Is a man entitled to use a gun to defend his property from burglars – and then shoot dead one of these intruders? I found that a difficult moral dilemma when the case of Tony Martin first arose in 1999. Mr Martin, described as “eccentric”, lived alone in an isolated farmhouse, appropriately called Bleak House, in a quiet part of Norfolk. One night he heard intruders downstairs. So he took out his shotgun and let blast, killing 16-year-old Fred Barras, who came from a Roma family. My childhood catechism taught that we are not allowed to kill – except in self-defence. So that’s the moral dilemma. If Tony Martin thought he was being attacked – and a psychiatrist diagnosed him with paranoid personality problems – and his intention was self-defence, then did he do wrong in resorting to his shotgun? Rural people in deserted places are often frightened of crime, and feel helpless. Tony Martin said he had contacted the police previously, and had seldom derived any protection from them. Thieves and burglars, moreover, ought to be deterred. They should not prey on vulnerable older people where they believe there might be “easy pickings”. But on the other side of the case – a young boy, and an only son, lost his life. He was foolish and reckless to go along with a more experienced offender on this expedition, but who isn’t foolish at 16? In a televised re-examination, The Interrogation of Tony Martin, broadcast last weekend on Channel 4, it emerged that Barras’s last, childish word was “Mum”. The verbatim re-enactment was sober and even prosaic – with Steve Pemberton as Tony Martin in 1999 and Tony Martin himself, now, in a coda (he served a term in prison, but was released on psychiatric grounds.) It offered the facts, and left the viewer to form a judgment. I concluded that Martin was wrong to shoot the intruders, since it emerged that they were shot in the back as they fled. His lack of remorse for the adolescent’s death also told against him. “Thou shalt not kill” prevails. Yet “Thou shalt not steal” was also among the canon.