Is the affirmative defense of self-defense available for the crime of terroristic threats? According to this article, the DOJ may charge individuals who attempt to spread COVID-19 with terroristic acts/threats. Suppose that an individual, say Bob, is being assaulted or otherwise a crime is being committed against an individual for which it is generally appropriate to use self defense in response. Call the criminal Joe. Suppose this occurs in one of the fifty states of the United States (if your answer is state specific please note it in your answer). Suppose that Bob coughs on Joe in an act of self defense and generally attempts to defend himself by spreading his illness. Suppose that an objective lay person and Bob himself believes that Bob is infected with SARS-COV-2 (causing the disease of COVID-19). Also, an objective lay person and Bob would feel that Joe’s actions if not stopped would cause imminent harm to Bob, but would not result in death. Suppose further that Bob believes that his acts of coughing would act as a deterrent to reduce the chance of Joe assaulting/attacking Bob. Is this a legally permissible act for Bob to do? Is there any crime Bob is committing?
This isn’t self defence Self defence involves reasonable steps to end an imminent threat. How does causing the assaulter to die in 2 weeks of Covid deal with the imminent threat?
Yes, both duress and necessity remain viable defenses. The contours of these defenses will vary from state to state, but many states use the Model Penal Code. MPC § 3.02(1) lays out the necessity defense, which it calls justification: Conduct that the actor believes to be necessary to avoid a harm or evil to himself or to another is justifiable, provided that: (a) the harm or evil sought to be avoided by such conduct is greater than that sought to be prevented by the law defining the offense charged; and (b) neither the Code nor other law defining the offense provides exceptions or defenses dealing with the specific situation involved; and (c) a legislative purpose to exclude the justification claimed does not otherwise plainly appear. MPC § 2.09(1) lays out the standard for duress: It is an affirmative defense that the actor engaged in the conduct charged to constitute an offense because he was coerced to do so by the use of, or a threat to use, unlawful force against his person or the person of another, that a person of reasonable firmness in his situation would have been unable to resist. So MPC § 2.09 does not explicitly make imminence a requirement for the duress defense, but it adopts an objective standard, which permits the jury to factor in that consideration. A &quot;person of reasonable firmness&quot; would be less able to resist robbing a bank if the threat was to kill their child in 30 seconds than if the threat was to kill their grandmother in 50 years, during which the defendant can call the police to investigate the threat and the odds are good that granny dies anyway. I'd guess most duress cases fall somewhere in the middle, so it becomes a question for the jury whether the threat was serious enough and imminent enough to merit justification.
This is not possible, simply as a matter of definitions and legal terminology. Someone who is "represented by one or more attorneys" is by definition not pro se which means representing yourself without an attorney. There are very rare instances in criminal trials involving serious consequences in which a pro se defendant is allowed to have an attorney advisor who does not represent them in court in an agency capacity, but, first, people who do that almost always lose and are almost always mentally ill (although not necessarily eligible for an insanity defense), and second, because courts generally don't allow this in any other circumstance (at least in court). The concept of getting advice from an attorney without having full fledged representation is called a "limited representation" and the law regarding limited representations more generally varies greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and even between different courts in the same place. For example, Colorado's state courts and Colorado's federal courts have different rules for limited representations.
Your ability to assert your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is not limited to cases where you are on trial or have been accused of a crime. Your ability to assert that right is also not an absolute bar against being ordered to testify: if you are given immunity, you can be forced to testify. Alice cannot hold Bob in contempt – only the judge can. Bob can explain to the judge why a simple truthful "yes" or "no" answer is not possible, if he knows how to do that (does he understand the notion of a false presupposition, or unclarity?). He could for example assert truthfully that he does not understand the question (pointing to the distinction between "Charlie's body falling on the vase, causing it to fall and break", and "Charlie acting with apparent intent to break the vase", since it's not patently obvious that the former scenario constitutes "breaking the vase"). However (changing the scenario a bit), he has to understand that if the question is "Did Charlie shoot Delilah?" and the fact is that Ethan forced Charlie to shoot Delilah, saying "No" based on a theory of blame is not reasonably interpreted as truthful testimony. Taking the 5th, without setting forth your basis (not understanding the question) runs the risk that the prosecution will grant immunity from prosecution, and therefore you don't get to avoid answering the question. Immunity covers various things except that it does not cover prosecution for perjurious testimony. See US v. Apfelbaum, 445 U.S. 115: the Fifth Amendment does not prevent the use of respondent's immunized testimony at his trial for false swearing because, at the time he was granted immunity, the privilege would not have protected him against false testimony that he later might decide to give. Immunity is conferred under the control of some applicable statutory law, such as 18 USC 6002 which says that no testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information) may be used against the witness in any criminal case, except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or otherwise failing to comply with the order.
The specific elements of the crime in question are going to be defined by Maltese law, which appears to be a blend of a European-style civil code with English-style common law. However, under ordinary Anglo-American standards, the alleged acts do seem to meet the legal definitions of these terms. At common law, an "assault" consists of placing someone in fear of an unwanted touching, and a "battery" is a completed assault; that is, an actual unwanted touching. If Mr. Suda, as alleged, took the victim's hand and touched it to his own genitals, without her consent, he committed an assault and battery. Any touching can constitute a battery, from a tap on the shoulder to a bullet in the head. Likewise, at common law, "violence" is any degree of physical force. If he tricked her into touching his genitals, that would not be a crime of violence; if he physically moved her hand to his genitals with his own hand, then he used physical force, or violence, to commit the crime. Again, what actually needs to be proven will depend on specifics you would need a Maltese lawyer to go into--but under general common law principles, neither "assault" not "violence" are particularly surprising.
If you state, to a third person, that Joe has performed a criminal act then that is defamation and you can be sued. Unless it is true. However, if you are relying on the truth as a defence you will need to provide evidence that it is. At the moment you lack: a criminal conviction of Joe any physical evidence against Joe any personal knowledge that Joe has committed these acts. All you have, is second hand rumours that this has happened to 5 women, some of whom have reported it to you in person. This is called hearsay and it is not evidence. It may be true, it probably is true - you can't prove it's true and in court, that's all that matters. If you were sued your only possible defence is to call these women to give the evidence they are unwilling to give - are you willing to betray their confidence to that extent?
It would depend on your intent, among other things If the prosecution stand a reasonable chance of proving you intended to kill that person by infecting them with coronavirus, they may choose to charge you with attempted murder. Obviously, it would be highly fact-specific. In the alternative (and the far more likely prospect) they could charge you with assault occasioning actual bodily harm contrary to s47 of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861 (OAPA) or inflicting grievous bodily harm contrary to s20 OAPA. The exact alternative charge would depend on the effects suffered by the victim and whether it could be proven that you were responsible. If so, and the infection was particularly severe, it could be an s20 offence (GBH). If not, it would probably be an s47 offence (ABH). Of course, if the person caught it and died, and the causation test was passed, etc. then you'd be looking at a murder charge. The same with attempted murder if they didn't die but the causation test was proven and your intent was also proven. However, realistically the most likely charge is ABH or GBH.
Start with the premise that Person A has so far engaged only in speech, which is presumptively protected by the First Amendment. So unless the speech is for some reason unprotected, the police should not involve themselves. This of course begs the question of whether this speech is protected. The First Amendment does not protect &quot;true threats,&quot; which includes &quot;those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.&quot; Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003). So the question for the police is whether Person A's texts were meant to communicate a serious intent to commit an act of unlawful violence. Removing First Amendment protection won't be as simple as letting B testify that he truly felt threatened, as the question is whether A meant to communicate a threat. But that also means that for A, it won't be enough to simply deny any violent intent, so the &quot;nothing illegal&quot; disclaimer won't be enough. In the end, this is a question for a jury to decide, should the case ever reach that far. The jury would essentially be asked to engage in mind-reading, determining what A was thinking when he sent those texts. The jury should be instructed to take several factors into consideration when it makes that decision, including the &quot;context&quot; of the remarks (the explicit disclaimer of violence helps A), the &quot;conditional nature&quot; of the threat (the three-strikes langauge helps A), and the &quot;reaction of the listener&quot; (calling the police hurts A). Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969). Practically speaking, if B were to call the police, I'd expect them not to investigate, unless they were awfully bored. If they decided to, I don't think there would be any actionable violation of A's rights, given their obvious inability to divine A's intent based solely on B's account. A court would likely allow them to investigate, but I doubt a prosecutor would allow them to bring charges based on the facts you've described.