limits of the imperative for defense of others German Law mostly requires you to defend others that are in danger. In a situation where someone's life is attacked and your only possible way of helping is the use of (probably) deadly force, are you obliged to use it? Many people's morals says no matter what they may never use deadly force (e. g. the ten commandments in Christianity)… Also, does the obligation of defense extend to self-defense or is that one optional?
Duty to rescue In civil law systems, like Germany, people have a duty to do what is reasonable to rescue someone from danger. This never requires the person putting themselves in serious danger nor would it require a person with strong moral reservations about taking a life to do so. In common law systems, like most of the English speaking world, there is no such duty unless the person concerned created the hazard or a “special relationship” exists between the people.
It appears you want to go for a defense strategy based on a self-defense argument. This won't work in many jurisdictions, because self-defense usually doesn't apply when you intentionally caused a situation where you knew you would have to harm someone in self-defense. Similar case: Bob regularly mugs old women in the park by threatening them with a gun. Charlie finds out and wants to stop him. But instead of reporting it to the police, he wants to take care of this himself. Charlie get a gun, dresses up as an old woman and waits in the park. When Bob shows up and tries to mug Charlie, Charlie shoots first. Well, anyone else who would have found themselves in a park threatened by Bob with a deadly weapon might have had a self-defense argument. But Charlie knew that by dressing up as an old woman, he would provoke Bob to attempt to mug him. This of course doesn't exonerate Bob. But Charlie actively caused the situation which would give him the opportunity to kill Bob &quot;in self defense&quot;. Charlie even made a complex plan to arrange this situation and put serious effort into setting it in motion. It's premeditated murder. Your situation is basically the same. You caused someone to make an attempt at your life, and then killed them to &quot;defend yourself&quot;. And you had plenty of other options: There are lots of ways to end your life without requiring the help of a hitman. By getting them involved, you incited them to commit murder (killing someone who wants to die is still murder under most circumstances). By hiring the hitman, you created two possible options: Either you kill the hitman, or the hitman kills you and they would be guilty of murder. Both are the direct consequences of your actions. You could have tried to cancel the hit when you changed your mind (if you tried and failed, that might give you a slightly better legal argument) You could have called the police and ask them for protection. Further, when you hired the hitman you committed a crime: incitement to commit murder. The fact that you were also the victim of that crime doesn't really matter. It also doesn't matter that you wanted to die: Assisted suicide is only permitted in very few jurisdictions, and those only allow it if performed by medical professionals under very narrow circumstances. Those circumstances would certainly not have applied, so the hitman would have been guilty of murder if he had succeeded (he is at least guilty of attempted murder, but you can't put a dead person on trial), so you would too. When you commit a crime and cause someone to die in the process, then that falls under the felony murder rule in many jurisdictions. You will likely be convicted of manslaughter or murder of the hitman, depending on when you decided to kill the hitman before they kill you. When you can convince the court that you did not premeditate to kill the hitman but only panicked in the last minute, and no felony murder rule applies, then you might get away with manslaughter. You might also be found guilty of incitement of attempted murder (your own murder).
1. Are this and similar ordinances constitutionally valid? Yes. Some future court might decide the law is invalid at some future time. But that possibility is hypothetical and speculative. Therefore, as of now, the law is valid unless and until it is challenged and overturned. 2. What defenses could a government make if challenged? It depends on what grounds the law is challenged. Your question about possible defenses is highly dependent on the nature of any challenge — which you have not specified in your question. The U.S. Constitution, for example, prohibits laws respecting a number of things such as freedom of the press, speech, religion, peaceful assembly, bearing arms, etc. to list just a few of the most notable ones. But your question does not assert the law in question violates any specific or particular prohibition against it. Although the question mentions "restricting free movement as well as targeting only a specific demographic," it does not specify any part of any constitution that prohibits these things. Therefore, your question is unclear as to what might present a constitutional problem for the law. It is also unclear which constitution you think might contain prohibitive language. Is it a federal constitutional issue that concerns you? Or is it a state constitutional matter? In either case, which issue specifically concerns you? Your question needs to address these specifics in order to analyze it and respond in a meaningful way. Look at it like this... just as it is impossible to prove a negative, so is it impossible for anyone to conclude with absolute certainty that any law is not unconstitutional because no one can predict with certainty every possible future challenge a law might face. There are just too many possibilities to (pre-emptively) exhaust them all with certainty. Also, no one can predict with certainty how any future court might rule on the future challenges (which themselves are unpredictable as previously argued). Therefore, one can only say I think the law is unconstitutional and here are my reasons. Then others can analyze the law and the reasons; then offer an opinion. Further, based on precedent, would they likely be successful? See above answer to question numbered 2. Laws aren't required to be "justified" by the constitution. Constitutional justification for a law is a meaningless phrase. There is no requirement for a law to be "justified" by any constitution other than that the legislature is empowered by the constitution to make laws. That's all the justification any law needs. Beyond that, however, no law can violate the constitution as determined by a Supreme Court (or the last court to rule) if challenged.
Laws vary by state, of course. In Wisconsin, according to the 1993 case State v. Neumann: the offense of second-degree sexual assault by sexual intercourse does not require proof of intent and therefore someone who claimed to be too drunk to know what he was doing was still guilty. Although that was a case involving adults and therefore a different statute, I think the statutes are similar enough to produce a similar result in a case involving a minor. But even though intent isn't required, according to the 2007 case State v. Lackershire she's still be not guilty in Wisconsin. It flat out says that: If the defendant was raped, the act of having sexual intercourse with a child does not constitute a crime. Additionally, in your case, there was a gun to her head. Under Wisconsin law, the woman could not be guilty of statutory rape, because of this law: 939.46 Coercion. (1) A threat by a person other than the actor's coconspirator which causes the actor reasonably to believe that his or her act is the only means of preventing imminent death or great bodily harm to the actor or another and which causes him or her so to act is a defense to a prosecution for any crime based on that act, except that if the prosecution is for first-degree intentional homicide, the degree of the crime is reduced to 2nd-degree intentional homicide. The paper you link to mentions several possible defenses like coercion, and how each defense is not applicable in some states. I don't think it ever clearly establishes that there is a state where there is no defense. The example you (and the paper) give occurred in Florida. I couldn't find an applicable statute in Florida law, but that appears to be because it's in common law instead of a statute. According to the 1981 Florida case Wright v. State: Florida has recognized the common law defense of duress as a defense to crimes other than homicide so I don't think the woman would have been guilty under Florida law, either. The paper states that she was in fear for her life and that of her daughters, and it is extremely apparent in hindsight that her fear was reasonable. I imagine that if the author was able to find an actual case where a victim was prosecuted under similar circumstances (or even one where the victim clearly could have been prosecuted under the law of that state) he would have used that case as his example instead. It seems that he couldn't... and that might tell you something. He probably used this example because it was sensational, but it doesn't seem that the woman was guilty under applicable law.
You are asking a different question The title to the earlier question -- &quot;Do the police have a civil duty to do their job&quot; -- is slightly misleading. The question is not whether the policy have an abstract &quot;civil&quot; duty to enforce the law, but whether they have a specific &quot;constitutional&quot; duty to do so. If they do have such a specific duty, then, as they OP says, they could &quot;be sued for not doing their job.&quot; As ohwilleke explains thoroughly, the answer to this question is &quot;no.&quot; The Supreme Court has consistently held there is no constitutional right to police enforcement of the law. In particular, the SCt has held that police aren't violating the 14th Amendment when they don't &quot;do their job.&quot; According to the Court, someone who is hurt when the police don't enforce the law, is not deprived of &quot;life, liberty or property without due process of law.&quot; This in turn means that the people who are hurt can't sue the police under §1983, which allows people to sue state or local officials who violate their constitutional rights. As you point out, the Nevada statute clearly requires officers to make an arrest in some cases. However, this requirement is not absolute; the statute also creates an exception to the requirement: a peace officer shall, unless mitigating circumstances exist, arrest a person when the peace officer has probable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has...committed a battery upon his or her spouse.. The statute goes on to explicitly exempt the officer and her department from liability if she decides not to make an arrest: Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose liability upon a peace officer or his or her employer for a determination made in good faith by the peace officer not to arrest a person pursuant to this section. Thus, the statute sends mixed signals to police officers. On the one hand, it requires them to make arrests in some domestic violence cases; on the other hand, it says they are not liable if they ignore this requirement. Taken together, the Nevada statute and the SCt's decisions mean people who are hurt if police don't make an arrest under 171.137 cannot sue the police under either state or federal law.
None No law requires police to keep people apart when making statements. Doing so is good police practice. In some police organizations internal regulations or procedures may specify that officers should do so. But those are not laws. In some cases witnesses may have had a chance to confer and agree on a story before police arrive, the police cannot prevent that. The trier of fact can take into account that witnesses had a chanc to agree on a false story.
I interpret the sentence &quot;intruder enters your home using the internet&quot; in the question as not as physically entering the home but as virtually entering the home, in other words hacking into the victim's home network remotely. When that interpretation is incorrect, please comment. Note that an action can only be considered self-defense when the self-defense prevents a crime currently in progress from being completed. When A hacked into B's computer and then B punches A in the face later, that's not self-defense, that's illegal vigilante justice. The self-defense argument would only work if it actually prevents the completion of the crime. For example, if A and B were in the same room, A sees B hacking into A's computer right now and uses physical force to prevent B from completing the hack (like yanking the keyboard out of B's hands). Also keep in mind that the intensity of self-defense must be appropriate for the severity of the crime. What is and is not appropriate is for a court to decide in each individual case, and the guidelines that are to be applied vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But causing bodily harm to people when the crime they are committing does not cause bodily harm is often not considered within the limits of self-defense. For further information about what is and is not allowed in self-defense, I recommend the series about self-defense by Law Comic.
There is an important distinction between moral duty and legal obligation. Even if an officer should arrest a person, given some moral standard, they are not legally obligated to do so. A test for legal obligation is whether an choice results in a negative legal outcome – is the officer sued or criminally penalized for acting or not acting? Unsurprisingly, the answer to the legal question is highly dependent on jurisdiction. I only consider US jurisdiction here (which incidently is not a single coherent jurisdiction, it is a phylum of jurisdictions), though some aspects of the answer extend to other countries. The clearest cases are obligations to not act in a certain way – prohibitions. Police may not beat a suspect in order to obtain information. Period, end of story, no discretion. There is a putative bright line that police cannot cross, namely violating an individual's rights, and that constitutes a major exception to the doctrine of police immunity. If X is a clearly established right, police cannot violate that right and if they do, they can be sued or even prosecuted. Sometimes courts &quot;discover&quot; a particular right in a certain case, so the individual (plaintiff in a civil case) may be vindicated but the officer will not be subject to legal sanctions, since LEOs are not held to be appellate court justices who can divine the future discover of a legal right. 18 USC 242 statutorily describes certain circumstances where a choice is criminally proscribed, and 42 USC 1983 allows for civil suits. This pertains to things that an officer does, saying what an officer does not legally have the discretion to perform an act. Now setting aside proscriptions where &quot;you may not...&quot;, the doctrine of sovereign immunity prohibits civil or criminal actions against the government (including LEOs) unless a specific exception has been carved out. I recommend this (open access) journal issue on Discretion in Law Enforcement. There do exist statutory obligations to act imposed on LEOs, for example see this AG legal opinion from Florida, stating that A law enforcement officer, including a police officer, has a legal duty to provide aid to ill, injured, and distressed persons who are not in police custody during an emergency whether the law enforcement officer is on-duty or acting in a law enforcement capacity off-duty. A famous case regarding (non)liability for police inaction is Castle Rock v. Gonzales. In this case, police declined to enforce a Temporary restraining order (TRO) against plaintiff's estranged husband (who then murdered the children). The Supreme Court observes that the Due Process Clause does not “requir[e] the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors” and also noted the lack of express statutory obligation to enforce that law. In Everton v. Willard, the Florida Supreme Court addressed the question of whether discretionary police power authority to make or not make an arrest and whether a decision not to take an individual into custody constitutes a basic judgmental or decision-making function that is immune from tort liability and they do hold that the decision of whether to enforce the law by making an arrest is a basic judgmental or discretionary governmental function that is immune from suit, regardless of whether the decision is made by the officer on the street, by his sergeant, lieutenant or captain, or by the sheriff or chief of police There have been disagreements on sovereign immunity, for example Huhn v. Dixie Insurance Co., 453 So. 2d 70, which held that when an individual suffers a direct, personal injury proximately caused by the negligence of a municipal employee while acting within the scope of his employment, the injured individual is entitled to redress for the wrong done (the relevant action was not arresting a person for DUI). As employees of the government, LEOs are subject to the over-arching rules of their employer. They may be ordered by their superiors to refrain from arresting a law-breaker during a riot, on the grounds that doing so will exacerbate a tense situation. The police department might be sued for such a decision, but it is unlikely that the government will be held liable for an essentially political decision. Likewise, enforcement of &quot;no public camping&quot; laws is highly variable, and the courts will most likely not sanction a city for not arresting homeless people who are camping on public property in violation of the law.