Personal Responsibility and the Law, concl.page 2
Lawmakers wait for that single instance of a citizen
failure so they can be justified in proposing and instituting a blanket law that
controls every citizen’s actions in a similar situation, and permits coercion of
additional fees and taxation and penalties for noncompliance with the new law
that forces self-safety. Every new law has at its core the purpose of revenue
generation for governing bodies, restriction of personal behavior where the
safety of others might be risked, or regulation of business operations and
policies.
Most laws are made to gain advantage over citizens,
not just hardened criminals. Laws that don’t constrain government intervention
and that curtail basic freedoms are bad, and the massive quantity of laws are
predictably contradictory (about 60,000 or so pages of new regulations are
published each year in the Federal Register), which counters the
principle that laws should be generally known, since no private citizen can
reasonably be expected to know all of the new and revised laws and their
specific conditions and technicalities.
Under felony murder statutes, the American legal
system broadens and assigns responsibility for criminal acts to more people on
the periphery of crimes, extending primary responsibility for murder to
incidental actors, while the unintended consequence of government social
programs is to encourage people to relinquish responsibility. Laws define
specific responsibilities, but social support programs imply responsibilities
indirectly as being those which the government hasn’t socialized.
The issue of the depth of one’s knowledge about a
crime or the intent of a criminal has no bearing on the level of responsibility
tied to periphery actors when accessory or felony murder charges are filed. Some
jurisdictions use the proximate cause theory, so that the
periphery actor, or agent, in legal parlance, can be charged for all damage
to anyone who is harmed by anyone in the commission of a crime,
including injury inflicted by bystanders who may trample other bystanders while
trying to escape gunshots, and including physical harm to bystanders caused by
the police on scene during a pursuit, provided that the property damage or
injury happened in a chain of events very soon after the primary crime, in which
case the periphery actor can be formally charged with legally causing any death
or physical injury at the scene or along an extended scene in the case of a
police pursuit.
If I see specific people on the street selling drugs,
and I know that within the next minute they will sell more drugs, though I have
nothing to do with their crime simply because I see it and don’t report it, I
cannot be arrested for a felony for seeing one take place. I might be charged
with withholding information if questioned by the police about what I’ve seen if
I don’t describe what I saw, but I am not an accessory to drug trafficking.
If I know that statistically, five people a week are
murdered in a bad neighborhood, such knowledge doesn’t make me personally
responsible for those murders. Having heard rumors that a specific person might
potentially kill someone makes my level of responsibility to the law
questionable in the case of accessory laws. In reality, if not in law, my
knowledge of a specific person’s plan to commit a crime makes me no more
personally responsible for that person’s crime than a general knowledge that
people commit crime makes me responsible for those crimes, whether or not I
report my suspicions to the police.
Television police dramas emphasize the aider and
abettor extension of culpability by showing periphery actors in a crime being
charged with the actual violent crime committed by an associate. In The
Closer, two apparently unarmed carjackers threatened a driver, and the
driver pulled out a gun and shot two warning shots over their heads. One of the
bullets killed an innocent bystander two blocks away. The carjackers ran away.
The lead detective in the drama charged the thwarted carjackers with
manslaughter because in the commission of their felony, a man was killed. It
didn’t matter that they had no intent, that they didn’t know the man who was
killed, that they didn’t pull the trigger, that they were unarmed, or that they
only threatened violence in the attempted car theft. The carjack victim chose to
discharge a deadly weapon, he did so irresponsibly when he had other options for
evasion, such as fleeing in the vehicle, using other means of defense, or aiming
carefully and ensuring that the bullets only entered the carjackers, yet both
carjackers were charged with felony murder.
Fortunately for the relatively innocent carjackers, since they didn’t themselves kill, didn’t attempt to kill, nor intend to kill, they can’t be executed in those states that observe capital punishment, even though they will be found guilty of felony murder.
In another The Closer episode, a man planned
with several others to commit a robbery. He maintained surveillance of the
property and determined that robbing it was too risky. He rejected the robbery
job, refused to participate, recommended that the others not rob the property,
and had no further contact with the crew. The heist crew took it upon themselves
to follow through on the former leader’s rejected plan and killed someone in the
commission of the robbery. The plan’s original designer, who had no part
in its execution and had no intent to kill anyone, was charged with the murder.
Murder committed by any party in the furtherance of a class A or B felony makes
all parties legally liable for the murder, according to clauses in most felony
murder laws.
On a recent episode of The Good Wife, on CBS,
a lawyer brought a felony murder suit against a newspaper company whose editor
and editorial committee decided to print a political cartoon that negatively
depicted Mohammed, which prompted an extremist to plant and detonate a pipe bomb
in the newspaper offices that killed one of the newspaper staff. The suit,
brought on behalf of a client who wanted more money than an insurance company’s
cap on the newspaper company’s liability, charged that the editorial board hoped
for provocation and sensationalism by publishing the controversial cartoon,
hoping to incite violent reaction, so the newspaper was responsible for the
bombing death, though the actual bomber was never apprehended. The fictional
suit was thrown out of court as being frivolous and having no merit.
In a recent Christmas episode of CSI: NY, a
man on the street was moving along the sidewalk picking the pockets of holiday
shoppers and dropping his booty into a manbag. Off-duty police detective Mac
Taylor saw the thief working the crowd and gave chase. The thief eluded the
police among the crowd and stashed his goodie bag when it appeared he’d be
caught red-handed for his crimes. Subsequently, it was learned that
someone had been murdered inside a store along that same sidewalk of crowded
shoppers. The detectives, hoping that someone on the street had taken a chance
photograph or video of the murder in progress, apprehended the lowly thief and
threatened to charge him with the murder if he didn’t disclose the location of
his stashed bag of stolen items, some items of which may have been
electronic recording devices that might contain video evidence of the
murder. The police were secure in this bluff because in New York City, according
to the writers of this television episode, if there’s a homicide committed
during the commission of another unrelated crime, such as a purse theft in the
vicinity of the scene of the murder, the purse thief involved in the secondary
crime can be charged with murder. Huh? Makes you want to scratch your head.
The felony murder and accessory laws allow police
departments to pump up their arrest record statistics by targeting uninvolved
people, act as a deterrent to those who might be thinking about being involved
in any remote way with a crime, such as receiving stolen property that the
seller may have assaulted the victim to obtain, and are used as a tactic or tool
by police to coerce confessions by threat of charges for the worst offense in
another person’s crime. You hang out with people prone to shenanigans, you get
arrested alongside them. You frequent the wrong places at the wrong times when
you should know better, then it’s by choice, and so you’re partly responsible
for the acts of others who are also in that wrong place.
Such laws stay on the books because they give police
legitimate coercion leverage in interrogations. Being able to threaten the
greater pain of long prison sentences, and then promising to cut those sentences
short in return for information is a useful tool for eliciting information from
criminals who are actually closely associated with nastier criminals or who know
of other crimes and the criminals who committed or are about to commit them.
Also, having secondary crimes at their disposal for which there is prosecutable
evidence allows the police to jail known crooks though there is no evidence to
support indictment in the primary crime.
Even when the outcome is completely unforeseeable, such as
an 1
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As another example of how accessory laws can punish
good people with good intentions, a couple walking down the street come upon a
bum with this hand out. They listen to his story of needing to buy gas for his
car, which has stalled a few blocks away with his family as anxious occupants.
The couple talk among themselves and argue the finer points of skepticism,
liberal generosity, and ensuring that the money they give goes to a cause they
agree is good rather than being diverted into a bartender’s till. So, the couple
get in their car, drive to the nearest gas station, buy a one gallon can of gas,
return to find the bum at the same location, and give him the can of gas. The
bum thanks the good Samaritans and walks away with the can. If he’s caught
pouring the gas out of the can down a storm sewer, the good Samaritan couple can
be charged with creating an environmental hazard. If the bum pours the gas
around the base of a bar whose management refused to serve him and sets the
place on fire, the good Samaritan couple can be charged with arson under the
accessory, association, and conspiracy laws in some states, whether or not they
knew the true intent of the bum that they thought they were helping to teach a
lesson about lying to open the pockets of marks on the street.
Liability law is another major area that impacts our
understanding of the extent and level of our legal responsibility to ensure the
safety of others. Regarding one’s responsibilities to maintain one’s property,
if a property owner makes an obvious attempt to counteract natural flooding and
snow, such as shoveling walkways, they create an expectation of safety in those
invited onto the property and a dilution of the visitor’s responsibility to
exercise greater caution. Therefore, the property owner who makes an attempt, no
matter the extent and effectiveness of such an attempt, can be sued by anyone
who uses the altered passageways and gets hurt in doing so. Not shoveling the
snow from your sidewalk or the steps to your front porch provides a visible clue
(the dangerous condition of the walkway is open and obvious) that any visitors
must use caution, and failure to use caution in a slip is the visitor’s personal
responsibility.
In subrogation law, property owners, even those
having knowledge of criminal activity on their property and not taking action to
prevent it, cannot be held liable for the crimes of the criminals, and have no
duty to protect persons from the criminal acts of others on the property.
Different judges interpret this concept with finer gradations of responsibility
based on the owner’s knowledge (the reasonable assumption that the property
owner should have realized) that changing conditions of the property, such as
installing an electrified fence around it, would likely discourage criminal
trespass, and thereby, criminal activity.
Under negligence law, each person has a duty not to
cause injury to others, and others have a duty to exercise care in daily living.
Multiple legal cases have delineated these responsibilities, including
mitigating factors of inability to recognize that one’s conduct might cause
damage to others, intent, and shared responsibility, or comparative negligence
when two parties are partly to blame (by percentage or by definition, slight or
gross negligence) for one of the party’s damages. Foreseeability of damage
occurring from one’s actions, concurrent causation by multiple independent
causes of damage, proximate versus remote causes, expressed and implied
assumptions of risk, and premise liability conditions are considered when
personal responsibility has to be legally determined. Courts decide degrees of
liability to determine the percentage that each party in a damages suit should
be required to pay to make things right.
In most negligence cases, danger is implied in the
activity, and people need to take personal responsibility to develop the skill
to avoid or minimize the danger. For instance, swimming in any public pool
increases the danger of chlorine damage to the swimmer’s hair that the swimmer
must accept as a condition of swimming, mitigate with a swimming cap, or repair
with hair conditioner after showering.
A trend in failing responsibility occurs when people
assume risks with full knowledge of the hazards, yet refuse to accept damages
when they occur, preferring to spread the costs of reparation onto others. Even
when they expressly sign contracts that release companies that offer risky
leisure sport and entertainment services of liability, people want to renege if
they are hurt through no defect in the service, but from their own acts, which
they perform without requisite skill or experience in an unfamiliar setting.
Incompetence and making bad decisions when taking on any responsibility is not a
mitigating factor for winning personal damages.
Frivolous lawsuits, such as the one in which an
elderly driver pulled away from a McDonald’s restaurant and spilled a cup of hot
coffee she’d put between her legs, scalding herself because there were no words
on the cup warning her the coffee was hot, demand a review of allowable
allegations within the tort system of law.
“The proliferation of nonsense tort suits—everyone
seems to have the right to dump hot coffee on their lap and then sue the coffee
shop—epitomizes the collapse of rationality in injury suits. By promulgating the
notion that no one can be held responsible for their own behavior, the legal
system multiplies the number of irresponsible individuals.” (Bovard, Freedom, p. 207)
Slip-and-fall artists spill fluid on the floors of
supermarkets so that the store can be sued for liability and medical payments
when the scammer falls and hurts his back. Manufacturers can be sued for idiot
usage of their products. Have you seen the warning stickers on aluminum ladders
lately? There are lawsuits against people who serve food which causes some
people allergic reactions. A landlord is suing a tenant for $50,000 after the
tenant tweeted to her friends about the grossness of mold in her apartment. An
out of work Monroe College graduate is suing the college because its career
advancement office failed to help her get a job, though no college can guarantee
its graduates will get a job. McDonalds, Inc. is being sued for using toys in
kids meal to lure kids into buying food.
Since a claimant’s deceitful intent in a frivolous
suit often cannot be proved, defense attorneys fall back on a strategy of citing
personal responsibility to either hold the defendant blameless or only partially
to blame.
Some laws make both suggestion and watching a video a
crime. In St. Paul, MN, video voyeur William Melchard Dinkle, using the screen
name Cami-D and posing as a concerned female psychological therapist willing to
enter a suicide pact, visited Internet chatrooms dedicated to discussion of teen
suicide and populated primarily by teen chatters. Dinkle encouraged depressed
teens to take their own lives and to videotape the suicide with their computer
camcorders so that he could watch as they hanged themselves or slit their
wrists. Sergeant Paul Schnell of the Minnesota law enforcement taskforce,
Internet Crimes Against Children, said that “Anyone who encourages, aids, or
directs another to take their own life has violated Minnesota’s law around
assisting suicide.” Forty-three states have laws against assisted suicide via
the Internet, though only one person has ever been prosecuted. Watching is
also considered assisting if no action is taken to avert a teen suicide, so
hundreds of online viewers could also be charged with a crime as they watched
teens commit suicide. (“Dateline: Dangerous Connection)”
Since teens were involved, Dinkle was considered an Internet predator and held 100 percent responsible when suicidal teens followed through on his suggestions that they kill themselves.
The popular culture feeds on these kind of
dispersion-of-responsibility laws. In a recent CSI: Miami, a pregnant
teen committed suicide in response to Internet bullying—a viral video making
fun of her elicited millions of negative taunts and teases and texts that made
it to the teen's computer and phone over the network. The ex-girlfriend of the
boy who’d impregnated the suicide victim had created and posted the video, so
she was charged with some kind of contributory homicide. The arresting officer
wondered where the parents of the video creator had been, and wasn’t there some
way to levy charges against those 11 million video viewers who made nasty
comments? Because a girl chose suicide as a response, rather than turning off
her PC and phone, or changing her e-mail address, or installing spam-blocking
software, or simply ignoring the negative comments, or pursuing any number of
other options, somebody else has to be charged with a crime based on her poor,
self-destructive choice. It can’t get more ridiculous.
This fictionalized account may have been based on the Megan
Meier case, in which the 13-year-old girl from Missouri committed suicide
after Internet postings, prompting her hometown to pass a law in an effort to
combat cyber bullying. “As a result, the 111th Congress introduced HR 1966; the
Megan Meier Cyber Prevention Act, in 2009. Despite desperate attempts by many
legislators, the bill died in committee. This bill did not fail for lack of
caring; but rather, its countless issues. These include the balancing act
between free speech and what constitutes commentary as opposed to bullying [and]
libel laws. In Ohio, the proposed Ohio Senate Bill 127...has provisions that
require schools to include cyber bullying in their anti-harassment policies. It
also requires the training of teachers and staff, to handle this new age
issue...In addition, the bill would require districts to establish systems for
accepting anonymous reports of cyber bullying and take steps to protect the
victims” (Suarez).
Is there ever justification for holding others
responsible for acts that individuals were already considering, such as
committing suicide? Is there ever any mitigating circumstance that permits
suspension of due process law statutes that allow those accused of confronting their accusers,
as seems unavoidable with anonymous reporting?
Suggesting investment opportunities in good faith
doesn’t mean the offeror is liable for any monetary losses when the advice is
acted upon by investors, though responsibility is questioned in today’s blame
environment, even if the advisor gives the advise without charging a fee, even
if he hopes additional investors will somehow make his own stake worth more. If
his listeners know that the advisor isn’t in the profession of providing
investment or financial advice, the advisor can freely lie about an investment’s
potential for growth. If listeners act on the lie, this does not qualify as
fraud and the liar isn’t responsible for the listener’s action. Each potential
investor is responsible for researching investment tips. If they develop
suspicions about the ethics and honesty of the person suggesting the investment
tip, potential investors can contact consumer agencies and fraud divisions
within legal Federals bodies, state regulators, and SEC investigators. Investors
can hire private investigators. In some states, giving investing advise is
illegal and called promoting securities without a license, as if having a
license makes it okay to steal people’s money. It’s also called “recruiting”
investors, and even mentioning an investment you yourself made can be
forbidden–how can any government body tell you what you can say, making speech
proscribed?
When is it okay to blame the victims for their
victimization, the parents for the crimes of their children, the provider of a
product used to commit a crime, the bystander with no intent though a hint of
suspicion about another’s intent to commit a crime? Should gun sellers can be
charged with murder if the user of the gun at any time uses it to commit a
murder. Can the owners of garden centers be charged with murder if someone uses
a garden hose purchased at their store to strangle someone, a shovel to bat
someone over the head and later dig a shallow grave to bury the body, a chainsaw
to dismember a body, or any other product that can be used to murder or maim and
then elude detection?
Police often blame victims for their own
victimization so that police won’t feel so bad for not putting in a strong good
faith effort in tracking down the bad guy or for their inability to catch the
bad guy after genuine effort. They tell themselves that the victim, often a
sorry character strung out on drugs, a criminal in his own right, perhaps a
lowlife that has never respected the law, deserved to be victimized because the
victim has a history of acting immorally. But however someone justifies placing
some victims on a lower priority investigatory path to free up police resources,
the victimizer who physically beats down or rapes another person is personally
responsible for the assault, regardless of the manner of any provoking verbal
statements by the victim.
People with medical training are legally not
permitted not to risk their lives and the future lawsuits of people they see in
medical need. If such medical personnel are not working within their insured
corporations and without benefit of signed contracts with recipients of medical
treatment, they are legally personally held responsible if their treatment fails
in any way and causes further damage or fails to curtail the unassisted expected
damage sustained by the victim in need of emergency medical care. Committing to
life-saving acts outside of a hospital leads onlookers to expect that the person
performing medical procedures will continue in this course of action, which lets
onlookers reasonably assume that the situation is in hand. If the agent stops
giving medical treatment before the patient is stable, he fails in his
responsibility. So, this law, which allows future suits for unexpected medical
outcomes, causes people with medical training to abstain from aiding victims.
The deaths of people in need of medical care outside of medical facilities are
the consequence of bad personal liability laws and a system which doesn’t force
claimants to pay all fees for losing in court.
Because the law states that it is a life guard’s
responsibility to save drowning victims while off duty doesn’t make it an
individual’s personal responsibility. It’s just a bad law. The law makes you
legally responsible if it can demonstrate you had expertise and decided not to
use it, and the law makes you responsible if you take action and make a
perceived mistake in your aid procedure. You’re screwed whether you take action
or don’t, but by not taking action, the state has to make a decision to locate
you and build a case, whereas the victim has you in the grip of his legal
sights. The law discourages involvement while penalizing noninvolvement. The
problem is that once you make a decision to take on the personal responsibility
of coming to another’s aid, you have full responsibility to follow through,
because you committed legally. So the law discourages helping one’s fellow man
by making it compulsory and giving fellow men the right to destroy your life in
court. You take the screwing that hurts least, which often comes down to
anonymous noninvolvement and later rationalization away of any feelings of guilt
about the victim’s outcome.
Individuals within the legal community try to define
boundaries and assign responsibility where it realistically belongs. They
understand that tree branches in New York’s Central Park occasionally break off,
fall, and hit patrons, but the suggested legal remedy isn’t to remove the risk
by cutting down the trees, but instead installing warning signs to remind
visitors that they are entering nature at their own risk.
As a realist, I know that bad decisions and poor judgment and ignorance of the fine points of law lead to negative consequences, and that sometimes, even negative results can be turned around to one’s benefit, or our perception of negative results can be changed so that we feel less harmed (a psychological process that is called “discounting”). I’m not making excuses for people who should be accountable for their own poor judgment and decisions. I recognize that not everyone has the time nor intelligence to stay informed about every new law that might affect their actions. I ask only that everyone get a good lawyer and shut up if the police ever try to assign blame for something you know you are not personally responsible for doing. Getting a great insurance policy might help protect your assets, too.