A California man who was allegedly armed with a gun, knife and various tools when he was arrested in the early morning near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland has been charged with attempted murder, federal officials said in court papers filed Wednesday.
U.S. Deputy Marshals reported seeing a person dressed in black clothing and carrying a backpack and suitcase get out of a taxi that stopped in front of a current justice’s house at roughly 1:05 a.m., according to the affidavit. The person looked at the two marshals and turned to walk down the street, the FBI agent wrote.
The Montgomery County Emergency Communications Center then received a call from a person, who identified himself as Roske, saying he was having suicidal thoughts and had a firearm in his suitcase. Roske also said he came from California to kill a “specific United States Supreme Court justice,” according to the filing.
I’m curious as to why that counts as attempted murder. I would have thought attempted murder is where a guy tries to actually carry out his attempt but is unsuccessful. Actually does something which has the potential to kill the guy but it doesn’t happen. For example, if he shot at the guy but missed, or put out poison and it didn’t get eaten. In this case, the guy was planning on killing him, but apparently saw the marshals and decided to call it off before actually doing anything that might have killed Kavanaugh.
What about if the guy called it off after buying all the stuff and coming to DC but before taking a cab to Kavanaugh’s house? Or perhaps at an even earlier point?
“Attempts” or “inchoate” crimes are some of the trickiest to define in terms of facts. It will depend on the definition of attempt in the statute, and the application to the facts. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends with a lesser charge.
Yup. Conspiracy always requires at least two people planning to commit an offence. It’s also a very difficult offence to prove. It’s also an inchoate offence:
I too have the same question as the OP. I would have thought that, in order to count as attempted murder, the gunman would have at least have had to fire a shot in the target’s direction, or something like that.
Here’s a “what if” : suppose an employee in the Dallas School Book Depository had come across Oswald aiming his rifle out the window and knocked it out of Oswald’s hands before he could fire a shot. Is “aiming with intent” sufficient for “attempt murder”?
How early in the chain of events is it sufficient to establish an attempt? It can be very difficult to convince a jury if the chain is stopped early. The better the policing, the harder it becomes to prove the offence.
It’s the Minority Report problem. The illusion of free will works perfectly well for most purposes in everyday life, but criminal justice is the major exception. A justice system based on the fiction of free will is fundamentally flawed. Trying to draw a bright line on an “attempt” doesn’t work, just as trying to draw a bright line on “mental disease or defect” to determine culpability doesn’t work. There is no magical sense in which we float above the causal factors that determine our actions, and a justice system based on this fantasy will always have this kind of problem with consistency and coherence.
I don’t see how that can work, if the key element of conspiracy is absent (no co-conspirator). A judge won’t convict someone of a crime they objectively did not commit, even they agree a plea.
It doesn’t seem to me, either, that “attempted” works here, but it also seems to me that there ought to be some sort of law that would apply. There are a lot of federal laws about “crossing state lines for purposes of…”, because that gives the federal government standing that they might not otherwise have… Maybe something along those lines? And it also seems that there might be some California or Maryland law that might apply, though I’m not sure what those would be.
I was surprised by the charge too. The law usually requires some substantial step, beyond mere preparation, for an attempt to occur. I think aiming but not firing should qualify as an attempt; I’d think getting in a cab to go to the location does not.
I think the substantial step is (correct me if I’m wrong) traveling across the country with the intent to commit the crime. And then lying in wait (maybe? How close was he?). I’m not sure if renunciation is enough to undo an attempt, or if that only applies to conspiracy (and then only to future acts of wrongdoing, not past). But of course IANAL.
It may turn out the feeds have overcharged, but TBD.
I’m sure this is the wrong thread, but how did this guy get charged with attempted murder when he called the police on himself before he did anything? I mean, this thread will blow up whenever the actual opinion is released, but in the meantime, maybe you’ll forgive this hijack.
It’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I can accurately summarize Maryland’s (where Kavanaugh lives, the nutjob was arrested) Attempted Murder statutes/elements, but …
Whoops. There’s a separate thread about this (of course there is). I’ll ask the friendly, helpful mods if they think these couple of posts should live over there:
It’s more a problem with our notions of justice than of free will. If the goal of the justice system is strictly to improve public safety by limiting the interactions between the violent (or potentially violent) and the rest of society, as well as providing disincentives toward acting violently in the first place, then there is no incompatibility with free will or the lack thereof.
But on the other hand, if we embrace the common belief that the purpose of justice is to punish those that deserve it in some way–then things become much trickier.