TexasCajun wrote:Wario = the anti-Mario. In the video games, Mario has an M on his chest. Wario, being opposite as a W. Kinda like Superman vs Bizzaro Superman.
OK, so Wario & Mario is like Mutt & Jeff or Frick & Frack. I get it. Sorry for the threadjacking. Carry on.
I have no idea what the law says in answer to the OP's question, but I do know what my own opinion is (strange as that may seem to some
)......
On the one hand, I do believe in the absolutist ideal of personal responsibility. If you agree to drive the getaway car in an armed robbery, you are agreeing to EVERYTHING that can come out of that, including the fact that this is an "ARMED" robbery, and "armed" implies that use of force/deadly force is a possible outcome to accomplish the robbery. Therefore, not only is anyone who participates in the actual event just as guilty as the shooter if deadly force is used, so are any coconspirators who helped to plan or facilitate the robbery in any way.....provision of safe houses, disposal of the murder weapon, or any other kind of aiding/abetting. For anyone who is guilty, the only determination between a capital sentence and life in prison ought to be whatever differences in punishment the law applies between a premeditated cold-blooded murder, and murder that occurs during the commission of another crime. If someone is killed during the commission of a crime, then ALL responsibility for the killing should fall on the shoulders of ALL of the perpetrators....whether they were just driving the getaway vehicle, or whether they were the one holding the gun and carrying out the actual robbery. I would extend that even to the scenario where the victim shoots and kills the robber in self defense. In that case, ALL accomplices to the robbery are guilty of his death, while the victim has a defense to prosecution because he or she has exercised their right to self-defense against the threat of deadly force.
That's the only way that makes any kind of sense.
On the other hand........
ryouiki wrote:Hmm per my previous comment, this is probably the closest example to one of OP's original scenario's (granted Wikipedia is not the most reliable source).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Wood_(prisoner)
Once you start getting into other people shooting back/etc. I haven' the foggiest ideal how this would work.
........I am a bit conflicted about capital murder charges against a mentally/psychiatrically handicapped person. I really don't know anything about Jeff Wood's psychiatric history. If he had some kind of a sociopathic diagnosis, that would incline me to vote guilty were I on his jury. A sociopath is definitely in touch with reality. He
knows that a thing is regarded as wrong or illegal by society. He either just don't care, or he thinks that he is somehow above or beyond the reach of societal norms, and that the laws therefore do not apply to him. Either way, he is intelligent enough to know what he's done is unacceptable to society, and that's why he tries hide his crimes, and tries to evade capture. This makes him
totally responsible for his actions.
But if a person is so out of touch with reality that he genuinely does not understand the moral implications of what he's done, then he is actually retarded in some kind of way. I'm not sure that we can hang responsibility for his actions on him, anymore than we can hang responsibility on the actions of an aggressive dog who attacks someone on anybody but the dog's owner, if it even has one. The dog has no particular morality. It does not understand that its attack is unacceptable to society. It is simply driven by whatever instinctive processes drove it to aggression. 5 minutes later, it might be happy tail-wagger who gratefully accepts a pat on the head. We can argue whether or not that dog should be put down or incarcerated for the rest of its life, but any such argument takes place in the context of understanding that the dog is not responsible for its actions. Someone
else might be responsible—the owner who failed to keep it behind a fence, for instance—but we don't assign responsibility to the dog.
So the question for me is, was Jeff Wood a sociopathic predator, or was he out of touch with reality. It has been said that one of the measures of the degree to which a society is civilized is how humanely it treats its insane population. Although I am generally a supporter of capital punishment, I certainly don't claim to have all the answers. Wisconsin chose to incarcerate Jeffery Daumer for life because they did not have capital punishment at the time, but neither does anyone believe he wasn't insane. There is no doubt that he was an sociopathic monster, and that he deserved to be executed for his crimes. On the other hand, Daumer claimed after some years in prison to have become a born-again Christian. As I am myself a born-again Christian, I certainly hope this is true. Interestingly,
after Daumer claims he became a Christian, another prisoner carried out his execution. It reminds me of the thief on the cross. He was not spared execution, but he was spared it long enough to meet his Savior and surrender to Him. But I digress.....
All of this is a long way of saying that it is my general belief that all accomplices are as guilty as their leader, including if he kills someone, or if one of them or their leader is killed in the process........AND, the victim is NEVER guilty if he kills either the primary perpetrator or any of his accomplices. All responsibility falls on the criminals. There can be very little exception to this standard, else those exceptions tear apart the fabric of society.
) so an actual lawyer (and that practices in the state in question) would have to comment how often this is even used.