How would a "Q framed me" defense work out in court?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Related question.

Would the ‘Mirror universe me did it’ defense work?

Anyone's Mirror counterpart is a completely different person. One can never be held responsible for what their counterpart did. (And it is possible to detect which universe one is from. We've seen them do it in DSC and TNG)

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Anyone's Mirror counterpart is a completely different person. One can never be held responsible for what their counterpart did. (And it is possible to detect which universe one is from. We've seen them do it in DSC and TNG)

Yeah, but if you were caught on video murdering someone, could you just claim "It was my MU counterpart, not me"?

 

[The Wormhole]

You got "non sequitur"'s I'm from another reality defense too.

Which did not work for Harry Kim.

 

[at Quark's]

I don't think it would be different from a small-time criminal's plea in one of today's courts "The CIA (or whatever government/secret service takes my fancy) framed me (but I don't have a shred of even circumstantial evidence to support that)". Sure, the CIA exists, and surely they would be capable of it, but if you even can't give a reasonable story as to why they would go through the trouble of framing you specifically, I'd say you're toast.

 

[DonIago]

Which did not work for Harry Kim.

Although theoretically if what's shown in "Non Sequitur" is an alternate timeline than they should have been able to check his quantum signature. Unless one assumes that the method that brought Harry to that timeline also altered his signature.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Probably about as well as, "It wasn't me it was my evil twin from the Mirror Universe" or "I'll make it right with a slingshot around the sun to travel back in time".

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Although theoretically if what's shown in "Non Sequitur" is an alternate timeline than they should have been able to check his quantum signature. Unless one assumes that the method that brought Harry to that timeline also altered his signature.

In that case, it's still the same universe, so Harry's quantum signature should be the same.

 

[DonIago]

^How does that work? Events in the past were clearly different than what Harry had experienced to that point.

 

[The Wormhole]

^How does that work? Events in the past were clearly different than what Harry had experienced to that point.

It basically is the Prime Universe, just the Coffee Shop Aliens had done some unspecified damage to the fabric of space/time and when they tried to put it back together, Harry and his friend Danny Byrd switched places.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Probably about as well as, "It wasn't me it was my evil twin from the Mirror Universe" or "I'll make it right with a slingshot around the sun to travel back in time".

I dunno, if you could credibly claim to the victim's family that you could go back in time and undo the murder, wouldn't they prefer that to punishing you? I guess intentionally altering the past must be very illegal but if you succeed, how would they know?

That's actually an interesting idea for an episode. A repentant murderer convinces the victim's family to break him out of jail to go back and time and prevent the murder.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

"Ensign Phunghus, you are simply not interesting enough for Q to meddle with. Enjoy your rehabilitation."

 

[DonIago]

I dunno, if you could credibly claim to the victim's family that you could go back in time and undo the murder, wouldn't they prefer that to punishing you? I guess intentionally altering the past must be very illegal but if you succeed, how would they know?

That's actually an interesting idea for an episode. A repentant murderer convinces the victim's family to break him out of jail to go back and time and prevent the murder.

But if the repentant murderer was successful then they never would have traveled back in time to begin with.

Or they time-traveled back into an alternate timeline and nothing in the original is resolved anyhow.