## Facts

- Don Louis Ceballos lived in a house with living quarters above an attached garage where he stored personal property and sometimes slept.
- After a prior theft of tools and signs of attempted forced entry (damaged lock and pry marks), Ceballos mounted a loaded .22 caliber pistol inside the garage aimed at the doors and rigged it to fire when a door opened several inches.
- Several days later, two unarmed teenage boys returned while Ceballos was away; one used a crowbar to remove the lock and pulled the garage door open.
- The rigged pistol discharged and struck the boy in the face.
- Ceballos admitted setting the device to protect his property.

## Issues

1. Whether setting and maintaining a spring gun to prevent burglary of an unoccupied garage is justified as defense of property or premises, negating liability for assault with a deadly weapon.
2. Whether a property owner may use a deadly mechanical device in circumstances where the owner, if present, would not be entitled to use deadly force.
3. Whether the trial court’s instructions on justification and related defenses were prejudicially erroneous.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of conviction for assault with a deadly weapon.
- The court held Ceballos’s use of a spring gun was not justified because the threatened offense involved property only and did not present an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury to any person.
- The court held a property owner may not accomplish through a mechanical device what the owner could not lawfully do if personally present (i.e., use deadly force absent a qualifying threat).
- Any instructional defects were not prejudicial given the absence of facts that could support lawful deadly force.

## Legal Principles

- Deadly force is not justified solely to protect property; justification requires circumstances involving an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury (or comparable violent felony conditions).
- A deadly mechanical device “stands in the owner’s shoes”: if deadly force would be unlawful for the owner if present, it is likewise unlawful when applied by an unattended device.
- Because mechanical devices cannot assess necessity or proportionality and cannot distinguish an unlawful intruder from an innocent entrant, their use is strongly disfavored and may constitute excessive force.
- Where the premises are unoccupied and the intrusion presents no immediate threat to persons, a spring-gun defense-of-premises theory fails as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed Ceballos’s assault conviction, holding that a spring gun may not be used to protect property in the absence of circumstances that would justify a person’s use of deadly force, and that any instructional shortcomings did not affect the outcome under the undisputed facts.


People v. Ceballos, 12 Cal. 3d 470 (Cal. 1974)