I read one of those Tales from the Crypt-type EC comics long ago, and it involved a man, a former Air Force bomber pilot, who wanted to kill his partner in his civilian business (for personal reasons, I believe). He knew the crime would be traced back to him no matter how he did it, so he decided to murder the guy in a way that would keep him out of jail, and indeed, court.
He knocked his victim out, put him into a plane, and dropped him so that he fell thousands of feet and splattered exactly on the Four Corners. He then watched the four states argue over whose jurisdiction to try him in, which caused delay upon delay. What if someone decided? Why, he’d just appeal! The perfect crime, right?
Hardly. His partner came back from the dead and killed him, of course, but that’s neither here nor there. I’d just like to know what gaping holes undoubtedly exist in this whole scenario. Any takers?
I know when there are a bunch of connected murders in different states, all states have jurisdiction but who gets the murderer first depends on who calls first dibs and gets the paperwork in.
I would think that since the guy hit the pavement in all 4 states, all 4 states would get a shot at him. It wouldn’t matter so much about jurisdiction since the guy would have been murdered in all 4 states. Just let 'em line up and have at him.
It’s a federal crime. The feds can claim jurisdiction because the victim was tossed out of an aircraft. Aircraft, especially in flight, are subject to federal jurisdiction.
However, in this day and age, he would probably remain in jail until the States decided among themselves which would prosecute.
[QUOTE}Stimson correctly takes the position that the offense is committed where the offender was when he did it… The problem becomes more difficult, however, if the exact locations of the various elements of the offense cannot be determined with certainty…The obvious solution, at least within the U.S., would be to convene a special grand jury, probably composed of a majority not connected with any of the sovereigns in contention, to investigate and decide which has jurisdiction and who may prosecute the crime.[/QUOTE]
Now, while the actual dropping off might have occurred immediately over the Four Corners in a way that the precise position could not be determined, some rules of thumb that the grand jury could use might be as follows:
What state got the majority of the body?
From what state did the defendent approach the Four Corners? However, in any case, the defendent had to have crossed state lines in the commission of the crime (or at the very least the crime required that the corpus delecti crossed state lines, thereby permitting the possibility of Federal jurisdiction.
I want to know how you can drop a body out of an airplane thousands of feet in the air in such a way that you can predict it will land exactly on the four corners.
We covereved this just yesterday, oddly enough. He could be tried for murder in all four states, as well as whatever state he kidnapped the victim in. Far from committing the perfect crime, he’s actually given at least four different states the chance to give him the death penalty.
Well, you do need to be careful about things like this – in another EC story I read recently, a man killed his boss by setting a bomb on the boss’s plane, but, when the guy went out to the desert to observe the crash, he misjudged the trajectory slightly and ended up getting killed when the wreckage landed on him.
(Those old EC’s were really good, folks! And lots of cheap reprints are available for order from your comics retailer!)
A real-life analogue can be seen in the prosecution of the recent D.C. area snipers. (Although it’s not exact because they killed several people in different jurisdictions in which they were present, not one person in many jurisdictions at once.) As is seen in this case, typically the prosecutors from the various jurisdictions get together and hash stuff out informally. The snipers are to be tried (first, at least) in Virginia for one murder committed therein although most of their victims were in Maryland. (About a half-mile from my house, actually.) This is because Virginia allows the death penalty for certain minors, including potentially suspect Lee Malvo, 16 at the time of the killings.
(When this arrangement was first worked out, several of us Marylanders were quite upset; I wanted us to bring the snipers to justice since we were the ones looking over our shoulders on our morning commute during those weeks, but I’m over it.)
Another case is that of Murrah Building bombing conspirator Terry Nichols. Although he was convicted of taking part in the Oklahoma City bombing by a federal court, the only murders before that court were of eight federal agents who died in the blast, and the federal jury did not give him the death penalty. Now that his federal case is complete, Oklahoma itself is planning to try him for the 160 civilians who died.
The common law view was that a crime could only have one situs, the place where the fatal force impinged on the body. Modern statutes generally expand this jurisdiction to say that if you perform one element of a crime within a state and the rest somwhere else, you’re liable for the whole crime in the state. If that one act is a crime in several different states, you can be tried in all of them.
The relevant SCOTUS case: Heath v. Alabama. Heath goes to Alabama and hires two guys to kill his wife in Georgia. He drives them home to Georgia. His wife is later found dead in Alabama. After arrest, Heath pleads guilty to malice murder in Georgia in exchange for a life sentence. In spite of this, he is also tried in Alabama for murder during a kidnapping and gets the death penalty. Heath appeals to SCOTUS, saying the Alabama trial was “double jeopardy.” SCOTUS rejected his argument; the two states are “dual sovereigns”, each with its own power to enforce its laws. The four corners murderer has subjected himself to multiple jurisdictions and could get four or more murder trials.
Isn’t it even worse than that? If I recall correctly, Four Corners is on tribally-controlled land, isn’t it? So in addition to all four states having jurisdiction (since elements of the crime occured in each), and the Feds (since the crime crossed state lines), wouldn’t the tribe (Navajo, IIRC) also get a shot at him?
Four Corners is actually a Navajo Monument, the Navajo Nation would have first dibs. But because the Navajo Nation is a Sovereign Nation within the United States, the crime would be considered a Federal Crime.
Plus the obvious “hole” in the logic of the story would be the ability to drop the victim on a specific point from an airplane. Not really realistic at all.
Firstly, I’d like to know how he landed<b>exactly</b> on Four Corners…considering air resistance and such, it’d be a pretty damn hard thing to do…but then again…
It DID say that his partner came back and killed him…it would be some kind of insane plot-hole if it turned out he only dropped him from a small height…which would answer both of my questions, “How did he make him land there?”, and “How come he didn’t die?”
Personally, I think this is a urban legend…unless of course, I’m completely wrong, in which case, someone hit me for being un-American…I need to watch more CNN, I think…
Read the topic again carefully SirMuffinMan… From what I gather, the story originally came from some sort of comic.
But assuming your questions weren’t a little irrelevant, you could so that one answers the other. He had to fly low to be able to drop his partner with enough accuracy.
Hey, if the guy you dropped was a genius, then it would a Smart Bomb!!
Thanks, I’ll be here all week.
But seriously, “precision” bombing techniques were developed in WWII. However, they weren’t as precise as they would have had us believe. They used to tell stories about being able to drop a bomb in a pickle barrell from high altitude, but that was a big exaggeration.
The answer is, it probaby isn’t possible, even if you were flying a B-17 with a Norden bombsight, and had an expert bombadier to use it.
The only way I could think of to even come close to the precision necessary would be to do it at VERY low altitude using a crop dusting technique. However, even then you would have to drop a bunch of guys in a row to “walk” the ordnace onto the target. So if you had a bunch of guys you wanted to get rid of, but only one of them needed to land exactly on Four Corners…
Any takers?
