Question about a dream I had

[Miss Chicken]

In this dream I was making fullsize, lifelike dolls for celebrities using both recycled or environmentally friendly materials. I would only make a doll of the actual person commissioning it.

I had just finished making a doll for Roy Orbison (in this reality Orbison was very much alive and aged around 50). He picked the doll and placed it in the front seat of the car, buckled it up, and drove home. His neighbours were surprised to see a car drive by with two Roy Orbison in it.

For some reason, Roy left the doll in the car in the garage. A couple of hours his wife had to go down the store. Roy offered to take the doll out of the car but his wife said "It is OK, he can come with me".

She parked outside the store. A man, who had previously sent letters with death threats in them to Roy Orbison saw the doll in the car and thought it was the real Roy. He fired several shots into the car and then jumped around shouting that he had killed Roy Orbison and how he (the shooter) would now be famous.

In the next scene I am back at my studio working on a lifesize Chuck Norris. A friend and I am discussing what the shooter should be charged with, Is it attempted murder or not? I bring up the story of Moran shooting at the wax model of Sherlock Holmes in "The Empty House" and we talk about if intent is enough.

So my question is - could the shooter be charged with attempted murder under any jurisdiction? and if he could be would you agree that that is the proper charge to bring?

 

[iguana_tonante]

My answer would be: you have weird dreams.

 

[scotpens]

Boy, that shooter must have been one disappointed looney bird.

If he intended to kill Roy Orbison, and thought the doll was the real Roy Orbison, it seems to me he could be charged with attempted murder. Mens rea and all that. Any of our law experts want to weigh in here?

My answer would be: you have weird dreams.

You should hear about some of my dreams . . .

 

[iguana_tonante]

Well, if it's the same for you. I'd rather not...

 

[Mr Silver]

I hate Roy Orbison.

 

[Gov Kodos]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB-wmOYelnM[/yt] For Miss Chicken, not attempted murder, since a doll got shot. One could try for conspiracy to commit murder, perhaps.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Miss Chicken isn't just uber awesome, she's life-size Chuck Norris.

 

[Misfit Toy]

I hate Roy Orbison.

You're under arrest.

 

[Mr Silver]

I hate Roy Orbison.

You're under arrest.

I also think that Van Halen's version of "Oh Pretty Woman" is infinitely superior.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I have just done a little bit of research and found out that the man might be able to be charged but his defense then could be that of 'legal impossibility" (which might not work)

From Wikipedia

USA

An Impossibility defense is a criminal defense occasionally used when a defendant is accused of a criminal attempt that failed only because the crime was factually or legally impossible to commit.[1] Factual impossibility is rarely an adequate defense at common law. In the United States, thirty-seven states have ruled out factual impossibility as a defense to the crime of attempt. This is not to be confused with a 'mistake' of fact defense, which is always considered as a defense to criminal charges

Impossibility defense seems to be divided into two types

Legal impossibilty of which an example is

Mistakes of law have proved a successful defense. An example of a failed attempt of law is a person who shoots at a tree stump, believing that he is committing attempted murder; that person cannot be prosecuted for attempted murder as there is no manifest intent to kill by shooting a stump. The underlying rationale is that attempting to do what is not a crime is not attempting to commit a crime

and

Factual impossibility of which an example is

Another case involving the defense of factual impossibility is Commonwealth v. Johnson,[4] in which a wife intended to put arsenic in her husband's coffee but by mistake added the customary sugar instead. Later she felt repentant and confessed her acts to the police. She was arrested, tried, and convicted of attempted murder.[3]

I gather my dream would fit under legal impossibilty.

If anyone is interested - in the dream I was just beginning to put hair on the Chick Norris doll's head. He didn't yet have a face.

 

[MANT!]

Chuck Norris never sleeps or dreams... he WAITS...

 

[sojourner]

God's creation of the universe is just an attempt to model what Chuck Norris is thinking.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

I'm not a lawyer but I think by German law he would be in for attempted murder. Not a succedded one, since the intended victim is alive and well, but definitely a murder, since the conditions (lowly reasons, intent, aiming at the target person's death) would all be met.
And as we Germans are very thorough people, he'd in addition be charged with illegally wearing a weapon,
disturbing public peace,
destroying valuable property (both the car and the doll),
stalking
and making noise (with the latter propably being considered the biggest offense)

Overall, it'd at maximum be something like 10 years prison, another 10 probation, the repair costs for doll and car and a fine of about US$ 2500 for the noise he made by shooting and shouting.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I have just done a little bit of research and found out that the man might be able to be charged but his defense then could be that of 'legal impossibility" (which might not work)

From Wikipedia

Do voodoo dolls count as legal or factual impossibility? If the voodoo dolls had the property of multiplying and transposing the forces to the victim, you'd successfully torture and murder them through one, and it would be a crime. So if the perpetrator thought that this would be the actual effect, wouldn't that qualify it for factual impossibility? I mean, if the shooter is a cactus, even shooting at stumps is a cause for concern...




I'm being serious though. You can easily construct an actual working voodoo doll or other remotely controlled torture and/or murder device, and I do remember similar set-ups being used in psychological studies of whether people would agree to torture people in certain settings. In the actual studies, the torture devices weren't connected to a real person and the test individuals were told that the person on the other side had agreed to the test. Would at least some form of those turn to be illegal?

Say, if I told you that pressing a button on a computer would kill somebody, like a real-life version of the murder device Mirror Kirk had trained on Mirror Spock, and you pressed the button believing me... On which side of the law does this fall?

 

[rhubarbodendron]

sadly, pressing a button *does* kill a lot of people nowadays.

The voodoo comparism doesn't quite fit in my opinion, as a voodoo doll can not be confused with the actual person (for reasons of size and general appearance), whereas in Miss Chicken's dream the doll was a Doppelgaenger of Roy Orbison, so lifelike that the assassin took it for the real person.

In the case of the voodoo doll no crime is commited since there is no such thing as wichcraft (according to experience and law throughout the western world), and something that doesn't exist can necessarily not work.
In case of the lifelike doll, it was only by coincidence that the musician wasn't harmed, but it was the attacker's intention to kill his victim. So we definitely have the intention and performance of a crime, and a case of mistaken identity.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

In the serious part of my post, I considered devices that might or might not look like voodoo dolls, but could actually be connected to a real harmful device on the other end. Such things are not an impossibility, and someone could make one any time. If you count remotely controlled bombs as such, you can say they are now used daily, unfortunately.

So the serious question should be read as: I gave you a cell phone and lied to you that dialling a phone number would cause the backpack of your ex-boyfriend to explode. Now, if you don't believe me, it wouldn't be a crime, but if you did, it might. The question was, would this qualify as factual impossibility that's still considered criminal and when? Or, to make it appropriate for the board, should it qualify?

Actual voodoo dolls are also interesting in the sense that magic can be emulated with technology, and the impossibility of magic is only relevant to the ability of the magic tool to function, but it doesn't change the intended effect, so a person who honestly believed that a voodoo doll would kill somebody might be worth going after?

Killing somebody, after all, is a crime, so there isn't a legal impossibility when you're trying to do it, no matter how ridiculous and insane your means are. Of course, persecuting someone for that would be opening a can of worms because of the vast number of people who are not insanely stupid who might find voodoo dolls a cool way to joke around.

 

[scotpens]

I hate Roy Orbison.

Blasphemy and sacrilege. "Blue Bayou" is one of my all-time favorite songs.

. . .not attempted murder, since a doll got shot. One could try for conspiracy to commit murder, perhaps.

I believe a conspiracy, by definition, has to involve at least two people.

I'm not a lawyer but I think by German law he would be in for attempted murder.
. . . And as we Germans are very thorough people, he'd in addition be charged with illegally wearing a weapon,
disturbing public peace,
destroying valuable property (both the car and the doll),
stalking
and making noise (with the latter probably being considered the biggest offense)

Knowing you Germans, would the fact that the attempted crime was well-planned and organized be a mitigating circumstance?

 

[Gov Kodos]

. . .not attempted murder, since a doll got shot. One could try for conspiracy to commit murder, perhaps.

I believe a conspiracy, by definition, has to involve at least two people.

I wasn't sure about the charge. I thought he might be charged with planning to commit murder rather than attempted murder. I suppose it would just come down to attempted murder.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

Knowing you Germans, would the fact that the attempted crime was well-planned and organized be a mitigating circumstance?

Quite the contrary. As I said in that part of my post that you removed from the quote:

In order to count as murder it must be

*deliberate (neither spontaneous or accidential = well planned ahead),
*based on lowly reasons (gain, for example)
*and the target person's death had to be expected.


Unless all 3 criteria are met, it counts only as manslaughter.