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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 07/18/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment #52
Originally written as installment #41 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue #573, November 9, 1984 issue
This is a column whose genesis dates back to Sherlock Holmes. I always found it annoying when Holmes would deduce who the guilty party was, then decide he knew better than the English justice system whether said guilty party should be prosecuted. Many was the time that Holmes decided the killer was in the right, was avenging a wrong done to him or her, so let the killer go.
Not in my world!
Deciding whether a criminal was justified is judge and jury stuff and should be decided by them. Not by Sherlock Holmes, with his haughty and superior attitude, and not by ...
Well read it for yourself.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment #52
by
Bob Ingersoll
Enter: The Hermit!
Enter...The Termite!
Enter: The Lawyer!
******
J. Jonah Jameson was right all this time: Spider-Man really is a masked vigilante, who takes the law into his own hands and undermines the American legal system. How do I know? Because I read Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #97 wherein Spider-Man intentionally allows a self-confessed felon, one Timothy Quail, to escape.
Allows? Hell, Spider-Man carries Quail away from the scene of the crime on the web-line express. Then, if that weren't enough, Spidey advises Quail how he can hide from all the people looking for him and never be found, including the police. So, by helping Quail to hide, Spider-Man, is himself guilty of the felony obstruction of justice.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I'd better start at the beginning, which, Julie Andrews tells us, is a very good place to start.
Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #97 tells the unhappy story of Timothy Quail, a natural born packaging genius, because of his "intuitive knowledge of human nature--coupled with a keen eye for the most sympathetic way to present things." Problem is, Tim doesn't like his ability. It has this annoying tendency of making everyone seek out him for advice. In other words, it attracts attention to Tim, while all he wants is to be left alone.
Left alone? Gertta Garbo spent her time at Times Square on New Year's Eve compared to Tim. I mean, Tim once moved to Tibet and lived on a mountain top to be alone. He even wore rags and grew a beard, so people would ignore him. Why did he think that would work? Would you think that would work? Or can you see it coming, like everyone with an IQ higher than Secret Agent Man's ratings did? Now Tim looked like your prototypical guru. The result: people came to Tim's mountain on pilgrimages for guidance from the "wiseman." Tim's mountain had more pilgrims than Plymouth Rock.
(Which brings up an interesting question: how many of you have ever faced a problem so knotty that you've considered flying all the way to Tibet and climbing up some big, cold mountain, just so you could consult some unwashed, unshorn wiseman; especially a wiseman, who isn't even smart enough to wear something warmer than old rags on top of a cold Tibetan mountain?)
Tim came back to New York, where he found the almost perfect job as an advertising executive. There he could package things, and, except for the occasional client presentation, he could also stay in the background without attracting any attention.
Almost.
It seems that there's this unnamed gangster--we'll call him Gary because Gary Gangster is the type of alliterative name that Stan Lee favored--thinks that a packaging genius is perfect for his needs. Said genius could package crimes, so that they wouldn't look like crimes, thereby not attracting anyone's attention. Including that of the persons, whose attention Gary did not want should be attracted, say the police.
So Gary Gangster periodically kidnaps Tim and, under threat of loss of life or bodily integrity, forces Tim to plan perfectly packaged crimes. Fearing for his continued well being, Tim does plan the crimes, which Gary executes, instead of Tim.
Which is how Peter Parker, the spectacular Spider-Man, becomes involved with Timothy Quail. Spidey foils Tim's latest plan.
And what a plan it was, too!
Gary wanted to rob an armored car making a late-night delivery to some bank. Tim reasoned that the guards would be suspicious of anyone coming up to the car, but not of anyone who looked like he was going to run past it. So Tim staged a fake marathon.
Really. Tim got some ten ersatz runners all dressed in the little short pants and Swoosh shoes to run a fake marathon near the armored car. Sure enough, the guards didn't suspect that the runners were really robbers, and let the robbers come right up to them. Then the robbers overpowered the hapless guards and took the money.
Fortunately, Spider-Man's spider sense alerted him to the fact that the marathon wasn't exactly what it seemed to be. So Spidey was able to swing in and prevent the robbery. Yea!
(Actually, I was insulted on behalf of Spider-Man, that he needed his spider sense to see that something was wrong with the marathon. First of all, marathons are daytime affairs, but this race was being held late at night. Seriously, how many late-night, under the lights running marathons have you seen?
Then there were the runners themselves... All of them, except Tim, were fat. Fatter than me. No, really, these guys made the Blob look Flockharted by comparison. They were fat, because Tim wanted some of them to use their sheer girth to pin the guards to the ground, while the others robbed the armored car.
Think about it for a minute: a late-night marathon of human hippos; guys so hopelessly out-of-shape, that it should have been painfully obvious they weren't accustomed to--or even able to--run anything more grueling than the sixty-second dash between the TV and the beer and chips. And Spider-Man needs his blessed spider sense to see that something is wrong? I mean, those "joggers" would have attracted more attention than Ross Peroit and Rickey Martin jousting on the backs of chartreuse elephants in the middle of Times Square.
Not to mention the guards. Didn't these trained professionals even bother to see if anything which might cause a diversion at their drop site, like a marathon, had been scheduled? If they had, they should have been suspicious too.
But I digress. The stupidity of Tim's plan doesn't really have anything to do with the law. And by going outside my topic to attack it, I end up sounding like a cantankerous old crab. Back to the topic.)
Tim tells his tale of woe to Spider-Man, who decides Tim isn't guilty of anything, so he takes Tim away, and, as I said before, advises Tim how to hide in plain sight.
Tim follows Spidey's advice and dresses like a bag man. It works. No one bothers Tim, and he lives happily ever after. In fact, I happen to know that he married a bag lady, and they raised a family of little Baggies.
Now, my problem is this: by planning the crimes that Gary Gangster pulled off, Tim was potentially just as guilty of those crimes as Gary was. Under the law a co-conspirator or an aider and abettor, who doesn't actually commit the crime but just plans it with someone else, is as guilty of the crime as the principal who does commit it. Tim was potentially guilty as an aider and abettor.
Tim does have a possible defense: duress, that's why I said "potentially." The defense of duress states: A person who commits a crime, because some heinous fiend has threatened him with bodily injury or worse if he doesn't commit the crime, lacks the criminal intent necessary to be guilty of wrongdoing. For this reason persons under duress are deemed to be not guilty, because they lack criminal intent.
All well and good, so Tim isn't guilty of anything. So Spider-Man didn't do anything wrong by helping him get away.
Wrong gavel breath!
Remember, I said "potentially." It's also possible duress wouldn't work for Tim. Most jurisdictions hold that if you have an opportunity to get yourself out from under the duress, instead of going ahead with the crime you're being forced to commit, and don't take advantage of the opportunity, duress won't save you. If you have the chance to escape the duress and don't take but commit the crime anyway, the court's won't let you use duress.
In Tim's case, once Gary sent him out to commit these crimes, Tim could have escaped, gone to the cops, told them what was going on, and sicced the cops on Gary. So, maybe duress would have worked for him. But maybe, because he didn't take advantage of his opportunity to escape, it wouldn't have. Either way, the determination of whether Tim is guilty of crime or innocent under the doctrine of duress is not for Spider-Man to make.
Under our legal system such determinations are for the jury or judge or the district attorney. They are the people charged with the responsibility of deciding whether Tim was a felon or duressed to kill. Spider-Man isn't. By helping Tim escape, Spider-Man obstructed justice. He should have left Tim with the authorities, so that the proper people could determine whether Tim was guilty of any crime.
Moreover, Spider-Man probably insured that Gary Gangster will also go unpunished for his acts. Tim isn't around to testify against Gary now, so, unless one of the blimps knows who hired him and is willing to turn state's evidence, no one can connect Gary with the armored car heist.
Letting two criminals get away. Not a bad day's work for a costumed crime fighter, huh?
******
Actually I'm about to digress again. I don't really have anything to say about the Termite or Iron Man #189, at least not anything that has to do with the law.
Well, maybe I do. In addition to being guilty of various counts of vandalism and arson, the Termite is also guilty of theft. Termite stole Ant Man's helmet and the Crumbler's power. Who is the Crumbler? An old Green Lantern villain, who had the same power as the Termite. If you're too young to remember the Crumbler or you simply don't remember him, I'll do you a big favor. I won't talk about him anymore.
Hmmm. That sounded pretty crabby too, didn't it.
ATTENTION COMIC CREATORS: from now on please have lots of stuff pertaining to the law in your comics, so I'll have something to write about, without sounding crabby. Please?
BOB INGERSOLL
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