I tried looking this up, but didn’t really find anything that really answered the question. I know that in countries where the authorities are a little weaker or less confident, hostage takers sometimes can and do negotiate passage out of the country, but I’ve never heard of that working in the US.
So let’s say I’m robbing a bank or something and I end up with hostages and a police standoff. The negotiator calls me on the phone. What can I realistically expect to get from him that would be of actual use to me at that point? I figured maybe a reduced sentence for ending the encounter peacefully(assuming no one got seriously hurt), but I’m pretty sure a negotiator can’t deliver that. So what can a hostage taker really gain from talking to the negotiator?
Possibly the ability to air their grievances on a public forum. And maybe a car. Something with reclining leather seats, that goes really fast. And gets really shitty gas mileage.
You would think, by this point, that some hostage takers would demand legal immunity in return for release of the hostages.
Although some unscrupulous governments might just say, “This concession was extracted under coercion and so we are therefore not bound by our word; you’re arrested anyway!” after the hostages were released.
Well, in some countries hostages do negotiate an escape and get away with it. Haven’t heard of that being successful here though. So basically it sounds like if you’re a hostage taker, your motivation to talk is really the same as the negotioator’s: you’re just buying time. I guess if you’ve got some kind of plan worked out you can trickle out hostages. Like if you’ve got a chopper or a lot more people under arms who can create an appropriate distraction if you’re part of an organization. But otherwise it would seem that talking to the negotiator is a waste of time.
That’s been done. Believe it was a hijacking in the US (IIRC, this was on one of those World’s Wildest (blank) shows). The hostage taker wanted immunity from prosecution, the Governor agreed, the guy came out, and was immediately arrested. The agreement was indeed nixed for the reasons you stated.
Interesting - is there any conceivable legal scenario under which a judge could overrule the governor and say, “You promised him immunity and so I am therefore setting him free?”
Why is that unscrupulous? You don’t want to encourage hostage-taking, so you promise whatever you have to in order to make the hostages safe, but you still punish the criminal(s) after the hostages are safe. I mean, isn’t protecting everybody from would-be hostage takers more important than “not lying to violent criminals”?
Because, in general, you want people to believe the authorities will keep their promises of immunity. Or they’ll simply stop helping at all.
What if, instead of negotiating with the hostage-takers themselves, you’ve arrested someone who knows about a violent crime that’s going to occur. You want him to talk. He asks for immunity, and he won’t talk without it.
Same violent stakes. Should the offer of immunity be bullshit?
How many times can the government go back on its offer of immunity before people start getting hurt because criminals no longer believe that they can protect themselves and provide information to stop violent crime?
Maybe that is true in the witness scenario. But looking at the bigger picture we currently have someone who is thinking of taking hostages seeing that every hostage taker has always been either arrested or killed. You’re proposing replacing that with either arrested or killed or let go without consequences. That doesn’t seem like an improvement.
Anyway, I suspect the whole point is moot because we’re discussing this as if hostage takers are sophisticated adults making good benefit versus risk assessments. “Lets see … I was thinking of taking some meth, robbing a bank, and taking some hostages in a drug fueled orgy of violence. Lets run the numbers and see if that would be, on average, a good life choice.”
No, I’m not. I’m simply saying that we shouldn’t make offers of immunity that are fraudulent. Because the spillover effects of doing so might result in much worse societal outcomes as people stop cooperating with the authorities.
Except in criminal cases you get your lawyer to look over the immunity agreement, and he can tell you if it’s phony or not. You can’t get the same immunity agreement by taking the DA hostage and making him sign it with a gun to his head.
I’m sure if the hostage takers called up their lawyer and had him read over the immunity agreement, that lawyer would advise his clients that the agreement was unenforceable and worthless. In which case the hostage takers wouldn’t fall for the scam. However, in real life very few hostage takers try to extort an immunity agreement from the cops, and even fewer get their lawyer to look it over first.
This is not coercion. He doesn’t know, he thinks. He just has info to trade. If the government makes the deal, and the info is bad, the government is stuck with the deal.
The hostage takers are not offering anything that is theirs to give. The hostages are not theirs to deal. To honor the deal for hostages would be to cheapen their lives and give incentive for taking hostages.
Just like confessions given as the result of a beating or threat of violence MUST be thrown out, no court can honor any deal of immunity under such circumstances. Contracts under duress are unenforceable. No judge would see it differently.
Generally the only thing hostage takers can expect is a free sniper bullet especially if they are actively threatening the hostages. The alternative is usually a forcible take-down followed by a long prison sentence.
There are a few hostage situations that have been “successful” but not many in modern times and vanishingly few in the United States. DB Cooper is the only high profile one that I know of and his attempt probably resulted in death by gravity or exposure as well.
There was one in India in 1999, Indian Airlines Flight 814, that was arguably successful. The hijackers wanted to secure the release of three Islamic militants and eventually succeeded.
There may be a few hostage situations in the U.S. that eventually allowed the hostage taker to escape at least for a while but I don’t know of any and I doubt they ended well. My kindergarten teacher’s daughter was taken hostage by her ex-husband when she went to pick up their daughter at daycare. The daycare workers saved the daughter from abduction but couldn’t save her mother. Police were unable to keep up with them and both the mother and father were found dead beside a rural road in a murder-suicide hours later. I don’t know if that fits however. It was most likely that a murder-suicide for the whole family was the point all along. Police contact was just an obstacle to that goal.
In summary, taking hostages probably isn’t a good career path for anyone, especially in the U.S. You almost certainly won’t get anything from it and most likely won’t last more than a few hours on the job.