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THE LAW IS A ASS for 05/23/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 45
Originally written as installment # 35 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 566, July 21, 1984 issue
Not much to add here. I got some mail. I answered it.
Further affiant sayeth naught
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 45
by
Bob Ingersoll
BZRLPLOX!
A wise man once told me that when you're stuck for an opening to a story or a column, just type the first thing that comes to mind and go from there. Can I help it if BRZLPLOX is the first thing that came to my mind?
But it worked. I've started the column. Now all I have to do is cleverly segue from my opening to my topic and...
Shoot, my cleverness has gone the segue of all flesh.
Oh, the hell with it!
******
Today is a mail column; I answer letters and other requests for information. (Now was that clever, or what?)
The first letter is from Lee Hestin (I think that's the last name) of Palo Alto, California. Lee wanted to know if anyone took me up on my offer to give legal advice to comic writers, before their stories saw print, so as to insure accuracy. Actually several have. But that doesn't mean more couldn't join in on the fun. So, I will use this opportunity to renew the offer.
Friends, Romans, Comic Book Writers, lend me your ears. (I'm having a cook out and want lots of corn.) Do you have a comic story which involves the law? Do you want to get the law part right? If you write me in care of the CBG or e-mail me here at law@wfcomics.com and detail the problem, I will give you my best consultation, so you can make the legal aspects of the story correct. Moreover, I don't charge for the service. Just make sure you give me enough lead time, so I can research the answer, if needed, and get back to you before your plot or script is due. I don't want to be the cause of a missed deadline. (And no, it is not true that they're holding Camelot 3000 # 12 while waiting for my response to a question.)
I am serious. Ask around, you'll see I've already helped some of your compatriots, they'll confirm my sincerity. And remember, my offer comes with the following written guarantee: The information I give you isn't warranted to be absolutely correct, but if it isn't, at least I won't very write about the story and criticize you for getting the law wrong.
******
The next request came from Assistant CBG editor, Kim Metzger. Kim wants to know if a magic-powered villain uses his power to turn Flash into a puppet, is that a crime as opposed to one of the all-time classic silly covers? Yes. The means used is immaterial. If the end result is illegal, it doesn't matter if the crime was committed by using magic, computer technology, or even super powers which defy explanation. (Although flight isn't against the law just because it defies the law of gravity.) A crime is a crime.
Turning someone into a puppet, incidently, would be some form of assault. Moreover, if the local government still has on its books some really old Salem-inspired law outlawing witchcraft, that is another crime committed.
******
Another old letter, this time from Thomas Hegeman, attorney-at-law of Oneonta, New York. Thomas wrote in response to my very first column. He was intrigued by a throw-away line, I included stating that many states had a law outlawing the public wearing of masks. These old laws, by the way, were probably written to discourage the KKK or masked highwaymen. He researched New York's law and found NY's anti-mask law in the state's loitering statute. Said law indicates it is only illegal to appear in public in a mask if said violator loiters, remains, or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked. So Spider-Man is alright, as he may hang around a lot, but he does it alone. Or he did, until he started dating the Black Cat. Dump her now, Spidey! Your continued association with her will give J. Jonah even more ammunition and lead you into a life of crime!
Actually the repercussions of this law are astonishing. It means that the Avengers, the X-Men, the New Mutants, the JLA, the JSA, Infinity, Inc., and every other super-hero group has to disband, or at least not engage in any team work. Why, this weapon could be more devastating that the Secret Society of Super-Villains' Smelt Ray. It would mean the end of organized Super-heroics, as we know them. (But it's not all bad. At least it would force the new and improverished Justice League of America to break-up, before Vibe, Vixen, Gypsy, and Steel do irreparable harm.)
******
The next letter is from Bob Schultz of Stephentown, New York who was recently watching the first episode of the old Batman TV series. (Holy masochism!) There is a scene, in which the Riddler was pretending to rob a jewelry story with a gun. Batman and Robin came in and foiled the robbery. But the Riddler was scamming them. He wasn't robbing the store, he was engaged in a legal transaction. His gun was actually a gun-shaped cigarette lighter. Riddler set-up the whole thing to make it appear as if he were committing armed robbery. He planned on having Batman and Robin catch him in the act, then wrongfully arrest him. Then he planned to sue Batman and Robin for false arrest. (Long time readers will remember that Riddler pulled the same scheme but without the questionable false arrest angle, back in Batman # 171.)
Questionable? You betcha!
A false arrest is an unlawful restraint of a person done, supposedly, under the color of the law. Batman's arrest of the Riddler was not, believe it or not, unlawful.
Arrests are based on probable cause not one hundred percent accuracy. Probable cause means that the person making the arrest had probable cause to believe that a crime is being, or has been, committed and that the the person arrested is more probably than not the person who committed it. Probable cause uses a reasonable man standard. If a reasonable man were given the same information would he reasonably believe that the person being arrested committed the crime. In this case, based on the information before Batman and Robin, would a reasonable man believe was committing the crime of armed robbery? Hmm, let's see Batman saw the Riddler pointing a gun at a jeweler and the jeweler handing over an expensive trinket. Hey, I may not know the religious persuasion of the Pontiff, but I can field this one cleanly.
I know of no court that would not find that Batman had probable cause to believe Riddler was committing an armed robbery. As Batman and Robin had probable cause, their arrest was not false. It proved to be wrong, yes. But it was based on probable cause. And, as it was based on probable cause, it was not an unlawful restraint. As I said, incorrect restraint, but not unlawful. So, I doubt Riddler would win his silly suit. Now if we could only convince the Riddler to get rid of his other silly suit, you know, the one he things gives him more bang for the buck. (And there's a joke only proofreaders will get.)
******
David Kirby, a constitutional lawyer from Charlottesville, Virginia questioned my conclusions in the old column involving the federal law on Earth-2 which made it illegal to unmask of a JSA member. Those who don't remember the column, pay attention! Because I'm forgiving, I'll recap, but you can't expect this sort of munificence all the time. I wondered under what authority Congress passed such law, as the Constitution limits Congress's powers to enact legislation to certain and specific areas. I concluded that the War Powers provision covered the legislation.
Mr. Kirby agreed with that assessment. However, he feels that Congress's authority to regulate interstate commerce could also justify the legislation. The Interstate Commerce Clause has been used to justify a great many things. Basically Congress feels if an activity might possibly impact on interstate commerce, it can use the Clause to regulate the activity. For example, Congress used the Clause to make loan sharking a federal crime, because loan sharking, even if it is purely an intrastate activity, does impact on interstate commerce. So if loan sharking is fair game for the feds, why can't they also regulate super-heroes, as the heroes fight loan sharks?
In retrospect, Mr. Kirby is right. Granted Green Lantern usually fights Tiger Shark and not loan sharks, but the justification could be made. More important, the justification would probably be supported by the Supreme Court. I did gloss over the Interstate Commerce Clause, which has been used to regulate everything except how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. That's what I get for leaving my Constitutional Law text in the office and writing my column at home.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: when I revised the former column about this story, I added the Interstate Commerce Clause analysis. I didn't knowingly want my mistake from years back to carry over for several weeks. Back in 1984, when I originally wrote the column, I didn't know I had made a mistake. Now I do and I wanted to get the correct information out there for all to read right away. In the future, when confronted with other times in which I made a mistake in the column, I'll probably correct the mistake in some way, so as not to disseminate incorrect information, when I can avoid it.
(Trust me, I've got some whopper mistakes to fix coming over the next few years!)
******
Finally, my last letter isn't really a letter at all. Mike Tiefenbacher (AKA Rona Blabbit in The Comic Reader) asked in The Comic Reader # 218 what I thought about certain legal aspects of the movie Superman III, particularly the fact that Superman lets Richard Pryor's character off scot free, despite Pryor's having committed several crimes during the movie. Well, I was bothered by aspects of that movie, such as the fact that it was a lousy movie. But let's turn to what Superman could have acted on, remembering what I said about probable cause a while back. Superman didn't really have much probable cause against Pryor. Let's take Pryor's crimes one at a time.
Pryor used the Websco computers to enrich himself by $85,789.90. It seemed that when payroll deductions were made, half-cent rounding errors were made. When the deduction yielded a half cent left-over, the amount paid is rounded down to the nearest whole cent, as no one could process a check containing a fraction of a cent and the half-cents went into the company's general funds. Pryor was able to order the computer to channel all those half cents into his expense account. The result was a $85,789.90 windfall.
What crime is that? I don't know. Maybe embezzlement, if the half-cents were lawfully the property of the company. Maybe lots of petty thefts against the other employees, if it wasn't the company's money. What crime it was isn't really important What is important is that Pryor was committing some theft offense or offenses.
The trouble is Superman didn't see Pryor do any of this. He had no knowledge of Pryor's thefts. He didn't even have a reliable tip. So Superman didn't have probably cause to arrest Pryor on the thefts.
Next, Pryor used his computer genius to reprogram a weather satelite to cause a monsoon in Columbia. This caused untold property damage and injury, if not loss of life. (It also made Juan Valdez real mad, but if that were a crime, Madison Avenue would have been arrested long ago.) These acts are violations of various vandalism and assault or homicide statutes (I won't go into each one). The problem here is who's? Columbia's or the United States? I mean the crimes were committed in Smallville, but had their impact in Columbia. Are the crimes local or international. I really don't know? We'll just let the Hague sort it out.
The problem is, again, did Superman have any information giving him probable cause that Pryor activated the computer? No one saw him do it. No one knew he did it. So Superman didn't have enough probably cause to arrest Pryor on this offense (Incidently, the same would be true of Pryor's using computers to divert all the world's oil tankers--probably a from of piracy on the high seas. No one saw, him do it, so does anyone have cause to arrest?)
Pryor did design a super computer that Robert Vaughn's character used to commit other crimes, but Superman had no proof that Pryor knew what Vaughn was going to do with the computer. So again Superman may have lacked cause to believe Pryor commit a crime.
Superman may have had probable cause to arrest Pryor on a count of attempted murder, when Pryor gave Superman the artificial Kryptonite. Again Superman might not have known whether Pryor knew what the Kryptonite was supposed to do, so may have lacked cause again. Even if Superman thought Pryor did know, he probably weighed that against Pryor's subsequent actions in saving Superman's life and decided to give him a break.
In actuality, Superman probably suspected that Pryor knew what was going on. He probably also concluded that Pryor was basically a good man being led on by Robert Vaughn's character, so Superman decided to give Pryor another chance. Personally, I would have preferred that Superman didn't play judge and jury and followed the law. He should have brought Pryor in and let the DA sort out what would be done with him. It would probably have worked out for Pryor anyway.
No one could really prove Vaughn had anything to do with many of the crimes committed either. Prosecutors love bringing down "big guys" like Vaughn, it helps them in that run for the Governor's office that fictional prosecutors are always making. The DA probably would have given Pryor immunity from prosecution in return for testifying against Vaughn, so Pryor wouldn't have been prosecuted, anyway.
As to Tiefenbacher's complaint that Pamela Stephenson's character did nothing, but was arrested; that isn't quite true. Stephenson did offer herself to Superman, in return for his destroying an oil tanker. There are two crimes there. One is some form of aiding and abetting piracy on the high seas. She and Vaughn agreed to have her offer herself to Superman, in return for his help in committing said piracy. That is an illegal conspiracy or aiding and abetting or something. The second crime is, of course, prostitution. Remember, she engage in sexual activity, albeit off camera sexual activity--it was a PG movie--for a price. Granted it wasn't monetary remuneration, but is still a good case of sex for hire.
What truly bothered me about Superman III, other than that it was a lousy movie, was that we, the audience, did see Pryor commit several crimes and, apparently, get away with them. That's sending the wrong messages out. Better Pryor should have been taken in, with the implication that the judge would show him some leniency in return for his having saved Superman or that immunity for his testimony against Vaughn thing we talked about earlier.
True, that wouldn't have been as funny, but "not as funny" fit right in with the rest of Superman III.
Did I happen to mention that it was a lousy movie?
BOB INGERSOLL
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