(Not a lawyer. Do not decide who you kill based on this advice.)
Maaaaaaaaybe? Kinda sorta depending?
So basically, the Colorado self-defense statutes allow lethal force if protecting oneself or another from grievous bodily harm, sexual assault, kidnapping, or violence committed during burglary or robbery, if the person using the force has reason to believe it was necessary to prevent the unlawful force.
Colorado also has no duty to retreat in your own home, but whether a duplicate of a resident can be considered a home invader is… not a question that’s been answered in court.
If the SEMME report is accurate to what happened, though, Joyce has no chance of a self-defense claim. Joyce initiated violence against Anti-Joyce, Anti-Joyce defended herself with proportionate force, Joyce pulled out a gun and shot with intent to kill.
Under normal circumstances, that could be First Degree right there; premeditated and committed with the full intent to kill. Voluntary manslaughter in CO is wrapped up into second-degree murder, which she might be able to slide if she could argue that an “ordinary person” (whatever that means in this case) would be provoked to kill in the same circumstances. (Since the provocation was wrapped up with Joyce’s particular neuroses, I get the feeling that ‘ordinary person’ might be a hard argument to swing.)
How any of this applies to evil duplicates produced with alien technology is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don’t see why it being a duplicate should change the appropriateness of the force. It might go with an insanity plea, though; the unusual situation of being confronted with her own darker nature drove Joyce out of her mind.
That is what actually happened, after all, and knowing that is why people like Walky are willing to treat her as a good person rather than a murderer. Why they are all so against the idea of a court mandating her psychological help, I have no idea.
Didn’t Joyce also GET some psychological ‘okay we really need to fix your terror of sex’ help in the aftermath, too? Which was ultimately her biggest issue as well. Saying ‘yeah, she was completely unstable at the time and so we for once tried to fix it, and all this went down way before SEMME went public’ would probably help.
I don’t think you can really plead temporary insanity these days, but PAST insanity with ‘also there is literally no precedent for psyche-split negative clone and so the psychological impact and expectations of that cannot be ignored on an already-fragile mind’ might get you somewhere. Insanity plea requires ‘The defendant didn’t know it was wrong (where it should be obvious to a sane mind),’ but a case for ‘We’re all so used to the Evil Clone idea that a lot of people when confronted with one they didn’t like would be primed to think Evil Non-Being’ could also be made.
Like, she still killed another sentient being who presented littlr known threat to her, but the situation is in fact hella complicated and there is in fact no legal precedent for ‘I killed my mirrored clone’.
Also if we wanna talk about SEMME agents in positions of power despite psychological instability… We’ll be here all day.
Insanity might be hard to prove, but she’s been mindwiped several times, which has been proven to be not so good for the noggin, and SEMME can actually get a non-lying testimony to that extent out of Professor Doc and the multiple agents who saw Walky go into crazy mode in the Britja fight.
The insanity defense is still available, but it’s very rare, used in less than 1% of cases. Even when it is used, it fails about three-quarters of the time, which is one big reason it’s so rare. Even when a diminished capacity/insanity defense does “succeed”, it’s not exactly a Get out of Jail Free card. Instead of prison, the person is usually committed to a secure psychiatric facility, which isn’t a whole lot more fun. Further, s/he can held indefinitely, until it’s officially determined s/he is no longer a danger to self or others. As a result, the defendant can actually end up spending more time in custody than if they had been convicted and formally sentenced.
Honestly I don’t know why they don’t just confess. O’Ryan’s gunning for them hard and seems very competent but I don’t think anybody would be able to get a jury to convict on a charge of clone murder. The public, via years of science fiction, has been (arguably incorrectly) trained to believe that clones are evil. Even if all of SEMMF didn’t perjure themselves and said that Anti-Joyce’s only “crimes” were dressing sexy and trying to bone all the guys, most people could probably still be swayed into thinking that Anti-Joyce was a threat that needed to be eliminated. (Granted this presumes that SEMME is able to get a very good lawyer to defend Joyce, which you’d think they could as a highly funded government agency, but seeing as SEMME is also an organization in a comedy universe, they’d probably end up with a Lionel Hutz-type lawyer.)
Is there a body? Hard to prove murder. Are there any records of this person ever having existed? No, they all refer to the defendant. I don’t think the prosecution has a good case. Even if they went forward, the burden of proof is high, and the lack of a precedent regarding the legal rights of clones/duplicates, or even defining what they are, will take years.
There’s definitely both, they showed declassified documents and a picture of a very messy head-shotted Anti-Joyce a few pages back. Now as for the body, who knows. Most likely incinerated but possibly buried in an unmarked grave. There’s probably more information somewhere at SEMME that O’Ryan could get out of them, as I doubt Professor Doc would let something as scientifically astounding as a clone go without a thorough autopsy.
Loading ...
Bart: “cool story bro”
Is assault a justifiable positive defense for manslaughter?
(Not a lawyer. Do not decide who you kill based on this advice.)
Maaaaaaaaybe? Kinda sorta depending?
So basically, the Colorado self-defense statutes allow lethal force if protecting oneself or another from grievous bodily harm, sexual assault, kidnapping, or violence committed during burglary or robbery, if the person using the force has reason to believe it was necessary to prevent the unlawful force.
Colorado also has no duty to retreat in your own home, but whether a duplicate of a resident can be considered a home invader is… not a question that’s been answered in court.
If the SEMME report is accurate to what happened, though, Joyce has no chance of a self-defense claim. Joyce initiated violence against Anti-Joyce, Anti-Joyce defended herself with proportionate force, Joyce pulled out a gun and shot with intent to kill.
Under normal circumstances, that could be First Degree right there; premeditated and committed with the full intent to kill. Voluntary manslaughter in CO is wrapped up into second-degree murder, which she might be able to slide if she could argue that an “ordinary person” (whatever that means in this case) would be provoked to kill in the same circumstances. (Since the provocation was wrapped up with Joyce’s particular neuroses, I get the feeling that ‘ordinary person’ might be a hard argument to swing.)
How any of this applies to evil duplicates produced with alien technology is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don’t see why it being a duplicate should change the appropriateness of the force. It might go with an insanity plea, though; the unusual situation of being confronted with her own darker nature drove Joyce out of her mind.
That is what actually happened, after all, and knowing that is why people like Walky are willing to treat her as a good person rather than a murderer. Why they are all so against the idea of a court mandating her psychological help, I have no idea.
Didn’t Joyce also GET some psychological ‘okay we really need to fix your terror of sex’ help in the aftermath, too? Which was ultimately her biggest issue as well. Saying ‘yeah, she was completely unstable at the time and so we for once tried to fix it, and all this went down way before SEMME went public’ would probably help.
I don’t think you can really plead temporary insanity these days, but PAST insanity with ‘also there is literally no precedent for psyche-split negative clone and so the psychological impact and expectations of that cannot be ignored on an already-fragile mind’ might get you somewhere. Insanity plea requires ‘The defendant didn’t know it was wrong (where it should be obvious to a sane mind),’ but a case for ‘We’re all so used to the Evil Clone idea that a lot of people when confronted with one they didn’t like would be primed to think Evil Non-Being’ could also be made.
Like, she still killed another sentient being who presented littlr known threat to her, but the situation is in fact hella complicated and there is in fact no legal precedent for ‘I killed my mirrored clone’.
Also if we wanna talk about SEMME agents in positions of power despite psychological instability… We’ll be here all day.
Insanity might be hard to prove, but she’s been mindwiped several times, which has been proven to be not so good for the noggin, and SEMME can actually get a non-lying testimony to that extent out of Professor Doc and the multiple agents who saw Walky go into crazy mode in the Britja fight.
The insanity defense is still available, but it’s very rare, used in less than 1% of cases. Even when it is used, it fails about three-quarters of the time, which is one big reason it’s so rare. Even when a diminished capacity/insanity defense does “succeed”, it’s not exactly a Get out of Jail Free card. Instead of prison, the person is usually committed to a secure psychiatric facility, which isn’t a whole lot more fun. Further, s/he can held indefinitely, until it’s officially determined s/he is no longer a danger to self or others. As a result, the defendant can actually end up spending more time in custody than if they had been convicted and formally sentenced.
Depending on circumstances, yes in Texas. In New York, I wouldn’t try it. Indiana, I don’t know.
I do not play a lawyer on TV.
Bart O’Ryan hasn’t denied Walky’s point about his life being petty and miserable.
Honestly I don’t know why they don’t just confess. O’Ryan’s gunning for them hard and seems very competent but I don’t think anybody would be able to get a jury to convict on a charge of clone murder. The public, via years of science fiction, has been (arguably incorrectly) trained to believe that clones are evil. Even if all of SEMMF didn’t perjure themselves and said that Anti-Joyce’s only “crimes” were dressing sexy and trying to bone all the guys, most people could probably still be swayed into thinking that Anti-Joyce was a threat that needed to be eliminated. (Granted this presumes that SEMME is able to get a very good lawyer to defend Joyce, which you’d think they could as a highly funded government agency, but seeing as SEMME is also an organization in a comedy universe, they’d probably end up with a Lionel Hutz-type lawyer.)
Is there a body? Hard to prove murder. Are there any records of this person ever having existed? No, they all refer to the defendant. I don’t think the prosecution has a good case. Even if they went forward, the burden of proof is high, and the lack of a precedent regarding the legal rights of clones/duplicates, or even defining what they are, will take years.
There’s definitely both, they showed declassified documents and a picture of a very messy head-shotted Anti-Joyce a few pages back. Now as for the body, who knows. Most likely incinerated but possibly buried in an unmarked grave. There’s probably more information somewhere at SEMME that O’Ryan could get out of them, as I doubt Professor Doc would let something as scientifically astounding as a clone go without a thorough autopsy.