Did you actually read the post I responded to?
And you somehow have come to the conclusion that that law is relevant to someone who has directly killed a police officer (or anyone)?
Exactly.
I disagree to some extent - arial views of car chases are now routine on the media, and if you have multiple choppers all trying to get the same story a mid-air is certainly conceivable and foreseeable.
That said, charging the guy starting the chase with murder does seem a stretch to me, at least in this case.
But the trucker’s life was pretty messed up. I know his father - he told me that his son hasn’t been able to get work since then, the legal stuff has basically ruined his life even though he has now been acquitted.
Eh, he was causing a felony ruckus and as a direct result some people died. Felony murder.
Egad. what would have happen to him had they caught him a couple of minutes before the crash? Manslaughter?
Getting back to the aviation accident–I can’t see how the collision of two helicopters can justify the murder charge. From what I remember taking glider lessons, the pilots of the aircraft are ultimately responsible for the aircraft. If they were operating under VFR with no ATC oversight, they were ultimately responsible for their fate of their passengers and aircraft. They collided because they allegedly failed to maintain spacing situational awareness. There’s no excuse for the police to to blame the driving suspect for “causing” the collision. I’m going on an assumption, that, assuming that no if no other significant facts arise this case, the FAA investigation will conclude the pilots were totally at fault. And that a new requirements will be issued concerning the spacing and situational awareness training to prevent it from happening again. The driver will be held blameless because he didn’t have anything to do with choppers being there–it was indirectly the news organizations choice to be there along with the direct, if unfortunately fatal. choice of the pilots.
To show the absurdity of the police chief’s thinking: Lets assume a house catches on fire and a couple of news choppers set out to cover the story and end up colliding. It’s later determine that origin of the fire is a result of bad wiring from a licensed electrician. Does the electrician get charged for murder now? Or, let’s take it a step further: what if the cause of the fire was a defective wire? Do we send the offending piece of wire to the electric chair?
Seems to me the chief is just trying to expand police powers to new heights (pun intended).
Phoenix’s finest indeed… :rolleyes:
Can you explain how the choppers colliding is a “direct” result of the actions of the man driving the truck? Seems to fit pretty much every definition of “indirect” I’ve ever heard. If he ran over a baby, that would be a direct result. I don’t see how this is.
I agree, except that I don’t think the FAA will make new rules.
No. Unless the electrician intentionally installed wiring that was contrary to code.
In my opinion the issue regarding colateral injuries is this: If a suspect directly causes an injury, he’s at fault. In the case of a policeman killed or injured on the way to the scene, I think it’s pushing it. But I understand the argument. As for the pilots, they were not emergency responders and so did not have to be there. Since they were acting on their own accord (or the station’s) and were not involved in any way in the pursuit, and were in no way in danger from the suspect, it’s absurd to charge the suspect with murder because of their deaths. They’re dead because one or both of the pilots screwed the pooch.
Is that because accidents would be too infrequent to justify the cost of implementation? Or do you mean something else?
That was my assumption. But again, how far does one’s responsibility go? In the case of the homeowner, I can see a tort case result for property and medical damages; in the area of criminal–manslaughter charges could be filed for negligence if someone dies in the fire. But for an aircraft collision?
This is fuzzing into a Great Debates question, so I’m going to stop here. I just find the whole, “gotta blame someone” attitude very unsettling… 
This isn’t really a GQ answer, but the chief is playing to the public, giving them a scapegoat so that we can blame the driver, and not our fascination with high speed chases, for the deaths of those four men. If it didn’t make good news and ratings, those helicopters wouldn’t have been competing for the airspace. But you can’t charge the general public with felony morbid curiosity.
The felony murder rule is not quite that simple. Say I discharge a weapon in my basement perfectly safe but still a felony in some jurisdictions, unknown to me a little old lady with a weak heart had walked by my house heard the noise which startled her and she dies of a heart attack, you still gonna call it murder?
The FAA hase been accused of ‘tombstone rulemaking’, which means that they don’t make a rule until enough people have been killed. One example I can think of just off the top of my head concerned new rules put into force after a Piper Archer collided with a DC-9 over Cerritos, CA in 1986. While this one crash did not trigger the new rules (requiring TCAS in commercial aircraft and Mode-C transponders in GA aircraft operating in areas of dense traffic), it contributed to them. In 1978 a Boeing 727 collided with a Cessna 172 in San Diego. This resulted in a TSRA (now Class B airspace) around Lingbergh Field.
On the other hand, mid-air collisions are rare. TCAS, Mode-C, Class B airspace, etc. make the areas around airports much safer for aircraft operating in their vicinities, but once you get away from airports (places where traffic is expected to be more dense) safety depends more on the vigilance of the pilots. This is especially true for helicopters, which operate under slightly different rules from fixed-wings. I could look up the specific rules in the FARs, but the basic rule is ‘don’t run into anything’. Helicopters tend to follow roads – keeping the roads to the left. This helps to reduce the possibility of head-on collisions. Helicopters are also expected to keep in touch with each other outside of ATAs. Within Class D, C or B airspace they’re on the tower frequency; but outside of controlled airspace helicopter pilots will switch to the air-to-air frequency and give position reports. For example, ‘Helicopter 4-0-0-0-Niner, westbound Simi, two-point-one.’ (‘N40009 is flying westbound on the right side of the 118 freeway at 2,100 feet.’) It works pretty well.
But then you have congregations of helicopters, such as when they are covering a news event. Often this is outside of controlled airspace (or usually, Class E airspace) where separation is not provided for VFR flights. It’s up to the pilots to not run into each other.
How would the FAA control the airspace? Class D airspace is what you find around municipal airports. They have their own workloads there keeping aircraft separated in the pattern and being aware of traffic within 5sm. Also, they might not be able to see low-flying helicopters at a distance. Raise the minimum altitude for helicopters? That would put helicopters, which often fly relatively slowly, in the same airspace as faster fixed wings. (For example, a Robinson R-22 might be cruising around at 70 kts while a Cessna 172 might be doing 120 kts.)
So given that mid-airs are rare, and that instituting new rules would be impractical for a problem so rare, I don’t think the FAA will see any need for rulemaking.
It is pretty simple, were you committing a felony when you discharged the weapon?
Np, bro is obvious. The choppers were there covering his escape attempt, and wrecked into each other. They wouldn’t have been there if he wasn’t committing his felony. If two cops chasing him wrecked into each other would be the same thing. That is what you can call “direct.” If you just don’t like the law itself, say so, but its application is pretty clear.
No, they wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t deemed top priority urgent to broadcast police chases.
Um, yeah, along those lines they wouldn’t have been there if he wasn’t born…
I disagree. The helicopters would have been flying anyway. That’s what they do. It’s true that they were covering the car chase, but they might have been in the same airspace at the same time for a traffic collision or a stalled semi. Cops colliding is different. They have a duty to try to catch the suspect. The first duty of a pilot is to operate the aircraft. Nothing should distract the pilot from this duty. If the helicopters crashed, it’s on the pilot(s). Helicopters often operate in close proximity to one another. That this time they happened to be covering a chase is irrelevant. Suppose someone became overexcited watching the chase on TV a hundred and suffered a fatal heart attack. Would the suspect be charged for murder? In this case, from what I’ve read, the suspect did not directly cause the fatal crash. I do not believe that the law was written to cover this situation. If he had hit someone or drove someone off of the road and that person died, then I think it is covered by the law. If a responder (i.e., someone with a duty to be there) is killed en route, I don’t believe he should be charged with murder. As I said I understand the argument, but I don’t believe that it constitutes direct action.
How about if I sat in my driveway printing up and handing out counterfeit twenty dollar bills and someone crossing the street to get one got killed by a passing car? Also pretty simple?
Good point. Should the suspect’s parents be charged as accomplices for giving birth to him?
My logic is that fleeing from an officer is a crime, and pursuit gives the officers indemnity from things that would otherwise be crimes (putting spikes on the road, shooting at the suspect, etc.). It does not pin their crimes on the suspect. If you go out onto the freeway and set up a barricade you’re committing a crime. Cops are allowed to do that because they are cops, but I firmly believe that everything they do is at their own risk – the suspect isn’t responsible for just any arbitrary enforcement attempt. If a police officer requisitions your car while in pursuit, the city owes you your car back but the fleeing suspect is not guilty of stealing it.
Don’t forget that in most cases a suspect that is not pursued is not going to plow through a barricade at 140 milers per hour – there’d be no chase and no barricade.
Doh. Too late to edit, but I just noticed I answered a wrong question because I didn’t catch this bit:
Throughout I was talking about being unable to stop in time and plowing through barricade unintentionally.