Let’s say Adventurous goes out with the explicit purpose of getting mugged, winning the fight, and leaving the city down precisely one mugger.
Bully is of the variety of person who considers arbitraging aggression their idea of nothing to do.
Bully is skulking in the shadows, and it’s like a bell that’s ringing for Adventurous, who goes over all unassuming, gets accosted, and wins.
Concerned calls the police, who take Adventurous and Bully into custody, Bully going via some poor intern’s first 3 AM.
Assuming the Adventurous plan comes to light, is it still self-defense? Does it change the legality in the slightest? Obviously, both parties came in with unclean hands, but Adventurous would have been passive were it not for Bully punching the dance card. Does Bully (or the estate thereof) even have a better chance in civil court?
As I understand it, exactly who has the claim of acting in self defense can change with very small change in the actions of each party.
Somewhere there’s a cartoon (B&W set in the ol’ west, not just an editorial sized one) that details just how fluid who is the aggressor and who is non-aggressor is and just how quickly those roles can change. I think it does detail which actions change self defense into becoming the aggressor. E.G. the “Death Wish” scenario of luring the bad guy into attacking you so you can attack them and whether that’s self defense or not.
If anyone remembers the cartoon I’d really appreciate a link!
(Not much of an answer, but I think the cartoon does deal with the question asked.)
This reminds me of Bernhard Goetz. For those too young to remember, Bernhard Goetz was a guy in NYC who was fed up with crime and the lack of punishment in the city and started carrying a gun around. According to Goetz, he was in the subway when a group of men tried to rob him. According to some of his detractors, Goetz was in the subway just looking for people who looked like criminals. Either way, Goetz unloaded his pistol against the group of men.
According to Wikipedia, Goetz was charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and several firearms offenses (he couldn’t get a handgun permit in NYC so he bought the pistol while he was in Florida). Goetz claimed self-defense. In the end he was convicted of one count of carrying an unlicensed firearm.
Cops leave keys in cars as bait cars. I think adventorous is a hero, if someone attacks someone who appears vulnerable does that somehow give him a right to mug?
When I was a kid the local skating rinc had some gay kids who were into figure skating. Some of the local toughs were giving them a hard time. The owner of the rinc enlisted myself and my friends to come over and wait for them to start their shit and then nock the hell out of them. I saw nothing wrong with that.
I actually researched Goetz when forming the OP, and it seems that his case was different enough that it isn’t quite what I’m interested in. The fact the jury apparently believed Goetz wasn’t out looking for trouble (whether he was or not) pushes his case more into the traditional self-defense realm; my case is closer to vigilantism, such that there might actually be laws against it, because Adventurous had (unarguably, this time) made a deliberate choice to potentially create a crime, and choices have consequences under the law.
I don’t think you would get much more than say Manslaughter but enough states want deadly force to be a last resort on the street that this sort of ambushing wouldn’t fly long. If you kept your mouth fairly shut, maybe twice. But by Bully III, someone in the DA’s office is going to start talking pattern of behavior.
IIRC there was a cabbie who decided to go all “Taxi Driver” and take the worst fares in the worst places and times. He clocked up three kills; I believe #4 got him charged althoufgh I don’t remember the results. Florida sticks in my brain but so does Baltimore.
Volokh provides a nice analysis of this (as it pertains to Texas), and if you’re interested in this, you really should take a look at it for more depth.
In particular, it looks like it would hinge on whether Adventurous’s actions could be considered a provocation beyond a reasonable doubt. My gut says no, but there’s definitely some ambiguity.
OK, this was something I thought would be obvious from the OP: No, nobody would consider Adventurous to have provoked it on the spot unless you consider someone walking down a specific region of public property at a specific time of night to be “provocative”, and I think anyone taking that stand would have a lot of explaining to do to the Take Back The Night people of the world.
I mean, I don’t get to stipulate matters of law in my OPs, but I do get to stipulate matters of fact, and I consider that to have been pretty well stipulated.
Let me play the role a moment. If I’m trying to be mugged so I can kill the mugger, I’m going to do something to make myself a better target. Wrong neighborhood, wrong clothing, wrong time - something. A white guy walking around South Park at 3 in the afternoon has little chance of getting mugged; I’m better off walking around Manchester or North Charles Street at 1am. That’s just how it is. If I act confused and put on a tux, I can almost promise myself I’m going to be mugged. Remember, the line was “Let’s say Adventurous goes out with the explicit purpose of getting mugged, winning the fight, and leaving the city down precisely one mugger.”
Cops aren’t stupid as you note by assuming the plan comes to light. That is where (b) comes into play. Was he provoking on the spot? Possibly (or maybe even probably) not. Was he legally provocative? Very likely. And chances are the courts would be asked to sort it all out.