Legal implications of Time's Orphan

[Guartho]

My wife and I watched Time's Orphan last night. Watching it for the first time as a parent raised some questions in my mind that had never occurred to me about the legal rights and status of everyone involved.

It would seem that Molly is treated as an adult since the stabbing victim can press charges against her and the Federation authorities seem to have the right to force her from her parents and send her to a treatment facility.

Dr. Bashir estimates her age to be about 18, but her birthdate is still only about 8 years ago. Apparently legal age is determined by medicine and not calendar.

As a parent and thinking about things from O'brien's point of view I was aghast at the thought of Molly being taken away against their will. Since she's incompetent, wouldn't her parents have still had the right to make decisions for her? Is it the stabbing that makes it the state's decision?

 

[Haytil]

Dr. Bashir estimates her age to be about 18, but her birthdate is still only about 8 years ago. Apparently legal age is determined by medicine and not calendar.

In an age where space travel can create relativistic effects, this is a must.

 

[Hofner]

Interesting subject. I agree some of the points you make can be disturbing; sticking Molly in some facility against her or her parents will seemed extreme although stabbing someone is serious too.

But Molly's age of 18 is not just legal, biologically she truly is 18. Of course she's not a normal 18 year old; for ten years she's been completely isolated and didn't learn any social skills and lost what skills she did have. So she cannot control herself and it will be hard and take time for her to learn control. Either her parents have to restrain her or the state has to.

I would find it very troubling to imprison her but she also can't be allowed to run around stabbing people. The only alternative was what the O'Briens did, put her back where she'd been living for ten years.

Robert

 

[Timo]

It would seem that Molly is treated as an adult since the stabbing victim can press charges against her

We have no direct proof that UFP law would call for a specific age before charges can be pressed, or that younger people would receive more lenitent treatment or sentences. With mankind (let alone humanoidkind) more diverse in the future, it might well be necessary to deal with eight-year-old master criminals as well as 36-year-old infants on a regular basis, essentially calling for the abolition of division to children and adults by age alone, and perhaps calling for complete abolition of that division in the legal sense.

In any case, it doesn't seem that UFP crime management measures and sanctions would be of the sort where a division to children and adults would have to be made. A Federation citizen wouldn't be fined, as she or he wouldn't have money. She or he wouldn't be jailed, either, as the standard "sentence" for all crimes ranging from forgery to genocide is established to be six months of psychotherapy (or a bit more if the ailment is especially difficult to cure). It would appear natural, then, to subject all citizens to the same legal rigors, and merely to different types of psychotherapy depending on the crime and the perpetrator. And the different, specific types of treatment would be required anyway even if only criminals between ages 34 and 36 were to be treated - so expanding to criminals between 0 and 140 would be no big deal.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rÿcher]

what if someone is put into suspended animation for a while like Scotty or Kahn? Would they be 140 and 300+ years old respectively?

What about the other way? What if Keiko who was a woman in her thirties made suddenly into a youngster? Would it then have been okay of she and Miles had bumped uglies or would she have been able to get away with stabbing someone?

 

[Kelso]

^ Why would Miles want to "bump uglies" with someone with the physical appearance of a child?

 

[votd]

^ True! He looked very uncomfortable in that episode.

 

[Sci]

Something to keep in mind:

If Molly assaulted someone on the station -- it's been forever since I've seen this episode, so bear with me in my forgetting where the assault took place -- that means that Bajoran law would apply, since DS9 remains Bajoran territory.

 

[Rÿcher]

^ Why would Miles want to "bump uglies" with someone with the physical appearance of a child?

not saying he would. He showed us he's a good man by not. I'm just citing precedence for mental age vs. physical age and the other way around.

 

[Dream]

Wasn't the death sentence abolished in the Federation by Picard's era or am I forgotten something?

 

[Dane_Whitman]

Wasn't the death sentence abolished in the Federation by Picard's era or am I forgotten something?

You're correct, it was established in TNG season 1, episode "Justice".

 

[HGN2001]

Seems to me that the retraining program used on Uhura after Nomad zapped her might have worked pretty well...

Harry

 

[Timo]

But that would be retraining, while the teen Molly had never been trained in the first place.

At least I'd like to make that distinction, because "The Changeling" needs every bit of rationalization it can get in order to make palatable the idea that an infantile idiot can be turned into a Starfleet lieutenant in a week. That they got Uhura doing baby-talk in a couple of days is enough of a wonder to me; that she regained her adult skills is something I'd rather attribute to a sudden breakthrough where it was discovered that her memories weren't truly erased, but merely blocked, and came flooding back.

Wasn't the death sentence abolished in the Federation by Picard's era or am I forgotten something?

In addition to establishing this, "Justice" tells us that the Feds screen their population for criminal tendencies at an early age. Basically, this seems to mean that children are not only subject to legal scrutiny, they are in fact prime subjects to it. As an adult, you get forced therapy for trying to steal, hurt or otherwise misbehave. As a child, you apparently get it for showing the theoretical potential for doing it in the hypothetical future...

If Molly assaulted someone on the station -- it's been forever since I've seen this episode, so bear with me in my forgetting where the assault took place -- that means that Bajoran law would apply, since DS9 remains Bajoran territory.

One wonders whether this would still be true by "Time's Orphan". The station had changed hands a couple of times in the preceding year, and we never quite learned how the de facto changes affected the de jure situation...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[McCoy]

Besides, even if Bajoran law applied, she was still a child of Federation citizens, and there was probably some kind of arrangement between Federation and Bajoran authorities around the application of laws.