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Join us each Tuesday as Bob Ingersoll analyzes how the law
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THE LAW IS A ASS for 07/27/1999
Installment # 3
The good news is she isn't a murderer.
The bad news is murder may be the only crime she didn't commit.
What other crimes entails an understanding of the law, which, as they say, can be something of an ass. That's why I'm here to explain things.
The "she" in question is Buffy, as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the horror/comedy/teen angst show on the WB that's not only become one of my favorite shows but one of the few I watch religiously. (And you should have seen the strange looks I got from my wife, when I put the TV up on that altar.) It's a good show; one you should be watching, too, no excuses. Not even if you happen to be living in one of those remote, out-of-the way burgs that doesn't have a local WB affiliate. You should be making a pilgrimage every Tuesday to a city that does. (I said the show should be watched religiously.)
The events we're talking about happened in an episode called "Bad Girls." But just in case you don't get the show and haven't converted as yet, perhaps a little background information is in order. . .
Into each generation shall be born the Chosen One, the Slayer; one girl possessed of extra-normal skill, strength and ability whose destiny it is to slay vampires. Vampires and, because this is a weekly series that needs a little variety, other assorted nasties that go bump in the night. The Slayer for our generation is Buffy Summers, an eighteen-year-old former Valley Girl relocated from LA to the not-too-distant Sunnydale, California; which happens to be on the mouth to Hell (thereby proving everything everyone has ever said about southern California). Buffy is all that stands between us and those assorted Hellmouth night- bumpers. Okay, not quite all. Few shows exist without an ensemble cast, so Buffy's not alone. She is aided by her high-school friends and also by Rupert Giles, her Watcher; the chosen representative of a centuries-old council whose task it is to seek out, train and assist the Slayers in their war.
At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Unfortunately, recently some plot complications have set in: there are two Slayers and two Watchers. I realize trying to figure out why there are two Slayers and two Watchers, when there's only supposed to be one of each, can be taxing. So, to make it less taxing I'm going to do what we wish the IRS would do and use the short form.
During the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy died. She got better. After all, doing a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer when there's no Buffy to slay vampires in it would be as stupid as, say, doing Sanford and Son without either Sanford or Son.
What happened was Buffy was thrown into a pool of water, drowned and was clinically dead for a brief time, until one of her friends gave her CPR. But her death, though momentary, was long enough to cause her replacement Slayer, Kendra, to be activated. Anyway, Kendra didn't deactivate when Buffy came back to life, so there were two Slayers. To complicate matters further, at the end of the second season Kendra died. But as she hadn't negotiated a Kendra the Vampire Killer spin-off, she stayed dead and her death activated the latent Slayerness in her replacement, Faith. So there are presently two Slayers in Sunnydale, Buffy and Faith.
Now, where Buffy was from a good home and had strong morals in her upbringing, so was the kind of hero we used to get in the comic books before grim became associated with gritty instead of Benjamin, Faith was a rebellious, tough kid from the streets of Boston, and when you remember what Boston considered to be a tea party, you know how rebellious and tough that can be. Faith was the oil to Buffy's water, the yin to Buffy's yang; or is that the yang to Buffy's yin, I can never tell which is which. Moreover, as Faith activated unexpectedly, she never got a Watcher, so was a self-taught Slayer, learning the tricks of the trade without any of the tempering or restraint that Giles instilled in Buffy.
Oh yes, Giles and the Watchers. As I said, there is a second Watcher in Sunnydale at present. Seems the Watchers' Council thought Giles had become too attached to Buffy-after all, how can you dispassionately send someone out to constant life-and-death struggles with the denizens of the Hellmouth, if you love her like a daughter?-so it replaced him with someone named Wesley, a cowardly whiner of an Englishman who can best be described as C3P0 without the metal. Or the personality. Or, thankfully, the Ewoks.
To say Buffy didn't take to her new Watcher would be to say Al Capone didn't take to abstinence. She resented him. She didn't listen to him. She openly defied him. Basically, if Wesley said, "Jump!" Buffy would break out the Limbo stick. And in an act of rebellion against Wesley and the Watchers' Council, started patrolling patrols with Faith and got caught up in Faith's more rebellious attitude; started acting like Louise to Faith's Thelma.
Which brings us back to "Bad Girls" and ends our background. Yes, I remember I was going to use the short form. But remember, I'm a lawyer. People like me wrote the IRS Code. That was about as short as we get.
The problem is it brings us to another managerial matter first-that of the SPOILER WARNING. So here it is: Warning, if you leave meat out too long it will spoil. Oh yes, and I'll probably be telling you about the episode "Bad Girls" that you want to know, if you haven't see it, so be warned.
As I said before, Faith's method of slaying was rather live for the moment and self- gratifying. She enjoyed the killing and reveling in her power and started drawing Buffy over to the Dark Side. When she and Buffy didn't have weapons for their patrol, they, at Faith's urging, broke into a sporting goods store and started looting it for archery equipment, under the mantra of, "Want. Take. Have."
Shall we start counting?
That's three crimes right there. Trespassing by force into an unoccupied store with the intention of committing a theft offense was breaking and entering. Breaking open the display counters of a place of business to loot them was vandalism. Stealing the archery equipment was . . .
Do I really have to tell you?
When the police responded to the silent alarm and arrested Buffy and Faith, the latter decided she didn't want to go to jail. She and Buffy kicked out the metal screening in the back of the police car, causing the car to crash. Then they knocked out the policemen and escaped.
And that's three more. Causing physical damage to the police car was another count of vandalism. Kicking the policemen into unconsciousness was assault on a police officer. Escaping from police custody was . . .
Again, do I really have to tell you?
Which is all the crimes I said Buffy was guilty of, but what about the one I said she wasn't guilty of, the murder? As Buffy and Faith fled from the police, they were attacked by a bunch of vampires, who they fought, staked in the heart and turned into so much dust in the wind, and all without any musical accompaniment from Kansas. Then an unknown figure grabbed Buffy from behind. She thought he was a vampire and threw him over her shoulder, at which point Faith jumped on him with a point of her own; a stake. Buffy realized the figure was not a vampire, but a man, and called for Faith to stop. But Faith either didn't hear or couldn't stop, she drove the stake into the man's heart.
As I said, Buffy wasn't guilty of the homicide here. It was not, after all, she that drove the stake into the man. But wouldn't she be an aider and abettor to Faith in this homicide? No. The law requires that an aider and abettor have the same criminal intent as the principal offender. If the aider lacks this intent, what we call a mens rea, then the aider isn't really aiding and isn't guilty of the crime. The episode clearly established that Buffy didn't have the same mens rea as Faith. Buffy recognized the man wasn't a vampire and tried, in vain, to get Faith to stop, before Faith stopped in vein. As Buffy wasn't encouraging or assisting Faith in killing the man, she wasn't guilty as an aider and abettor.
Even Buffy's act in throwing the man off her where Faith could stake him, didn't make her an aider and abettor. The man grabbed Buffy from behind immediately after she had been attacked by vampires. She could reasonably have believed she was being attacked by another vampire so was acting in and could reasonably use self-defense.
Self-defense is flexible that way. A person, here Buffy, doesn't have to be right in her belief that she's entitled to use force to defend herself, she only has to have a reasonable belief that she is entitled to self-defense. Moreover, the law even says that when its evaluating whether the person, here Buffy, reasonably believed that she had the right to use force to defend herself, it won't use an objective, "reasonable" man standard; that is what would a reasonable man believe under the circumstances. Rather the laws says the evaluation of reasonableness is made from the subjective point of view of the person acting in self defense. Given everything that had happened to Buffy immediately before the killing, I don't think the law would have too much trouble finding her belief that she was justified in using force to defend herself to be reasonable, even though it was wrong. It's one of the few times that the law permits someone to be wrong yet innocent, but it is the law.
See, sometimes the law isn't such an ass, after all. But don't tell anyone, okay. I don't want people thinking they don't need me explaining things, after all.
BOB INGERSOLL
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