Tony Martin (farmer)

Anthony Edward Martin (born 16 December 1944) is a farmer from Norfolk, England, who shot a burglar dead in his home in August 1999.

There was much sympathy for Martin and enthusiastic support for the right to defend one's own home.

However, prosecutors cast doubt on his evidence and pointed out that he did not have a valid firearms certificate.

Martin was convicted of murder, later reduced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility and served three years in prison, having been denied parole.

Changes in legislation in 1988, resulting from the Hungerford massacre, had changed the licensing treatment of semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns with a magazine capacity of more than two to equate to that of a firearm, requiring a valid firearms certificate.

Martin had his shotgun certificate revoked in 1994 after he found a man stealing apples in his orchard and shot a hole in the back of his vehicle.

On 20 August 1999, Tony Martin, a 54-year-old bachelor, was living alone at his farmhouse, Bleak House, in Emneth Hungate, Norfolk.

He claimed that he had been burgled a total of ten times, losing £6,000 worth of furniture, though police stated they were unsure if all of the incidents occurred.

Martin also complained about police inaction over the burglaries and claimed that multiple items and furniture were stolen, including dinnerware and a grandfather clock.

Martin had equipped himself with an illegally held pump-action Winchester Model 1300 12-gauge shotgun which he claimed to have found.

On the evening of 20 August 1999, two burglars – 29-year-old Brendon Fearon and 16-year-old Fred Barras, both from Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire – broke into Martin's house.

Shooting downwards in the dark with his shotgun loaded with birdshot, Martin shot three times towards the intruders (once when they were in the stairwell and twice more when they were trying to flee through the window of an adjacent ground floor room).

Barras was hit in the back and both sustained gunshot injuries to their legs.

Both escaped through the window, but Barras died at the scene.

Martin claimed that he opened fire after being woken when the intruders smashed a window.

The prosecution accused him of lying in wait for the burglars and opening fire without warning from close range, in retribution for previous break-ins at his home.

On 23 August 1999, Martin was charged with the murder of Barras, the attempted murder of Fearon, "wounding with intent to cause injury" to Fearon and "possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life".

Martin did not hold a valid shotgun certificate, let alone the more restrictive firearms certificate he would have needed to possess the Winchester pump-action shotgun that held a maximum of five rounds.

English law at the time permitted a person to kill another in self-defence only if the person defending themself uses no more than "reasonable force"; it is the responsibility of the jury to determine whether or not an unreasonable amount of force was used.

The jury at the trial were told that they had the option of returning a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder, if they thought that Martin "did not intend to kill or cause serious bodily harm".

However, the jurors found Martin guilty of murder by a 10 to 2 majority.

Martin was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum term to serve of nine years, soon afterwards reduced to eight years by the Lord Chief Justice.

On 10 January 2000, Fearon and 33-year-old Darren Bark (who had acted as the getaway driver), also from Newark-on-Trent, admitted to conspiring to burgle Martin's farmhouse.

Fearon was sentenced to three years in prison, and Bark to two and a half years (with an additional 12 months arising from previous offences).

Fearon was released on 10 August 2001.

Fred Barras, the dead youth, had already been convicted of a total of 29 offences by the time of his death at the age of 16, including seven convictions for theft and six for fraud.

He had been sentenced to two months in a young offenders' institution for assaulting a police officer, theft and being drunk and disorderly.

On the night he was killed, Barras had just been released on bail after being accused of stealing garden furniture.

His grandmother, Mary Dolan, stated: "It's not fair that the farmer has got all the money and he is the one that took Fred away."

An appeal by Martin against his convictions and sentence was first considered in October 2001 by three senior judges headed by Lord Woolf LCJ.

Submissions by the defence that Martin had fired in his own defence were rejected by the appeal court.

On this occasion, the defence also submitted evidence that Martin was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder exacerbated by depression and that his paranoia was specifically directed at anyone intruding into his home; he was also diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.

This submission was accepted by the Court of Appeal and, on the grounds of diminished responsibility, Martin's murder conviction was replaced by manslaughter carrying a five-year sentence, and his ten-year sentence for wounding Fearon was reduced to three years.

These sentences were to run concurrently.

Martin was imprisoned at Highpoint Prison at Stradishall in Suffolk following his conviction.

When he became eligible for parole and early release in January 2003, the parole board rejected his application without stating a reason.

In an interview with The Times, parole board chairman Sir David Hatch described Martin as "a very dangerous man" who might still believe his action had been right.

Martin challenged the decision in the High Court, where the parole board's decision was upheld.

Probation officers on Martin's cases said there was an "unacceptable risk" that Martin might again react with excessive force if other would-be burglars intruded on his Norfolk farm.

On 28 July 2003, Martin was released after serving three years of his five-year sentence, the maximum period for which he could be held following good behaviour.