A question related to this is circling the net, and I am interested in the American legal view on this.
Suppose a surviving individual of a hominid sideline, so far unknown to science, is found and deliberately killed by a licensed hunter. Could he be charged with homicide? In other words, how is a “human” legally defined in terms of being a murder victim?
How about crossing that bridge when we come to it?
Since Bigfoot is as mythical as elves, leprechauns or satyrs, why not include them in your discussion? What would be the legal implication of killing one of them?
In a superhero campaign, we determined that killing undead amounted to littering. Since it was aiding the public good, the police decided not to prosecute, but we were required to clean up after ourselves from then on.
Were you actively trying to track down and kill (as opposed to capture) one or did you happen to find one going through your trash can?
You can always claim self defense and force them to prove it was premeditated.
Why would someone throw away a perfectly good Bigfoot? 
It would be explained as either being a bear or a weather balloon. Both of which would not be considered murder. Wasn’t there a group that was trying to get bigfoot classified as a human entity? My guess is that it would not be considered murder.
Moderator Note
The question is not on Bigfoot specifically, but on the legal definition of human. Threadshitting of this kind is not helpful. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I don’t think killing BigFoot is regulated by any Dept of Fish and Wildlife. Therefore, you can shoot and kill them all you want, as though they were sparrows or some other non-regulated animal. If the rubber skin is pulled back and you find human DNA, you’d get a bye for accidental shooting.
If sasquatches exist, they’re surely very rare. Could you perhaps fall afoul of the Endangered Species Act? Is that based on an explicit list, or does it include standards by which a hitherto-unknown creature could be considered endangered?
How can you get a bye for accidental shooting when the shooting was intentional? Perhaps some other defense is possible. But the real question in the OP is that if BigFoot really exists and is some form of homosapien or other thought to be extinct homo would that be murder? I saw on the National Geographic channel recently that it is hypothesized that a primitive homosapien tribe which migrated from Africa settled in a sparse area in southwest Asia, accounting for sightings in that area.
H. Beam Piper explored this in “Little Fuzzy.” He concluded that sapience and personhood create legal rights which apply retroactively. So, if on March 1, I shoot a Bigfoot, and on June 1st, the courts declare the species sapient and possessing civil rights, I would be guilty of murder.
Thing is, I think Piper was full of crap on that. In the U.S., today, that kind of ex post facto interpretation is forbidden. A “reasonable person” could not know that the Bigfoot was a “person” under the law.
Somebody might go after the shooter for violating the terms of his hunting license… (“Does it say ‘Bigfoot’ anywhere on this card?”)
Obviously, the “court of public opinion” would weigh in. Many would be angry at the shooter. Others would excuse him. Damn messy. He’d be invited on every stupid weekend or morning talk show in the country!
Species have to be explicitly placed on the list to be covered by the Endangered Species Act, either by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (though individuals or groups can petition those two agencies to place a species on the list). AFAICT, there’s no provision for protecting a hitherto-unknown creature, and it takes quite a lot of bureaucratic work to get a species onto the list.
Endangered Species have to be explicitly declared to be subject to legal protection.
The law recognizes (at least) two different types of intent: intent to perform a specific action (i.e. firing a gun), and intent to cause an (usually illegal) outcome (another person is wounded by your gun shot). There’s actually special words (latin, of course) for the two different types, but I don’t do that elitist bs.
I’m sure one of our legal dopers can provide a better explanation later.
Tweet! Time out! The OP’s question directly relates to mythical beings, i.e., “surviving individual of a hominid sideline.” Can you say that elves and leprechauns are NOT hominids, but Bigfeet are?
It is not fighting ignorance to exclude my questions in this discussion, and this is not threadshitting. It is exactly what this forum is intended to combat.
It’s not quite so ex post facto, though. Federation law defines “murder” as “the unjustifiable killing of a sapient being” (or something along those lines), which is not ex post facto because that’s the law and has been for years if not centuries at that point. The question becomes, would a reasonable person know a Fuzzy and/or Bigfoot was a sapient being? Under Federation law, if you land on Planet Ikanam, see some hairy humanoid roasting meat over a fire; said being turns to you and says “Ellohay, angerstray! Ouldway ouyay ikelay omesay ofay isthay eatmay?” and you respond by shooting the aforesaid being, you’re almost certainly on the hook for murder, since said being a.) appears to be capable of building fires and b.) appears to possess the facility of speech; and “talk and build a fire” is the basic rule-of-thumb (though not without exceptions) for determining sapience.
[Moderating]
While finding a hypothetical “surviving individual of a hominid sideline” may be very unlikely, it is not impossible. Homo floresensis could conceivably survived into fairly recent times (although they pretty certainly don’t exist any more). As I said, while the OP linked to a story about Bigfoot (which I agree does not exist), it is not specifically about that creature; and the only one who has brought up elves and leprechauns is you. In any case, there is a legitimate question regarding on whether human status is defined legally. There’s no justification for dismissing the question out of hand.
If you wish to discuss my moderation of this topic further, take it to ATMB.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Vercors, a French writer, put out You Shall Know Them in 1952, in which a scientist deliberately kills a newly found hominid in order to provoke a legal battle over their status. A classic if almost unknown novel in the U.S. with the best paperback cover ever. Ever. It was turned into the 1970 movie Skullduggery, which is equally unknown, at least to me.
In 1988, Roger McBride Allen wrote a very good novel titled Orphans of Creation, in which a scientist deliberately kills a newly found hominid in order to provoke a legal battle over their status. He swore when I asked him that he had never heard of Vercors. And I believe him. The logic of the plot is overwhelming.
The Allen book is one of my picks for a science fiction novel to turn into a film. Other than some prosthetics no special effects budget is needed, but it would hit every hot button.
(Bearing in mind that I am not a lawyer…)
The Texas Penal Code defines homicide as “intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence [causing] the death of an individual” and defines “individual” as “a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth”–but I don’t see that it defines “human being”. (Note that the recent alleged shooting of a Bigfoot was reported to have happened in Texas, not up in the Pacific Northwest like you might think.)
A multi-tentacled bug-eyed creature from outer space, I think you’d walk, even if all the E.T. did was walk out of its spaceship and say (in English) “Greetings, Earth-Human! We come in peace!” (Of course you might get the entire planet blasted to smithereens.) But conceivably a court might find that anything capable of operating a spaceship and greeting people in English counts (for legal purposes) as a “human being”. (Especially if the Galactic Federation has a giant spaceship hovering over Austin.)
With something like Homo floresiensis, or a hypothetical Bigfoot that turned out to be a close relative of ours (a fellow hominid)…who knows? It might sway the legal system if, on the one hand, you just saw (and shot) a hairy (but bipedal) critter skulking around in the woods–even if it was subsequently found out that Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) are advanced beings with their own language and culture and so on; versus you stumble across a Bigfoot and he says to you “Oh, dear me–This is most unfortunate! We Sasquatch have nothing against you Hairless Ones, but we prefer to keep to ourselves–I don’t suppose I could possibly prevail upon you to just forget about this whole thing?” and you reply “Screw it!” and shoot him. (And, say, you have your video camera recording the entire exchange.)
Even though the shooter was a licensed hunter, he wasn’t really hunting in the traditional sense. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a Bigfoot hunting license so I would imagine he’d qualify for at least a fine. That said, if he was really interested in “proving” Bigfoot is real, couldn’t he have shot it with a tranquilizer gun just as easily?
The short answer is that our legal system is ill-prepared for intelligent beings that are not homo sapiens. Now, if Bigfoot turned out to be a hominin - let’s say a surviving Neanderthal - then a court would probably find it easy to conclude that he or she is a human being, individual, or natural person (the three terms most frequently used in the law) and protected against murder. The issue becomes harder if Bigfoot is more distantly related than indisputably nonhuman animals, and it seems more likely that a court would rule that such a creature is not a natural person and therefore its killer cannot be prosecuted for murder.
The issue may well arise in the future. At some point we will probably be able to enhance animals to human intelligence, and of course artificial intelligence seems inevitable. Extraterrestrial intelligent beings are also a possibility, though I consider them a remote one. (I don’t question that there are extraterrestrial intelligent beings; I just don’t expect to see them on Earth.) Existing legal standards are not equal to these eventualities.
