Say a man, for whatever reason (excluding hijacking) smuggles a knife onto a plane. Maybe he feels like he needs to protect himself very strongly, maybe he is a Sikh and it is part of his religion, whatever. So he gets the knife onto the plane and sits down.
Then a hijacker gets up, tells everyone there is a bomb, and says that he will kill everyone if he does not get control of the cockpit or the plane doesn’t land in X airport, or whatnot.
So our knife-smuggler stands up, pulls out his knife and slices the hijacker’s throat. The hijacker dies. The now-heroic knife smuggler makes clear that he means no harm to anybody else, surrenders his weapon to the authority (if any,) or places it on the floor, or whatever, and sits back down. The plane lands in the closest airport and the probably shaken passengers are plied with free drinks while…
what now? Does the knife-smuggling hero get arrested for what he did? If he was tried in court, would he probably be acquitted easily?
What if he didn’t have a knife? What if he was a boxer or martial artist who was able to kill the hijacker with unarmed force? Would he be likelier to be acquitted of any wrongdoing in court?
Wouldn’t there be a grand jury investigation regarding whether or not to indict the knife-weilding “hero”? In the US, grand juries decide to bring felony charges (right?). If the grand jury feels that no crime occurred, then no charges are brought.
If the knife-wielder’s actions really were honest—which I’m assuming they are—I imagine that he wouldn’t face greater legal problems for killing the hijacker than if, say, Bruce Lee killed the hijacker with his bare hands. Smuggling the knife onboard would be the real problem—but I imagine he might get a slap on the wrist or even a pardon or something, seeing as he just saved a couple of hundred lives.
At the very least, the killer is clearly protecting his own life, so wasting the hijacker is an act-of self-defense. Regardless of any claim the hijacker might make about landing etc., it is a reasonable assumption that the hijacker’s intent is to cause the death of everyone aboard, and it’s hard for me to imagine a grand jury indicting the person who killed the hijacker.
I remember a pre-Sept. 11 episode of CSI that had the crew reconstructing how a man died in the first-class cabin of a commercial jet. They eventually figured out that the guy was suffering some kind of mental breakdown, was behaving violently and erratically, had tried to kick down the cockpit door (!) and was promptly grabbed and pounded to death by half-a-dozen other passengers. I seem to recall that Grissom got kind of preachy, implying the passengers had overreacted.
Feh. I’m happy to admit that if I was on a flight and a passenger tried to force his way into the cockpit, I’d gladly bite his throat out and appear before a grand jury still covered in his blood.
Incidentally, has there been an airline hijacking of any kind in the last three years? I doubt any hijacker can count on the docile cooperation of the passengers, these days.
Not four hours ago, I was in my girlfriend’s house when her thoroughly domesticated (and altogether rather timid) housecat came in from wandering around the backyard, sampling the local grasses. Girlfriend reported that the cat had already effectively mowed the front lawn over the last few days. The cat skittered around, agitated, made a bunch of weird meows, began huffing, and spewed several mouthfuls of vomit, always bolting to a different part of the house after each deposit.
I could buy that cats eat grass to induce vomiting to free themselves of airballs. I could also buy that this particular cat is just being a jerk.
You don’t even need a knife - just throttle the hijacker with your tie or belt. But I think we’d need to know where exactly the incident took place - international airspace or national airspace and if the latter which nation and their laws on the matter.
So this should actually read as: "Not four hours ago, I was in my girlfriend’s house when her thoroughly domesticated (and altogether rather timid) hijacker came in from wandering around the backyard, sampling the local grasses. Girlfriend reported that the hijacker had already effectively mowed the front lawn over the last few days. The hijacker skittered around, agitated, made a bunch of weird meows, began huffing, and spewed several mouthfuls of boxcutters, always bolting to a different part of the house after each deposit.
I could buy that hijackers eat grass to induce boxcutters to free themselves of airballs. I could also buy that this particular hijacker is just being a jerk."
If it wasn’t me in the situation of the OP, I would hope someone else would step up. We need more of me. Yay me!
Good = Stand-up guy says to self, “Self, let’s do something here!” Chicken-shit coward is taken down and all go on with life. National Hero. TV interviews.
Bad = ACLU and other sundry organizations bitch about not understanding the motive nor giving the terrist shit a fair trial.
I would hope that he would receive some type of retribution for breaking the law. Otherwise, radio transparent knives would quickly become standard traveling equipment for all sorts of crazies, and before you know it, some guy who is complaing to the stewardess because he didn’t get a kosher meal ends up with his throat cut.
the guy was (rightly) overpowered by several passengers. However at this point (lying helpless face down in the aisle) he was kicked to death.
the guy was suffering from undiagnosed meningitis and the conditions of the flight exacerbated his pain. But nobody asked him why he was acting strangely (for about half an hour) before he went on the rampage. They all assumed he was a nutter.
Nobody disputes your right to self defence. If someone hijacks a plane, your life is in danger.
The ACLU is not a psychological organisation.
It does exist to defend the rights of all Americans, such as getting a fair trial.
Bear in mind that the current US administration has imprisoned many people without access to legal advice or families, tortured them and never even told them what charges they face. They have produced a definition (enemy combatants) to avoid using the Geneva Convention.
And the reason that all these people are imprisoned? Intelligence sources. The same ones that told you about all the WMD’s in Iraq. :rolleyes:
It’s not the passengers’ job to diagnose someone, or probe into his motivation. Whether his actions are triggered by a physical or mental illness, or just a desire to martyr himself for some cause, the attempt to force into the cockpit justified his death on self-defense grounds, in my opinion. The episode tried to make clear that the passengers could have stopped after the instigator was down, but that’s a highly controlled fictionalized situation, where the character can find evidence that tells them exactly what happened (and the audience is treated to video recreations of same). A real-life incident would likely have the crew isolating and restraining the guy long before he became a problem, or 3-4 passengers restraining him by sitting on him, rather than an all out smack-down, which is kind of what happened to that shoe-bomber guy. I’d have had no problem if he’d been beaten to death.
Right - something that however much affectation of “gritty” or “real” may be thrown in, is the characteristic of every TV crime/law drama. CSI, LAW & Order, and JAG make it a habit to harvest the headlines and urban legends of the previous few months and then make a nice, neat “now, THIS is what we think really happened/should have happened/would happen if the idea were taken to the ultimate consequence” tale.
IIRC, the fine print on a plane ticket says that if you attempt to interfere with the operation of the plane while in flight, the crew, and anyone else on the plane is within their right to use any and all means necessary to prevent you from succeeding.
There have been “air rage” cases in which the person causing the disruption on the plane has been killed. AFAIK, none of the people involved were ever jailed for anything.
