I watched a 60 Minutes program about drone pilots. These pilots worked in a base located in the US (Nevada, I think), and piloted missions where people were killed in other countries. Could a local prosecutor bring them up on charges? It is clear that the pilots are killing people, and we do not know the procedures that they go through. I think a prosecutor should charge everyone on the base with conspiracy to commit homicide, and if the defendants want to raise an affirmative defense, they can bring forth their evidence.
I don’t know if the prosecutors have jurisdiction over the base, but from the 60 Minutes program, the pilots live off base, so they just need to find one act that a person involved committed that furthered the conspiracy that happened in the prosecutor’s jurisdiction.
There also might be federal preemption issue.
But this is such an important issue, we need a brave prosecutor to bring these charges and then deal with any issues that come up.
It would be BETTER to indict the President and his top advisors, the people who make the decision to implement drone strikes. I would like to see that. Obama needs to spend some time in a jail cell in the Hague. But if he does, it would ONLY be fair to put Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice there, too. War criminals, all.
Numerous innocent people have been killed. The pilots appear to have been negligent, at best. If they have evidence that mitigates their possible guilt, they can bring it forth.
As it stands, we don’t know whether the pilots or those giving the orders do anything to make sure they do not accidently kill innocent people. We also do not know what the rules are for collateral killings, or whether there are even any rules.
Being a soldier (I think these pilots are airmen) does not mean you cannot be a criminal. It does not mean that you can kill people without making sure you are not killing innocent people.
We know that innocent people have been killed. We don’t have any evidence that the people involved can bring evidence to support an affirmative defense that justifies killing innocent people.
If you don’t think these people should be charged, for the cases where innocent people were killed, what evidence do have that the pilots and the other people involved were justified in accidently killing these innocent people? What procedures did they follow? Were these procedures adequate to support an affirmative defense that justifies killing innocent people?
For the cases where they decided to kill people around the target, what law allows a person to kill someone because the person to be killed is near a person that been targeted for killing?
The more I think aobut this issue, the more i realize that the collateral killings are most obvious violation of the law. The pilots kill people without even knowing who the person is or whether the person has ever done anything that makes him or her a threat. There is no justification for this. Charge these pilots. They are cold blooded killers. We cannot have such people in our society.
I don’t know if the local prosecutors have jurisdiction over the base, but if any person involved committed any act that furthered the conspiracy, the prosecutor can go after the whole conspiracy. Did a pilot ever receive a call asking him to go on base?
We know the military is not going to bring a case.
This thread rings the bell and wins the prize for the dumbest idea ever posted on the SDMB. OP, you simply have no clue about law, politics, military matters, or foreign policy. You are so incredibly far off base that I can’t even begin to address the many glaringly obvious faults in your reasoning.
How are drone operators different from any other artillery crews? Shall we prosecute every gunner, every loader, every observer, for murder? What about aircraft pilots? What about infantry mortar crews, or anti-tank rocket crews? What about infantry riflemen (what’s the sex-neutral form of rifleman?) whose shots go astray in combat?
There are laws against homicide in the US. The pilots are operating in the US.
Vincent Bugliosi, the lawyer who prosecuted the Manson murders, had a similar idea to prosecute George W. Bush, but I guess he knows nothing about the law.
Uh, hello? Confessing here? I voted for the guy – committed the act in cold blood, if you will – right smack dab in the US, because I was in a “furtherance” mood.
if it can be proved that “double tap” strikes targeting civilian rescuers have been used, that would be a war crime under the geneva convention.
“As international law experts have noted, intentional strikes on first responders may constitute war crimes.”
Thats from a report from NYU School of Law and Stanford Law School quoted in the article below.
Besides the total lack of evidence that there are attacks on first responders, and the absurdity of the notion that you can only fire once at your enemy, I don’t think local prosecutors can charge someone with war crimes.
It is fallacious to say we should not prosecute a crime if we don’t prosecute a different crime. But I would have no problem with prosecuting people for the Dresden fire bombing if the evidence supported the prosecution–I don’t know enough about the fire bombing to say one way or the other.