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Tony Martin, the man who shot and killed a teenage intruder in his home in 1999, has passed away at the age of 80 according to a family friend. The murder of 16-year-old Fred Barras in Martin’s Norfolk farmhouse caused controversy and divided the country at the time between those who saw Martin’s actions as pre-meditated and those who believed the farmer was simply defending himself and his property. Martin was convicted of murder in 2000 and was released three years later after the verdict was reduced to manslaughter.
At the time of the incident, Martin lived alone in his sprawling, semi-derelict farmhouse in Emneth Hungate, near Wisbech on the Norfolk/Cambridgeshire border. On 20 August 1999, the evening of the incident, two intruders entered Martin’s home, with the intention of burglary. They had travelled from Newark in Nottinghamshire. Martin fired his pump-action shotgun at them, killing one, while the other was rushed to the hospital.
Martin was initially charged with murder for the killing of the teenager, but he claimed to have acted in self-defence while the prosecutor argued that he lay in wait for the intruders. The case attracted widespread public attention, with Martin’s supporters suggesting he was a hero for taking a stand to defend his property, while critics saw him as a violent eccentric who turned vigilante.
In 2000, Martin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life, with ten years for a wounding offence and a further 12 months for possession of an illegal firearm. His charge was later reduced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility owing to a diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder, and he was released in 2003 after serving three years in jail. In 2013, the Crime & Courts Act introduced a “householder’s defence”, which recognized the right of people to use “reasonable force” against an intruder that was not “grossly disproportionate”, considering the Tony Martin trial as one of its influencing factors
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