Summary Execution Of A Wounded Criminal

Great Debates
1

I’d like to begin this by stating I’m firmly anti-Death Penalty, but the following hypothetical occured to me the other day (after watching the movie Speed, actually) and I’d be interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on it.

Let’s say there’s this Really Nasty Criminal who’s hijacked a bus full of Nuns, Children, Kittens/Puppies, and one of the few remaining Gutenberg Bibles.

After a tense stand-off, in full media view (broadcast around the planet by several independent news networks (including CNN, the BBC, Australia’s ABC, and NHK), in which the Really Nasty Criminal is clearly identifiable, the Really Nasty Criminal makes some outrageous demands that are quite patently unreasonable (whatever your social/ethical/political views and mores may be), and eventually, deciding The Authorities aren’t going to acede, carries out his threat and blows up the bus- and the fact he pressed the button on the detonator is clearly visible to the TV cameras and anyone watching.

Amazingly, the only person NOT killed or horribly maimed and scarred for life is the Really Nasty Criminal. Sure, he’s injured, but he’ll pull through given a few weeks in hospital.

However, one of the police officers on the scene, rushing to the aid of the victims, finds the Really Nasty Criminal lying pinned under some wreckage, injured, but not life-threatningly. Knowing that if he arrests the Criminal, he will eventually stand trial for a crime that he is clearly and obviously guilty of (still holding detonator in his hands, everyone on Earth with a TV has seen the events leading up to the explosion), which will cost the taxpayers a fortune in legal fees, with the (admittedly slim) chance the Really Nasty Criminal might get off on a technicality, and even if he doesn’t it’s going to cost a lot of money to incacerate him for life, the police officer draws his handgun and calmy shoots the Really Nasty Criminal, killing him.

Should the Police Officer be charged, or should the incident be quietly swept under the carpet (not covered up, just… overlooked)?

Variation on above scenario: Really Nasty Criminal is critically injured in the blast. A paramedic finds him, but using the same rationale as the police officer, ignores him, going to tend other victims and knowing full well the Really Nasty Criminal will be dead before anyone can help him.

Given the impossibility of proving the paramedic deliberately chose not to assist the Really Nasty Criminal ("Gosh, I didn’t see him under all that wreckage, and there was a screaming 6 year old girl, a nun with no legs, and a burning copy of the Gutenberg Bible all vying for my attention…), would anyone demand an inquest or charges be laid?

I’m not trying to posit a particular viewpoint here, I’d just be interested to hear everyone’s thoughts. I’ll post my own later on, so as not to colour the thread from the outset, if that’s alright with everyone…

2

Yes, he should. That’s as cold-blooded a murder as anything RNC committed. I don’t really see that there’s anything to debate here - the policeman’s actions were just as unethical, immoral, and illegal as RNC’s. Absolutely open-and-shut case, IMO.

Be interesting to see if anyone disagrees here, and what their justifications are.

3

The police officer is guilty of some form of murder, and should be convicted and sentenced as such. The state and its officers cannot be allowed to carry out summary executions. Even when the guilt is really obvious. Even when the crime is really nasty.

The paramedic, AFAIK, has no obligation to treat certain injured people before another. In fact, given the way your situation is phrased, if the criminal is truly the least gravely wounded, leaving him for last is just good triage practice, and is not only lgal but the most ethical course of action.

4

I find the scenario as described unlikely. A police officer is not going to approach a violent criminal, especially one who has just killed or tried to kill hostages, with his gun holstered then casually draw it and shoot. That would be foolish in the extreme, as the criminal might easily have weapons or other bombs on him. It would actually be best to blow him away (preferably by sniper) as a precaution, while there is still a plausible threat to the lives of police officers or surviving hostages. I find it hard to imagine any reasonable person objecting.

If the criminal is sitting handcuffed in the back seat of a police car when he’s shot, then the label “summary execution” would apply. Somewhere between these two is a moment when the criminal is restrained, searched, and taken into custody. At that point, he’s no longer considered an immediate threat. That’s when a good shoot turns into a bad one.

5

I think there’s something about this in the constitution somewhere towards the back.

6

Since the guy’s almost certainly going to be easily convicted anyway, the only thing gained by wiping your ass with Constitution is saving a few tax dollars. And maybe few bucks on toilet paper.

Besides, a quick death is seen as more merciful than lifetime imprisonment by many folks, so you’re even reducing the deterrent aspect of the punishement to at least those people (of which I am one).

7

What Menocchio said. As a society, we say that we put life above money, so even if you changed the scenario so that it wasn’t a cop who killed RNC but some random passerby, the fact that the killing was done simply to save a few bucks can’t justify it.

And Menocchio is also right about the paramedic: if RC is the least injured, the paramedic was justified in passing him by.

I also think that we hold our service professions – cops, firefighters, paramedics – to higher standards than we hold the rest of society. We fully expect the cop to engage in this hours-long chase with the guy, run him down, watch the guy kill nuns and puppies, tackle him to cuff him, then treat him oh so gently and respectfully during the arrest. It’s inhuman of us to expect that from police, yet we do, and 99 times out of 100 they come through. (It’s that one time when they don’t, and someone inevitably has a video camera, that creates that pesky PR problem.)

8

Everything above this point is irrelevant. Murder is the criminal, deliberate killing of another person. It is differentiated from legally justifiable self-defense killing.

This is what is relevant, if the RNC isn’t a threat, and there is no justifiable self-defense motive, then it’s murder. Everything before this doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who he is. If you kill him on the street and it isn’t out of self-defense, and it’s intentional, it’s murder. You don’t allow murder to go unpunished in this society, period.

Most legal systems do make some allowances for emotional state, and give a decreased sentence for someone who kills in a moment of passion, and we punish those who kill in cold-blood with deliberate premeditation more harshly than those who are acting in a moment of passion. But we still punish the crime either way. To not do so would be to accept living in a society where murder is okay, and no one wants that.

9

What the police officer did was totally wrong, and indefensible. Charge him, and throw the book at him. But I would hope that a jury would refuse to convict. That would be wrong, too, but inside I would cheer.

10

Would you still cheer when it comes out that RNC wasn’t actually acting of his own volition, but was forced to hijack the bus by someone who had his 6 day old son hostage? The bomb not even set off by RNC, but remotely by Really Really Nasty Criminal, who is still at large, and will never be caught since the only witness is now dead? (concept stolen in part from TV show Criminal Minds)

Maybe he’s part of a larger group who will carry out other acts of terror. Might be nice to have him around to interrogate.

There are lots of reasons why you would not want to summarily execute this guy, even more reasons than there are to oppose the death penalty in general. At least with the normal DP, you have a chance to investigate the incident, with this, there is no investigation, no background, no nothing, just one more death.

11

In the first instance, I’d want the cop charged and brought to trial; that said, were I on the jury, I might well refuse to convict.

In the second instance, it’s difficult to see how anyone could make a prosecutable case.

12

I think I know what case the original poster may be planning on discussing. I saw a story on Geraldo recently about a police officer (in Arizona, I believe) who was involved in a gunfight after going to the home of a man who had just killed his girlfriend. He wounded the killer, handcuffed him, then went into the house and found his partner shot dead. He went back outside, told the 3 year old daughter of the woman who was killed to get out of the way, and then shot the man dead. He said afterwards that he does not remember anything after seeing his partner dead. This was all caught on videotape as it happened directly in front of his car.

The tone of the story really showed how far into fascism our country has sank. The police officer was repeatedly referred to as a ‘hero cop’ and the man he killed was called a creep and otherwise villified. The fact the man the cop killed was a white supremacist was brought up, despite the fact that everybody involved in the situation was white and it had nothing to do with the executed man’s crime. The fact that the ‘hero cop’ shot a handcuffed and wounded man to death was not brought up until the last minute and a half of the story, though it was obvious he did something heinous by the tone of the story leading up to this revelation.

13

I realize I left off some stuff and failed to make myself clear - the reason I knew the police officer did something bad was because the story was that this ‘hero cop’ was in jail for shooting a dangerous criminal, yet they did not give any details of what happened until several minutes of people talking about how great the cop is, how he loved his partner like a brother, how horrible the ‘white supremacist creep’ was, etc. Knowing how hard it is for a cop to go to jail for shooting a criminal, it was obvious that all the spin was covering for something bad.

14

It also ran in the New York Times. Here’s a blurb. The upshot is that the officer handcuffed the shooter, then went around the house to find his partner had been shot in the head. The officer then returned to the front of the house, flipped the shooter, still handcuffed, over, and shot him. This last was captured on the videocamera on the officer’s car.

Dude, you were watching Geraldo Rivera. You can’t extrapolate to fascism in American society from Geraldo Rivera.

The other thing you should point out about that story is that Anders accepted a guilty plea under state law to avoid federal charges.

15

Actually, I’d never even heard of that case until you mentioned it here, but it sound very interesting and more than a little disturbing.

I’d be inclined to charge the cop, knowing no jury will convict him, but then that’s wasting money just as much as a trial for someone who’s obviously guilty of blowing up a bus full of kids and nuns.

Still, NOT charging the cop would set a dangerous precedent, one which I’m not comfortable with.

Out of curiosity, would any of you change you answer if the hypothetical events took place somewhere with an active and regularly used Death Penalty- say, Texas, or Louisiana?

16

I found another ambiguity in my post. It reads as if the man who was executed had just killed the girlfriend of the police officer, but it was his own girlfriend that he killed. The police arrived at the front door and saw blood, and the man said that he had killed a deer recently and told them to leave, when they didn’t the gunfight began.

I can surely sympathize with the police officer. I know I would be sorely tempted to kill a man who had just killed one of my best friends if I had a gun in my hand, but I’d like to think that I would consider the consequences first, especially if I already had the guy cuffed and was in front of my dash-mounted video camera.

17

Really Nasty Criminal found not guilty by reason of insanity.