Can I kill people with my autonomous drone? If I were to deploy an autonomous drone that went around shooting people, what could I be convicted of? Suppose that all decisions were made by the drone, and I had no intent of this happening. E.g., perhaps I wrote an algorithm that discerned between what and what not to shoot, but a bug slipped in that caused it to shoot people. Although it's, in my opinion, subjective, I'd say that the possibility of the drone killing someone would be one that came across the deployer's mind, but, still didn't expect to happen. Sort of like a nuclear power plant melting down. Contrarily, what if I did design the drone to shoot people, but I didn't actually pull the trigger?
In the US, it depends on the jurisdiction because each state has its own homicide statutes: but, the defining elements don't differ a lot. Drawing on Washington state law, the first question is whether you intended to kill a person (it doesn't have to be a specific person). If you did, you have committed first-degree murder. It is first-degree murder, because it requires a certain amount of advance planning to kill with a drone. It does not matter that the drone houses the gun that killed the person and a program determines when the gun fires (the "it was the drone, not me" defense gets you nowhere: otherwise, you could always claim "It wasn't me, it was my gun / knife / fist".) If instead this is a badly-designed pig-slaughtering drone, then it could be manslaughter in the first degree, if the act was reckless, or manslaughter in the second degree, if the act was with criminal negligence. To determine which it is, you look at the definitions: A person is reckless or acts recklessly when he or she knows of and disregards a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and his or her disregard of such substantial risk is a gross deviation from conduct that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation. versus A person is criminally negligent or acts with criminal negligence when he or she fails to be aware of a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and his or her failure to be aware of such substantial risk constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation. So it would depend on whether you decided that safeguards which would prevent shooting people were too much bother (you know there is a risk and set aside that concern), or it didn't occur to you that a flying gun might hurt a person.
Whether or not a war between political entities can result from some action is completely political and strategic, and not legal. The specific incident is probably legal, given US and international law regarding military action. Unless the order was self-evidently unlawful there is no possibility of arrest and prosecution under US law, however there might be a framework for legal action by Iran, if e.g. a drone operator were to fall into Iranian hands. The specifics of the order are not generally known, though we know that DoD states that this was due to a presidential order. This article discusses targeted killing from a legal perspective. In the context of war, killing is legal though not entirely unregulated. There was a failed attempt to sue the US in the case Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta, which involved a targeted killing of a US citizen involved in planning terrorist attacks, a suit which was dismissed. One problem is that the suit "failed to state a 4th Amendment claim", and also failed to state a 5th Amendment due process claim since Al–Aulaqi's deaths was unanticipated. The court notes that a Bivens claim allows damage action against a federal officer for violation of clearly-established constitutional rights. However, No case has discussed precisely whether a plaintiff can proceed on a Bivens action that claims deprivation of life without due process based on the overseas killing by United States officials of a U.S. citizen deemed to be an active enemy. In the discussion, the question arises whether special circumstances counsel hesitation (Doe v. Rumsfeld and citations therein), which the Doe court notes would "require a court to delve into the military's policies", and they will not do that lightly. All of this is about US citizens. Soleimani was not a US citizen.
Some people seem to believe that just because something happens 'in the internet' it is somehow outside normal jurisdictions. Wrong. In may be harder to investigate and prosecute crimes in the internet, but the laws apply all the same. There are some problems when it is unclear 'where in the world' something did happen -- in the jurisdiction of the perpetrator, the victim, or the service provider? But problems of jurisdiction apply e.g. to international fraud cases in the non-web-world as well. In many jurisdictions, the informed and voluntary consent makes some things legal which would otherwise be illegal. For instance, if two boxers get into the ring, it is understood that each of them did consent to be hit by the other. But usually two fighters could not legally agree to a fight to the death, because even if there are laws on assisted suicide, they do not apply to a fight. Insults, libel, and slander are not on the same level as homicide. There are jurisdictions where they are not prosecuted without the request of the victim. But an insult might also violate other laws, e.g. disturbing the peace. So don't bet on such an app unless you know for sure which jurisdictions are involved.
“Never” is a very big word… If a burglar stabs someone in claimed self defense, then we have evidence that this was an armed burglary, so that won’t go down well for that burglar. And your rights to self defence are greatly diminished if you caused that situation illegally. So should you get into the situation, try to run away if at all possible. If you had any chance at all to escape your self defence argument will not be accepted. The only possible situation with self defence is if you are threatened with illegal violence that cannot be justified by the fact that you are a criminal. For example you enter a home, two people with guns inside catch you, bind you to a chair so you are no danger at all, and instead of calling the police they announce they will kill or maim you. This is of course very unlikely to happen.
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.
So each government has jurisdiction of the crime if and only if it occurs within their borders. In addition, the Federal Government can take a crack at any crime any where in the United States, though typically they only do so if the crime involves crossing state lines (kidnapping over state lines, ect). At the maximum, suppose for arguments sake Alice fatally shoots Bob while Bob is standing at dead center of the Four Corners Monument (the only place in the United States where four states meet). This means that one act of Murder has been committed in four seperate states, so Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona can all claim jurisdiction over the case and each prosecute Alice for First Degree Murder. Additionally, the Federal Government may step in and also prosecute Alice for First Degree Murder (though they are more likely not too. The Feds rarely prosecute crimes after the State UNLESS the State did something horribly wrong... I.E. Utah let her go because Utah is crazy). Additionally, the monument marks the dividing line between the Navajo Nation and the Ute Tribe, both semi-autonomous Native American Tribes that have their own recognized court systems, so they could conceivably charge Alice with First Degree Murder. So in total, the most amount of times someone can be charged for the same crime due to cross-jurisdiction is 7 times (Four States, 2 Tribal Governments, and one Federal Government). In likely hood, a few of these guys will pass because it's a waste of effort. If Alice gets the death penalty in Arizona, Colorado can't kill her a second time. It's important to note that each government gets exactly one trial so Alice can't be convicted twice in Arizona. A more realistic example occurred in the D.C. Beltway Sniper Case, where the perpetrators were tried in both Virginia and Maryland but only for the crimes committed within those states. VA got first crack because they had (and eventually carried out) the Death Penalty. Maryland tried both for insurance in case the VA cases got thrown out for reasons. The Feds found this satisfying and decided not to press their charges.
Real-world situations are rarely so clear-cut Let's say, hypothetically, that I'm in the driver's seat of a car. The company told me that the car has &quot;Full Self Driving&quot; capabilities based on some sort of artificial intelligence, though they also said that these capabilities &quot;are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.&quot; Let's say I was not fully attentive at a moment when the car's AI decides to swerve into oncoming traffic, and I fail to grab the wheel and prevent that. Who's at fault? Is it the car company's fault for a bug that caused that? Is it my fault for failing to be fully attentive? Is it some combination of the two? But wait, it can get more complicated: maybe the car company argues that they couldn't have reasonably anticipated the situation that caused it: maybe the lines were incorrectly drawn on the road, and indicated that the road continued in that direction. Maybe I argue that the car swerved quickly enough that even a fully attentive driver couldn't have recovered. These and more are all facts that need to be sorted out in a trial. There's no way to simply say that &quot;any issues that this algorithm caused&quot; are entirely the company's fault. In other words, this isn't really the legal system &quot;breaking down&quot;—it's working as intended, trying to figure out whose fault an event actually was. The law just isn't very developed yet as to the process a court would follow to assign liability.
Natural law does not prescribe particular punishments, that only comes from statutory law. Under Indian law, this would seem to be a violation of IPC 304a, &quot;causing death by negligence&quot;. There is no intent to cause great injury, indeed it is a complete mystery why the boy died. The penalty is up to two years imprisonment and a fine. There are more details in IPC 300, focusing on intent to kill under extreme provocation, but the required intent is lacking here. The courts may be lenient, having considered surrounding circumstances, and sentence her to less than the maximum punishment.