Are the U.S. military police allowed to operate on U.S. soil? Recently I saw an action movie about military police officer in the U.S. One question surfaced for me - as far as I understand main task of military police (including its investigators) is to combat crime inside U.S. army (and crime related to the army). On the other hand, as far as I remember almost in every country, including U.S., army cannot be used on the domestic territory for pretty much any operations. As I understand, military police is part of the military and technically any investigation or operation which military police will perform would be a violation of this ban on usage of army in homeland. How this paradox is resolved from legal perspective? Am I misunderstanding something?
It's probably not a good idea to take action movies as authoritative sources on the law. The law that you're referring to is presumably the Posse Comitatus Act (18 USC 1385) which says Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. There is an article on the act which reviews the pre-history of the act and subsequent congressional authorizations, and there have been many, e.g. the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1894, Espionage Act of 1917, 33 USC 3 pertaining to gunnery ranges, Fisheries and Conservation Management Act of 1976 and so on. The military police are authorized to enforce military law (though not civilian law), see article 7 of the UCMJ, authorized by Congress in Title 10. P. 167 of the article discusses limits on arrest and investigative powers: their powers pertain almost exclusively to the military.
There may be a purpose to have laws which are impossible to follow. (I'm neither a lawyer nor a politician, following points are what I like to call qualified hearsay - they come from qualified people I know personally but were given as a remark or during a chat over a cup of coffee and therefore are not easily substantiable with rigorous sources. You can treat them as a hypothetical ideas for your thought experiments.) Everybody is implicitly guilty Confident citizens and transparent law is the worst enemy of totalitarian regime. You learn to live with ingrained feeling that there surely is something you are guilty of. Merely being addressed by police makes you nervous and malleable; should you stand up against oppression, it is easy for the state apparat to detain or convict you of one or more default offenses. A good example would be the law present in many, if not all, socialist bloc countries saying that knowing of a comrade having commited an offense or merely planing to and not reporting it to authorities is an offense in itself. Whether you did or did not know would be determined by the authorities. Make your laws very strict with a hope thay they will be followed at least to a degree Not laws in themselves, but standards (technical norms) regarding nuclear power stations in the former Soviet Union were strict to the point where they were technically impossible to follow given the state of the art. For example the standards for manufacture of high pressure pipes would state very low level of material impurities that when the actual manufactured material contained twice the level of impurities the pipe will still be very safe to operate. In a centrally planned economy with ever more ambitious production projections and declared zero need for contingency this was one of several ways how to create a bit of a wiggle room. (Source: I once worked for a nuclear power research institute supporting Soviet technology and was told this by an expert on stainless steel.) So there you have a bit of an illustration what may happen if a law is intentionally impossible to follow. Since you labelled your question 'United States', I believe the follow-up question is why would anyone want to propose such a law.
Only in the “most unusual and extraordinary circumstances” &quot;conceivable&quot; Respect for the chain of command is central to the armed services. As a result, lower ranked officers generally cannot relieve a higher ranked officers of command. Instead, they must work through the chain of command, taking their complaints to their superior's superior. To do otherwise is usually considered mutiny. As far as I know, the only service that has made formal provisions for this is the Navy. This makes sense, given that ships at sea may be out of contact for extended periods. The Navy regulations involving a subordinate can relieve a superior of command are found in § 1088. Relief of a Commanding Officer by a Subordinate of Chapter 10: Precedence, Authority and Command of the US Navy Regulations, issued by the Secretary of the Navy. Here is what that sections says: In the “most unusual and extraordinary circumstances,” a commanding officer can be relieved only by the “next in succession to command.” The problem must be so “obvious and clear” that any “reasonable, prudent and experienced officer” could reach only a “single conclusion:” that leaving the officer in command would “seriously and irretrievably prejudice the public interests.” Unless it is a “undoubtedly impractical,” the subordinate cannot act “without the approval of…higher authority...” The subordinate can act only after “much careful consideration” and after an “exhaustive investigation of all the circumstances…” The decision “must be based upon…substantial evidence,” and supported by “the official views of others in a position to form valid opinions…” Any subordinate who relieves a superior will “bear the legitimate responsibility for…such action,” and “must be prepared to justify…” it.
The general answer is "yes." Who ever said that only one set of laws applied? Jurisdiction isn't a matter of "one country's laws matter here, let's find out which one it is." All jurisdiction means is that your laws apply to the conduct, not that no one else's can as well. Broadly, there are a few sources of jurisdiction that are generally considered legitimate (to at least some degree) in international law: Territoriality: You have jurisdiction over actions performed in your territory. You also have jurisdiction over crimes where just one part of the crime happens in your jurisdiction (e.g. standing in country A and shooting someone in country B), or even if it just has a significant effect in your territory. Nationality: You have jurisdiction over crimes committed by your citizens anywhere in the world, regardless of whether or not they were breaking the law of wherever they were. Passive personality: You have jurisdiction over crimes committed against your citizens anywhere in the world. Protective: You have jurisdiction over crimes directly harming core state interests, like counterfeiting your passports or sabotaging your warship. Universal: A handful of crimes (like piracy or genocide) are so serious that every country in the world can exercise jurisdiction. If you catch a pirate, you can punish them. These are accepted to different degrees. Passive personality and protective jurisdiction tend to be iffier; territorial jurisdiction is unquestioned (although if it's just based on effects in your territory, it becomes a bit iffier as well). But any of them can be a basis for jurisdiction. If multiple countries have jurisdiction, whoever actually has the offender decides who will try them (jurisdiction to make an arrest is limited to the country in which the arrest is made). So: If you're located in a country, you have to comply with their laws, and they can regulate just about whatever they want, including what you're doing to foreign computers. The foreign country can also generally regulate what you're doing, because part of what you're doing is happening on their territory. Even if both you and the computer are in a foreign country, you may have to answer to the courts of your country of citizenship. Depending on what exactly you're doing, the protective principle may come into play. For instance, if you hack into a computer on a foreign military base, the foreign country could prosecute you for endangering their security. If you're coordinating a genocide, universality applies and anyone can prosecute you. If you hack the computer of a foreigner, passive personality may apply, although this tends to be controversial.
That is not a valid assumption. Many states have laws that let you presume someone is a threat to your life if they forcibly enter your house. Simple trespass on your land does not let you reasonably presume someone is a murderer. An autonomous killer drone is not a comparison you want to make: those may be illegal entirely, and are likely to seriously hurt any claim of justifiable force. “You forfeit your right to live when you set foot on my property” is not justifiable. If the dogs are trained to be a hazard to the community, that’s an argument in favor of having them confiscated and destroyed. Dogs are not people. Under normal circumstances, they cannot be protected under self-defense or the defense of others. Those doctrines only apply when a person is in danger. Deadly force is sometimes allowed to protect property, but this tends to be strictly limited. To start with, you can only ever use force to prevent illegal damage to property. If your concern is “this animal control officer will destroy my dogs within the scope of their duty,” that’s not protecting against an illegal use of force. Deadly force in defense of property is also normally limited to particular crimes that are inherently dangerous, like arson, robbery, or burglary. Even in Texas, simple theft only justifies deadly force during the nighttime. Deadly force is also not justifiable if there were reasonable other options. Shooting an animal control officer is unlikely to be the only way to temporarily stop them from destroying a dog. Threatening violence in order to influence a judge’s decision is terrorism. This hypothetical man is a terrorist. He may well find himself on death row for murder, but he’s also going to face separate charges for terrorism.
I'll use Washington state as my source, but laws will be similar in other states. RCW 9A.76.020 outlaws obstructing a law enforcement officer, which this would be: it is a gross misdemeanor. In using lethal force, you would have committed first degree murder, under RCW 9A.32.030. There is a defense that can be used, per RCW 9A.16.050, that homicide is justified when: In the lawful defense of the slayer, or his or her husband, wife, parent, child, brother, or sister, or of any other person in his or her presence or company, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished. Law enforcement officers have access to justifiable homicide defenses as well under 9A.16.040, for example (b) When necessarily used by a peace officer to overcome actual resistance to the execution of the legal process, mandate, or order of a court or officer, or in the discharge of a legal duty or (c) When necessarily used by a peace officer or person acting under the officer's command and in the officer's aid: (i) To arrest or apprehend a person who the officer reasonably believes has committed, has attempted to commit, is committing, or is attempting to commit a felony The outcome of the case would hinge in part on whether the officer's arrest and use of force was lawful. To take two extremes, if the guy on the ground had just killed a dozen people and was aiming to rack up another dozen kills, the officer's arrest would almost certainly be held to be legal and his degree of force justified. Your personal belief that the suspect was compliant and unarmed might be refuted by the facts. On the other hand, if the guy on the ground had slept with the officer's sister and the officer wanted to rid the world of this vermin, then the arrest and force would almost certainly be held to be not legal. It can be legal to use deadly force to resist unlawful arrest. See John Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529, where the court held that if a party resisted arrest by an officer without warrant, and who had no right to arrest him, and if, in the course of that resistance, the officer was killed, the offence of the party resisting arrest would be reduced from what would have been murder, if the officer had had the right to arrest, to manslaughter The court also said where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction when the officer had the right to make the arrest from what it does if the officer had no such right. What might be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed. This ruling has been somewhat eroded, in US v. Simon: We recognize that law enforcement officers are frequently called on to make arrests without warrants and should not be held, so far as their personal security is concerned, to a nicety of distinctions between probable cause and lack of probable cause in differing situations of warrantless arrests. It is for this reason we believe that the force of John Bad Elk has been diminished The upshot of this is that (assuming no warrant), leeway is granted to officers in assessing probable cause (I'm not sure anybody really knows at a general conceptual level what constitutes "probable cause". The court seems to imply that the remote hearsay used as the basis for the arrest would not have been sufficient for a warrant, but it was "reasonable grounds" for believing accused had committed a crime). Your premise that the officer is about to shoot would have to be substantiated by some fact, such as a declaration "I'm gonna kill you". Otherwise, your belief that the officer was about to commit unjustified murder would itself be unjustified. With better fleshing out of the circumstances, you could manufacture a justified-homicide scenario.
The term "enemy" in the U.S. Constitution's definition of treason is generally considered to be a term of art that means a party against whom Congress has authorized the use of military force or a declared war. The only such country in existence at this time, to the best of my knowledge, is North Korea. Terrorist organizations which had affiliated involved in the 9-11 attacks (including ISIS and Boko Haram) are also covered. Russia is not an "enemy" of the United States, within the meaning of the constitutional definition of treason. Neither are any individuals or corporations in Russia, unless they are affiliated with a 9-11 terrorist organization. An important statutory definition of "enemy" might also be considered informative to a court presented with this question, which is slightly broader (as it requires "hostilities" but does not require a full fledged war and does not require Congressional action): According to 50 USCS § 2204 [Title 50. War and National Defense; Chapter 39. Spoils of War], enemy of the United States means any country, government, group, or person that has been engaged in hostilities, whether or not lawfully authorized, with the United States; (3) the term "person" means (A) any natural person; (B) any corporation, partnership, or other legal entity; and (C) any organization, association, or group. In this context, "hostilities" would generally mean physical warfare acts like shooting Americans, or blowing up American property, in a warlike manner.
It isn't clear that the example you give is illegal police action, but let's assume that it is for the sake of this question, since it doesn't affect the analysis. If possession is not compelled, then it is voluntary.