Can a legally sentenced but escaped offender be legally executed by a drone attack? Imagine the fictional situation: someone (e.g. a U.S. citizen) commits a capital offense, he is arrested and legally sentenced to death. Then he somehow escapes. His hiding place is discovered, and the only way to kill him is by a drone attack. Can it be done? Is it a legal execution?
No Law enforcement are allowed to use “reasonable force” to effect an arrest. They are also allowed to use reasonable force to prevent imminent harm to people or property. As described, the felon is not a danger to other people or property and a drone strike would be an ineffective means of effecting an arrest. The force used is not reasonable. Nor can the drone be used as a means of lawfully carrying out the sentence. An execution in the USA is a highly formalised legal process and must be done strictly in accordance with the law to ensure it is not &quot;cruel and unusual&quot;. Blowing people up with high explosives which may or may not kill them is not an authorized method of legal execution.
He would be thanked and sent on his way. We don't generally punish people for preventing murders, even if they are rogue cops or soldiers. If you wanted him to plausibly land in legal peril, he'd probably need to do more than simply save someone's life. The most obvious possibility, I think, would be if he were to continue inflicting harm on the attacker after cuffing him. At that point, there's probably no justification for a continued use of force, so he could face assault charges there. Also possible would be that the way he handled the situation -- the amount of force he used, the failure to de-escalate, failing to call for assistance -- just violates some police or military policy. I don't know if that would jam him up in the way you're looking for, though.
I have bad news. California's vandalism law prohibits maliciously: defacing property with graffiti defacing property with inscribed material damaging property destroying property Chalking the sidewalk probably doesn't sound very malicious, but maliciousness includes “an intent to do a wrongful act, established either by proof or presumption of law.” So the questions is whether you intended to do a wrongful act -- meaning that you intended to do the act, which happens to be wrongful, not that you intended to act wrongfully. So unless you drew on the sidewalk accidentally, the malicious-intent requirement isn't going to help you. So then you have to ask if your conduct is described by the statute. In Mackinney v. Nielsen, the Ninth Circuit said that sidewalk chalking did not violate the law, but California has since amended the law to add the "deface with graffiti" language. I haven't seen any chalk cases since then, but another case, In re Nicholas Y., from the Second District, dealt with someone who used a marker on a window. He argued that it could be easily erased, but the court said it was still vandalism because: it "mars the surface with graffiti which must be removed in order to restore the original condition" the definition of "deface" "does not incorporate an element of permanence" "marring of the surface is no less a defacement because it is more easily removed." Given that language, I'd argue that the vandalism statute includes sidewalk chalking. But one important element here is that most sidewalks are owned or controlled by the government, so any effort to restrict "expressive conduct such as writing with chalk" (Guilliford v. Pierce County) expressive activity" there must comply with the First Amendment. The government has varying degrees of latitude on the restrictions it can impose, depending on the character of the space involved. So in a courtroom, whose function is incompatible with free-wheeling public debate, a judge can set quite a few rules about how people may speak. But sidewalks are considered a "public forum," where the government's ability to regulate speech is a lot more limited. So how does the First Amendment apply? There's a D.C. Circuit case (Mahoney v. Doe) dealing with abortion protesters who wanted to use chalk on the streets and sidewalks outside the White House. Police told them they would be arrested for violating D.C.'s defacement statute, so they brought a First Amendment challenge. The court upheld the law, saying that it satisfied all three prongs of the public-forum test: The law must be content neutral, meaning that it prohibits conduct without reference to what is being said. The Court said the defacement statute was content neutral because people could be prosecuted regardless of what they wrote or drew. The law must be narrowly tailored, meaning that it serves a significant governmental interest and does not restrict more speech than is necessary to achieve that goal. The Court said the defacement statute was narrowly tailored because it served the government's interest in maintaining the aesthetic appeal of the area in front of the White House and didn't restrict any speech that does not deface public property. The law must leave open ample alternatives for communication, meaning that even if you can't express yourself in the way restricted, you still have meaningful opportunities to express yourself. The Court said the defacement statute law allowed adequate alternatives for communication because the group could still congregate, march, speak, hold signs, and hand out leaflets. There's an interesting wrinkle there in terms of whether the interest in aesthetics is heightened because we're talking about the White House, but generally speaking, aesthetic concerns can still justify speech restrictions. So the bad news is that unchaining your inner six-year-old may subject you to criminal liability. That leaves the question of whether you want to unleash your inner teenager and do it anyway. This could help put you in a frame of mind for making the decision.
A fundamental requirement of criminal culpability is intent. Based on the description this whole process is happening after a user has already had their phone seized. If a person was not aware of Signal's hidden files to damage the police's data forensics software, they will not have met the criminal intent requirement, either maliciously or under a criminal negligence theory. None of the prongs of CFAA are strict liability statutes (18 U.S. Code § 1030 &quot;Whoever having knowingly accessed a computer...&quot;), so that would not apply here. If we imagine a person that is aware of all the information from Signal about their app intentionally abusing Cellebrite's package and with intention to cause damage downloads Signal's malicious files to their phone, I think it's an open question whether or not they would be liable under the CFAA. Specifically, 18 U.S. Code § 1030(a)(5)(A) (emphasis mine) Whoever knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer; An argument on this could go both ways. On the one hand, the owner of the phone could be found to not have substantially caused the information to be transmitted to a protected computer, as the police were the integral cause for that in executing their warrant. On the other hand, this sort of file could be considered a digital &quot;booby trap,&quot; and booby traps are illegal for essentially this reason, that they have a foreseeable effect of causing harm to people who are lawfully inside a building without the owner's permission. In this case, the owner's trap was sprung by law enforcement but still placed by the owner in order to damage them.
As far as I understand, no one can jail anyone as a result of a civil matter. I can't just say, hey! You did this! I'm taking you to jail. You simply don't have the reason and authority to do so - and I doubt the jails would want random people coming in for random reasons. Courts also don't send people to jail for this. As far as I understand, you can only be jailed by a judge for a criminal matter. However, you can go to jail as a result of a civil matter. When this happens, you need to found guilty of a criminal offence, most notably Contempt of Court. You can be found guilty of that offence if you don't respond/comply to the court's instructions - such as failing to repay debts. In order to be found in contempt, the court needs to find that you also intended to refuse the court's instruction (this is known as mens rea). If you were found liable, the court would not send you to jail. They would instead tell you to repay the damages that you owed the creditor (the person who filed suit). Inability to do this does not result in contempt of court, however, you should generally let the court know of this. In terms of this, the court can allow the creditor to garnish wages, have scheduled payments... etc of the debtor. To answer the main question, the only time that the court will jail a person will be upon conviction of a criminal offence (such as contempt of court), and not a civil matter (such as liability).
I assume this took place in Washington state. There are a number of self-defense provisions in Washington law. The first, RCW 9A.16.110, is primarily about reimbursements for prosecutions of acts of self-defense, but includes an applicable limit on prosecution: No person in the state shall be placed in legal jeopardy of any kind whatsoever for protecting by any reasonable means necessary, himself or herself, his or her family, or his or her real or personal property, or for coming to the aid of another who is in imminent danger of or the victim of assault, robbery, kidnapping, arson, burglary, rape, murder, or any other violent crime as defined in RCW 9.94A.030. This provision is relevant, since executing a prisoner on death row is not a crime (the state Supreme Court recently struck down the death penalty, so I assume this took place before that ruling). RCW 9A.16.020 states the more classic law on justified use of force, saying The use, attempt, or offer to use force upon or toward the person of another is not unlawful in the following cases:...(3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary; Statutory law does not define offense against his or her person. Grabbing a person and strapping them down for some harmful purpose would normally constitute battery under the common law, but in this instance it is privileged, so it is not an offense against the person). RCW 9A.16.030 says that Homicide is excusable when committed by accident or misfortune in doing any lawful act by lawful means, without criminal negligence, or without any unlawful intent. The person is under court order to be executed, and it is not lawful to resist that order. The guard, however, RCW 9A.16.040, may use deadly force pursuant to the legal mandate to carry out the court orde ((1)(b)"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").
Yes, there is a good chance. Ordinarily, the law as written is what is enforced. On occasion, the wording of the law is actually ambiguous, or vague, which means that the jury will need an instruction as to how to interpret the law. In fact, juries are not literally read the statute, they are given a set of decision-making instructions so that they can decide "If we find X, we must acquit; if we find Y we may convict". Your attorney will, if he is diligent, note the problem and strive for an instruction that favors the client. (The prosecution will of course object). Eventually, on appeal, a court will decide what the law "really means", and that decision might be strictly based on the letter of the law, or it might be based on a supposed spirit of the law, i.e. what the legislature "originally intended". That outcome is determined in part by the jurisprudential ideology of the prevailing justices of the appeals court. Usually, letter of the law prevails until a higher court rules that a particular "spirit" is what was originally intended.
The court will presume that. You say there is no doubt that he was the attacker but the matter isn't subject to opinion. It has to be proved in court, because if there should be a tiny bit of uncertainty, or some uncertainty, or a lot of it, then the opinion &quot;he did it&quot; becomes &quot;trial by media&quot; or other euphemism. Not just that, but Hadi Matar can plead &quot;not guilty&quot; to the offense as charged. The law might allow that he could be guilty of a different offense, but not what the charge is. A theoretical scenario: Hadi Matar ran onto the stage to shout at Rushdie, but someone in the audience threw a knife. Maybe it is &quot;obvious&quot; to you that it didn't happen here, but a criminal trial isn't about what is obvious, but the truth. Take another case where X commits a crime but frames Y for it, so it seems obvious to all that Y must have done it. The trial will follow a procedure, not the sway of opinion. The outcome of the trial might depend on Y showing that is was impossible to have committed the crime, but not know who X is. So the court will presume that Hadi Matar is innocent, unless proved beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty as charged.