## Facts

- Robert C. Bishop lived in a trailer park and had experienced prior break-ins.
- Bishop set up an unattended “spring gun” using a Mauser 8mm high-powered rifle inside his trailer, arranged to discharge when the front door was opened by a string connected to the trigger.
- On February 13, 1986, Bishop left for work with the device in place.
- James Freeman, an acquaintance, attempted to enter through the trailer’s front door; when the door opened, the rifle discharged, struck metal molding near the doorway, and wounded Freeman with a ricochet or flying metal.
- Freeman was found wounded in Bishop’s driveway and taken to a hospital; he suffered a thigh wound and a fractured forearm, underwent vascular and tissue procedures, and was released about two weeks later.
- On February 27, 1986, Freeman died; an autopsy attributed death to a pulmonary embolism.
- Bishop claimed the rifle was aimed toward the floor inside the doorway and was intended to scare burglars rather than to kill.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to support malice murder, including proof of express or implied malice, given Bishop’s claim of intent only to frighten intruders.
2. Whether killing by an unattended mechanical gun trap was justified as self-defense or defense of habitation when Bishop was not present when the device fired.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the malice murder conviction and life sentence.
- The court held the evidence permitted the jury to find malice based on Bishop’s deliberate installation of a high-powered rifle designed to fire automatically upon entry.
- The court held the killing was not justified: an actor may not use a deadly mechanical device unless he would have been justified in using deadly force had he been personally present and firing the weapon.
- The court relied in part on policy concerns that indiscriminate lethal traps endanger innocent entrants, including children and emergency responders.

## Legal Principles

- Malice may be inferred where a defendant deliberately sets an inherently dangerous, deadly mechanism to discharge upon entry, regardless of the defendant’s asserted intent to “scare” and regardless of whether the fatal injury results from a ricochet.
- A person cannot lawfully do indirectly, through an unattended mechanical device, what the person could not lawfully do directly by personal use of deadly force.
- Justification defenses (self-defense and defense of habitation) do not authorize indiscriminate lethal force against unknown entrants, particularly where the actor is absent and not facing an imminent personal threat.
- Public safety limits the use of deadly force to protect premises; mechanical traps are disfavored because they cannot distinguish between unlawful intruders and lawful or innocent entrants.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Bishop’s malice murder conviction, ruling that the jury could infer malice from the deliberate installation of an automatic, high-powered spring gun and that such a killing is unjustified unless the defendant would have been legally entitled to use deadly force in person under the same circumstances.


Bishop v. State, 356 S.E.2d 503 (Ga. 1987)