Category: The Law Is A Ass

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #393

ANT-MAN HITS THE HEIST

Sometimes I wonder why I bother getting out of bed.

So Scott Lang, former thief and current Astonishing Ant-Man, has a daughter, Cassie. Cassie is a teenager, meaning she’s in that rebellious stage. We’re not talking tattoos, emo outbreaks, and staying out after curfew to be with that boy. We’re talking the Boxer Rebellion of teenage acting out. Cassie decided that to get what she wanted, she should become a super villain.

What did she want? Revenge on industrialist inventor Darren Cross for one. Kind of a non-standard goal for an angst-ridden teenager, but Cassie had a kind of non-standard childhood, what with her having super powers, losing those powers, dying, and being brought back to life. Then there was the time, Cross’s son kidnapped her and stole her heart because he needed a transplant for his father. So I can see where Cassie might go all Wrath of Kahn  on Cross and start spitting at him for hate’s sake. (Okay, we know Captain Ahab beat Kahn to the “Hell’s heart” shtick, but Cassie’s young; she may not know from Moby Dick. To her a rousing sea story is probably Finding Nemo.)

Anyway Cassie went to Power Broker, a super villain whose gimmick is that he supplies super powers to people who want to become super villains in return for a cut of their ill-gotten gains. He even has an app – Hench– that people needing super villains can use to find his super villain database and find the suitable villains to hstingerire. And, it turns out, Power Broker has his own mad on for Darren Cross, because Cross’s son stole the platform for Hench and started a rival super-villain-hiring app, Lackey. So Power Broker convinced Cassie to undergo his process and regain her former powers.
She did and became Stinger, an insect-motifed super villain.

Power Broker wanted Cassie to use her Stinger powers to break into Cross’s super secure facility and retrieve Lackey. Cassie agreed. That way both she and Power Broker would get their revenge. (By the way, contrary to popular belief, revenge isn’t a dish best served cold. That would be vichyssoise. And I don’t really recommend adding either to your meal plan.)

When Scott learned what Cassie was up to, he gathered together a group of super powered individuals – himself, the new Giant-Man, Darla Deering AKA Ms. Thing, Grizzly, Machinesmith, Whirlwind, The Beetle, The Magician, The Voice, and Hijacker – to break into Cross’s super secure facility and rescue Cassie.1u1jnc Their twenty-two step plan succeeded well enough to get everyone into the facility. Then the team separated. The super-villains in the team – you did notice that most of the team was comprised of super villains, didn’t you? – went off to fulfill their goal, stealing technology from Cross. Scott headed off on his own for his goal, to rescue Cassie.

Scott found Cassie, who was in the middle of a face-to-face confrontation with Darren Cross, Cross’s son, and their super villain bodyguard, Crossfire. That’s when things went…

Ah, but you don’t want me to give that away, do you? I mean that would be a SPOILER and I’d have to do a SPOILER WARNING! and everything. Even though this is issue 9 which would be a bad place to stop a story arc, because 9 is a bad number of issues to collect into a trade paperback, so you probably already know the story was be continued in the next issue, you still don’t want me to tell you that things go badly and Ant-Man is captured by Cross and Crossfire. Right?

Okay, fine. Things go badly and Ant-Man is captured by Cross and Crossfire. Happy?

Now I’ve written before about my problem with super heroes who do stupid things that essentially break the law. But rather than do that, and like I said earlier, I shoula stood in bed, because apparently no one listens or cares. Hell, The Astonishing Ant-Man # 9 didn’t just not care, it doubled down on the trope. Instead of having Ant-Man do something stupid that essentially broke the law, this story astonished us by having Ant-Man do something stupid that actually broke the law.

Ant-Man teamed up with a bunch of super villains to break into a technology research facility. Sure Ant-Man’s motives were a little more pure than thieving. He wanted to rescue his daughter and keep her from becoming a super villain. But to do that, he aided and abetted a group of super villains he knew were going to burgle the research facility. That makes him just as guilty of their thefts as they are, even if Ant-Man didn’t, himself, steal anything. Ant-Man even knew he was guilty, because his narrative caption joked, “Cue Ocean’s Eleven soundtrack.” (BTW, Scott, your quip doesn’t work. In case you didn’t notice, or can’t count, there were only ten of you.)

I can’t say as I’m impressed with Scott’s parenting skills. I’ve got to show my daughter that the way to solve your problems isn’t to become a super villain. So I’ll solve that problem by becoming a super villain. I’d hate to see what Scott’s solution is when Cassie comes to him because it’s time for “the talk.”

Oh, and lest you think I’m being a little hard on Scott, because he wasn’t really a thief and his heart was in the right place, think again. Everything the astonishing Ant-Man did in this issue proves that, contrary to popular opinion, he was a thief. What did he do? He staged an elaborate heist to break into Darren Cross’s super secure technology research facility to steal something, only to be captured by Cross. See, Scott is a thief. He totally ripped off the plot to the Ant-Man movie.

The Law Is A Ass # 392: Bob’s Brain Has A Darkside

I am reminded of a story my father told me. What story, I’ll get to that shortly. First I’ve got to tell you about another story.

That other story is “Sleepwalker” from Tales From the Darkside# 1. For those of you who, unlike me, aren’t as old as Pangean dirt, there was a syndicated TV show of that same name combined back when Hector was a pup, and I was in my 30s. A half-hour anthology show featuring horror, science-fiction, and fantasy stories that usually climaxed with a twist ending. The show wasn’t bad, but I had a problem with it. I was raised on The Twilight Zone and EC comics. I cut my teeth on twist endings. For me the endings of Tales From the Darkside had as much twist as a pretzel rod.

Joe Hill, a fantasist with a pedigree, both a literary pedigree and a literal pedigree, tried to revive the series for the CW. The series didn’t make in onto TV, but Hill is adapting four of the scripts he wrote for the show into a comic-book series of the same name. And that first issue is the other story I’m telling you about first.

Ziggy was a recent high-school graduate who was working as a lifeguard at a municipal swimming pool on Brody Island. His lawyer mother was out-of-town on business, so he stayed out partying all night then went to his lifeguard job during the day. As bad ideas go, this wasn’t like texting and driving. This was more like typesetting a magazine article complete with multiple fonts and drop caps while driving.

The sleep-deprived Ziggy fell asleep on duty and Ellen Miller died.

Only she didn’t drown. Leastwise, I don’t think she did.

Neither did the coroner. He testified during some courtroom proceeding Ziggy called a trial that Ellen had a weakness in the wall of her heart and Ziggy he probably couldn’t have saved Ellen’s life even if he had “gotten to her in time.” According to Ziggy, the hearing ended in less than an hour with the judge telling Ziggy that he shouldn’t blame himself.

That’s when I went tilt. The story called the proceeding both a hearing and a trial. My brain, with it’s mind trained to think like a lawyer even though none of my law school professors looked even remotely like John Houseman wanted to know. Was it a hearing or a trial?

The proceeding happened so quickly that Ziggy’s mother had to cut her business trip short. That’s not enough time between event and proceeding for it to have been a full trial. Trials take time to mount. Even on small islands with small populations, trials for negligent homicide don’t generally come to court for weeks or months. So let’s take trial off the table. Ziggy, the narrator of the story, probably didn’t know the difference between a trial and a hearing and misspoke, or mis-first-person-narrative-captioned, when he called it a trial. Hearing it is.

Except there appeared to be a jury in what appeared to be the jury box and you don’t have juries in hearings. Only, was it a jury box? The group of people were seated in what looked like a standard jury rig, except for the fact that it was on the other side of the room from the witness stand. The judge’s bench separated the witness stand from the jury box. In every courtroom I’ve been in, the jury box is right next to the witness stand, the better to hear the witnesses with.

So, let’s assume this wasn’t a jury box because it wasn’t where a jury box was supposed to be. Maybe it was an auxiliary seating area for the spectators. Boy there must not be a lot to do on Brody’s Island other than that swimming pool, if the local courthouse routinely gets so many spectators it needs overflow seating. Okay, no jury box means that wasn’t a jury and the proceeding wasn’t a trial. It was a hearing.

But what kind of a hearing? The coroner testified. Could it have been a coroner’s inquest? Not likely. First, coroner’s inquests might be all the rage over in England, when they’re not too busy having their Brexit, lunch and dinner, but they’re aren’t as common in the United States. Moreover, a coroner generally presides over a coroner’s inquest, not a judge. Our hearing definitely had a judge.

I’m guessing it was a preliminary hearing, in which the judge heard some witnesses and determined whether there was enough probable cause to bind Ziggy over for trial. That would be in a courtroom and presided over by a judge. And it only last an hour after the judge heard the coroner testify that Ellen died from a weakness in the wall of her heart, like a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and Ziggy couldn’t have done anything to save her life. Even a tough-on-crime judge would have to find no probable cause after the coroner testified the defendant didn’t kill the victim.

I was almost satisfied. The only question I still had was this: What was Ziggy doing in the witness stand? The prosecution couldn’t call Ziggy to the witness stand. I don’t know what state Brody Island is in, but I don’t need to. All 50 of them recognize the 5th Amendment and its right against self-incrimination. So the State didn’t call Ziggy.

Did he testify on his own behalf? At a trial, maybe. Sometimes defendants testify in order to present a defense with the best possible evidence. But not at a pre-trial hearing. When all that’s happening is the judge hearing the state’s case to determine whether there’s probable cause, no “high-powered lawyer” is going to let the defendant testify. There’s a greater percentage of impurities in Ivory Soap, than there is of allowing a defendant to testify in a preliminary hearing.

I have a theory why Ziggy was in the witness stand. The story was about Ziggy being sleep deprived and sleepwalking through life. Maybe Ziggy sleepwalked into the courtroom and sat in the witness stand by accident. No one moved him because you’re not supposed to wake a sleepwalker.

Okay, it’s not a great theory. But it’s still a hell of a lot better than believing that a defense attorney let the defendant testify at a preliminary hearing.

So after studying the contextual clues of the story, I’ve determined that the proceeding shown in Tales From the Darkside # 1 was a preliminary probable cause hearing.

Now here’s the story my father told me that I was reminded of. When he was in college, my father took a course on Shakespeare. One day the professor came into class with the biggest, broadest cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile imaginable on his face. The cat didn’t just eat the canary. It had canary cordon bleu, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and La Bonnotte potatoes; washed it down with a bottle of Chateau Lafite, and got double points for the whole meal on his cash-back rewards card. The elated professor announced that after thirty years of close and intensive study of Hamlet’s text as well as the language, idioms, and word usage of Elizabethan England, he had concluded that, yes, Hamlet had definitely slept with Ophelia.

My father asked one simple question, “And that changes the play, how?”

The professor deflated quicker than a Macy’s balloon after a close encounter of the AK-47 kind.

I was reminded of that story, when I realized that my studying contextual clues to determine Ziggy was in a preliminary hearing didn’t change the story, either. But at least I didn’t spend thirty years determining the answer. Or even thirty minutes. And, unlike Ziggy, I didn’t lose any sleep over my problem.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #391

IS THE LAW IN ASTRO CITY AN ATROCITY?

I have to admit, the city fathers of Astro City are smart. They won’t tell me where Astro City is. Okay, it’s somewhere on the eastern face of the Rocky Mountains, but that could be anywhere from New Mexico up through Colorado, Wyoming and into Montana. I don’t know which state Astro City’s in. So those smug city fathers think I can’t analyze Astro City stories, because I won’t know which state’s laws to use in the analysis.

Wrong!

I don’t need no stinkin’ laws to analyze the law. I can just make it up as I go along.

Which leads us to Astro City v3, #33 and #34. Hey, it had to be leading us somewhere. Super villainess Cutlass asked retired super villain turned civilian Steeljack for help. Someone was committing crimes and framing Black Masks – the nickname for costumed villains in Astro City – for those crimes. This trend was problematic for Cutlass. And when she was framed, it became an actual problem.

Steeljack and Cutlass investigated and learned that the real culprit was –

SPOILER WARNING!!!

***

Here’s where I give away the things you don’t want me to give away if you haven’t read this story. I, The Spoiler in the aforementioned Spoiler Warning, say, you have been warned.

– Jared Everall.

Who’s Jared Everall? A rich, fan boy collector of super power memorabilia who wanted to play with his wonderful toys, that’s who. So Everall played by committing crimes using super villain weapons in his collection and framing the super villain whose weapons he used.

Like a good little villain, Everall captured Steeljack and Cutlass in issue 33 just in time for the cliffhanger. Like a good little villain, Everall took them to his underwater lair in issue 34. And, like a really good little villain, Everall monologued long enough for Steeljack and Cutlass to escape.

Everall fled the scene, while Steeljack and Cutlass fought Everall’s Black Mask minions. One super powered obligatory fight scene later, Steeljack was ready for the main event; him versus Everall, who was back in his mansion operating some oversized armor by remote control.

Now because Astro City knows how to tell a story in a reasonable two-parts instead of subjecting it to Trade Paperback Stretch, this fight scene didn’t last long. Three pages into it Steeljack made the armor overload.

12

Steeljack and Cutlass went to Everall’s house to look for proof that he was framing Black Masks. They found the house in a state of disrepair, having sustained damage when the armor overload caused Everall’s remote control to explode. They also found Everall in a state of disrepair, having also sustained damage when the remote control exploded. Everall’s damage was a little more extensive. As in fatal.

Steeljack was arrested and charged with a “long list” of crimes, including Everall’s murder. So there Steeljack was, in court with a public defender who was so new and inexperienced “the tags were still on” her being asked how he pled.

Things looked pretty bleak for Steeljack. That is, until – cue “Park Avenue Beat” – Perry Mason arrived. Only in this story “Perry” was called Randal Sterling and was hired by Cutlass, because Steeljack couldn’t even have afforded to pay that public defender with the tags still on her.

Sterling and Cutlass even brought evidence. Cutlass hired someone to follow them and video record everything. In addition, Cutlass found Everall’s records before the house burned down. So she had the proof that Steeljack didn’t murder Everall, he had acted in self defense and that it was Everall who had committed all the other crimes.

She never bothered to explain why she hadn’t brought any of this evidence to light earlier so that Steeljack didn’t have sit in jail waiting for his day in court. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. Maybe Astro City didn’t have one of those one-hour photo developing huts.

Still the evidence was better late than never. After seeing the evidence, the judge granted Sterling’s motion to dismiss all charges.

Now my question is, all charges? Even the ones he was guilty of like breaking and entering. Because when Steeljack trespassed in Everall’s house to take evidence from it, that’s what he was doing. But my other – and bigger question is this: What kind of court proceeding was Steeljack in where he was both entering his plea and his defense attorney could introduce evidence?

Those two things usually happen in two different proceedings. First there’s a probable cause hearing– we call them preliminary hearings in Ohio – where the prosecution introduces evidence to prove that it has probable cause to charge the defendant with a crime. The defendant is also permitted to introduce evidence in a preliminary hearing. If the judge finds probable cause exists, the defendant is bound over to the grand jury for a formal indictment.

Then sometime after the grand jury indicts comes the arraignment where the court reads the formal charges to the defendant and the defendant enters a plea of guilty or not guilty. No evidence is admitted in an arraignment and no witnesses called, because there are usually dozens of defendants going through the cattle call that is the arraignment room. The arraignment judge doesn’t have the time to let any of the defendants call witnesses. Not when there’s another twenty-seven or so defendants waiting to be arraigned.

In our story, the judge read the charges to Steeljack then asked him how he pled. So it was an arraignment. Then the defense attorney called witnesses and moved to dismiss the charges. So it was a preliminary hearing. It was a prelimment.

So was the scene wrong? The end result was fine. The charges against Steeljack probably would have been dismissed after Sterling introduced his evidence in a preliminary hearing. If the story conflated the arraignment and the preliminary hearing into one proceeding because it didn’t have enough pages to show both, that’s not a big deal. Especially when there’s an actual reason why such a conflation might have occurred.

Steeljack was a high-profile defendant in a high-profile case. Sometimes high-profile defendants are arraigned in private procedures instead of the customary arraignment assembly-line. We did that in Cleveland on more than one high-profile occasion. There’s no reason why Astro City couldn’t do the same thing.

If Steeljack were being arraigned in his own private hearing so the judge didn’t have to arraign two dozen other inmates then the judge could have taken her own sweet time in the hearing. She might even have been willing to listen to the evidence brought into an arraignment. Especially when it was being brought in by a high-profile criminal defense attorney like Randall Sterling.

See Astro City fathers, I may not know where Astro City is, but that won’t stop me. When it comes to my legal analysis, you can hide but you can’t run.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #390

MARIA HILL’S CONSTANT-TUTIONAL VIOLATIONS

For a place that has Matt Murdock, Jennifer Walters, Franklin Nelson, Jeryn Hogarth, Bernadette Rosenthal, Kristen McDuffie, Blake Tower, Rosalind Sharpe, Isaiah Ross, Holden Holliway, Emerson Bale, Dennis Bukowski, Grace Powell, Matt Rocks, Connie Ferrari, Justin Baldwin, Jason Sloan – Okay, >>gasp pant<< let me catch my breath here – Ebenezer Wallaby, Maria Alvarez, Maxine Lavender, William Hao, Nelson Mandella, and even some guy named Robert Ingersol (no relation); I can’t understand why the Marvel Universe doesn’t have any lawyers in it.

Now, I know you may think all of those people – and several others, I didn’t mention for fear of really padding my word count – are lawyers. Marvel may even think they’re lawyers. Trust me they’re not. Based on what I saw in Captain America: Sam Wilson #9, no one in the Marvel Universe would know what to do in a bar, let alone in a bar exam.

It’s like this. Maria Hill, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., had Cosmic Cube fragments which her superiors ordered her to destroy. She didn’t. Instead she used their reality-altering power to create a super villain gulag that looked like a small American town called Pleasant Hill. She wiped the memories of several super villains so that they believed they were normal people who lived in Pleasant Hill. It was a Norman The Rock-well painting.

Several teams of Avengers found out about Pleasant Hill and went there to shut it down. At the same time, all the inmates dirtied their newly washed brains and revolted. So all hell broke loose.

Meanwhile, the Cosmic Cube fragments coalesced into a sentient being which took on the form of a little girl who left Pleasant Hill and was loose in the world. And did I happen to mention criminal mastermind and terrorist Baron Zemo had escaped and was also loose in the world?

To quote Joe Higgins, the Dodge Sheriff, Maria Hill was, “in a heap o’ trouble.”

Except that she wasn’t.

When Hill was confronted by some sort of informal Avengers tribunal composed of Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Rogue, Tony Stark, and The Vision; Hill freely admitted Pleasant Hill violated the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment. Then she pled her case. She argued she shouldn’t be arrested and tried as that would make Pleasant Hill and the fact that there was a sentient Comic Cube wandering around as a little girl public knowledge. So they had to keep the whole Pleasant Hill debacle quiet.

Which makes a certain amount of sense except for two things; 1) it makes no damn sense at all and 2) we’re talking about S.H.I.E.L.D., a shadowy super spy organization. As a shadowy super spy organization in good standing, S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t arrest or try Maria Hill. It would black site her. Unless it decided to terminate her employment. With extreme prejudice.

Even worse, however, was Maria Hill’s second line of defense, what happens if the lawyers for the Pleasant Hill inmates find out about the cruel and unusual punishment that went on there? “I’ll tell you – Every single one of them – the mass murderers, the cosmic-level threats, the ones with poor personal hygiene – they will all go free.” To which Rogue responded, “Damn it, she’s right,” and the rest of the Avengers tribunal concurred.

Proving, as I said before, that there are no lawyers in the Marvel Universe.

If there were, then one of them – probably more than one, but at least one of them – would have pointed out the fatal flaw in Maria Hill’s argument. That’s it’s complete and utter taurus turds.

Want to know what happens when a court rules a prison is subjecting its prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment? It makes the prison stop doing whatever it was doing that was cruelly and unusually punishing. But it doesn’t make the prison release all the cruelly and unusually punished.

Prisoners are in prisons because they’ve been convicted of crimes. They had their due process. Now the government has the right to imprison them. That doesn’t change just because a prison may have been inflicting improper punishment. The government still has the right to imprison them, just in a different way.

But don’t take my word for it. Look at some history. (Yes, summer school history class. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it short.)

Waaay back in 1972, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment. When it did, it didn’t order the prisons to release all the murderers who were on death row. It just had the prisons transfer them out of death row and into general population. Prisoners who were subjected to said cruel and unusual punishment aren’t automatically freed.

Maria Hill may have been an interesting character once. She’s not anymore. She’s become one-dimensional, strident, extremist, and, quite frankly, boring. And I’d really like to see her disappear forever.

The last thing I want to see is for her to continue on exactly as before. No, wait, that’s the second-to-last thing I want to see. The last thing I want to see is a spin-off series starring Maria Hill; Tales From the Crypto-Fascist.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll The Law Is A Ass #389

WE ARE ROBIN THE CRADLE

Now I know the answer to the question.

For years people have been asking me, what kind of laws would the Marvel or DC legislatures – federal, state, or local – have passed in light of the super-powered activities in their respective universes?

Now you know the question.

So, what’s the answer? Well, after what happened in the Robin War story that ran through several of the Batman family of books earlier this year, I deduced what the answer to that question must be. A two-thirds supermajority of Congress must have passed an amendment to the Constitution. Then a three-fourths supermajority of the fifty states ratified said amendment and the amendment became part of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

What did said amendment say? Again, based on what happened in “Robin War,” it must have said, “Hey, you know that whole Bill of Rights thing? Offer void where prohibited.”

Seriously, there can be no other explanation for what happened in “Robin War.”

Now, if you’re good, you should also know the next question: What happened in “Robin War?” And I’ll get to that. But before I can answer that question, I have to tell a little of what happened in We Are Robin, the comic book off of which “Robin War” spin-off spun.

We Are Robin was a comic book about an African-American teenager named Duke Thomas, who was so inspired by Batman and his succession of Robin sidekicks that he created his own startup comprised of teenage crime fighting vigilantes. Everyone in the group adopted the non du guerre Robin and wore something with an identifiable element of the Robin costume on it. Maybe a red shirt or hoodie or baseball cap. But something that was red and had the Robin insignia on it. The Robins fought crime in Gotham City, and spouted the team’s catchphrase, “I am Robin,” more often than a pod of whales with a dozen extra blowholes.

Which leads us to “Robin War.” In Robin War #1, one of the Robins stopped an armed robbery. The Robin subdued the robber and had taken his gun. That’s when an armed police officer entered the store and, upon seeing two masked people in the store one of whom was holding a gun, made the not unwarranted assumption that both the actual perp and the Robin were robbin’ the store. While the police officer tried to make an unwarranted arrest – well, it was a warranted arrest, the officer just didn’t have a warrant – the Robin didn’t put down the gun as ordered and tried to explain that he was one of the good guys and had apprehended a robber. The robber used the confusion to try to escape. Which created a “shots fired” situation. Unfortunately, shots were fired by the Robin into the officer, accidentally killing him.

That’s when the Gotham City Council, led by Councilwoman Noctua, passed the most sweeping and unconstitutionally overreaching laws I’ve ever seen. Which is why I hypothesize that there must have been a “void where prohibited” amendment added to the Constitution. Otherwise the “Robin Laws,” unlike a real robin, could never have gotten off the ground.

The laws placed City Council “in charge of all police matters related to Robin matters.” They also made possessing or wearing “Robin paraphernalia” illegal. “Anyone seen in a Robin mask, or a Robin ‘R’ or whatever they wear [would be] immediately identifiable as a delinquent and subject to arrest.”

How broad and overreaching were these laws? Well, when Duke Thomas was walking down the street, he was arrested simply for wearing red sneakers. “Red means Robin. And in Gotham, Robin means you’re under arrest.” The shoes in question had no Robin indicia on them. No Robin logo. Not even an R. Duke was arrested simply for wearing red shoes.

In a world where the Constitution hasn’t been declared void, this law would be struck down as unconstitutionally overbroad. You can’t make it illegal for all people to wear red clothing, simply because some kids wore red clothing to play at being Robin. Under the law, people who were wearing red for perfectly legal reasons would be subject to arrest. Ringmasters could be arrested. Revolutionary War reenactors. Hell, firemen could be arrested for wearing their red suspenders.

In the height of the Crips and Bloods wars, did Los Angeles make it illegal to wear black or red? No. If they had Wayne Gretzky would have won the 1993 Stanley Cup playing for the San Quentin team, not the Los Angeles Kings.

Know what else would be unconstitutional? City Council ordering the police department to search every locker in a school “for evidence of any delinquent activity.” So guess what happened in Gotham City schools after the Robin Laws were enacted?

I know in New Jersey v. T.L.O., the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a school environment does permit some easing of the search and seizure requirements of the Fourth Amendment. But even T.L.O. didn’t authorize the wholesale abandonment of the Fourth Amendment shown in this story. Or the sort of blanket searches committed in this story. Hell, they weren’t even searching for blankets.

The T.L.O. court said a high school search is reasonable if 1) there are reasonable grounds for believing the search will reveal evidence that the student or students whose property is being searched violated the law and 2) the search is related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive. The searches conducted in this story didn’t meet either of the T.L.O. criteria.

Search of every locker in a school to find out whether any of the students might possibly have Robin paraphernalia? Not based on reasonable suspicion. Search every locker even those of students you have no reason to believe might be Robins? Excessively intrusive. Let silly things like the Constitution stop you from doing whatever you want? Naw, constitutions are for wussies.

Then there was the question of what the Robin Laws allowed Gotham City to do with the Robins after most of the Robins were arrested. In Detective Comics v2 #47, we learned the Robins were being kept in supermax jail cells suspended from the ceiling like bird cages. Because, well when you’re dealing with a bunch of kids wearing bird-motif costumes, why be subtle?

Some of these Robins were under the age of 18, so juvenile offenders. Juveniles are treated differently than adults. When a juvenile is arrested in New Jersey, the courts must hold an initial detention hearing by no later than the following day and both the juvenile and the juvenile’s parents or legal guardians must be present. They can’t be held in supermax conditions indefinitely. Moreover, the parents or legal guardians of a juvenile must be notified of the juvenile’s arrest and must be present anytime the juveniles are questioned. The juveniles can’t be held incommunicado.

You know, the Robin Laws in this story were so extreme and sweeping and illegal and unconstitutional, you’d think that Councilwoman Noctua, who spearheaded the laws, had her own secret agenda and was benefitting financially from the chaos the laws created. Turns out –

SPOILER, THAT’S PROBABLY NOT MUCH OF A SPOILER, ALERT!

Noctua was lining her pocketbooks from the chaos created by the Robin Laws and using the laws to earn a place in the Court of Owls.

Of course, that doesn’t explain why the rest of the Gotham City Council agreed to these patently unconstitutional laws. But I only explain why legislatures in comic books can’t do the things they’re shown doing. I don’t try to explain why they do them. That way lies madness.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #388

MARIA HILL GETS A STANDOFF O

When last we saw The Avengers, several of their branches – The All New, All Different; the New; the Uncanny; and for all I know Steed and Mrs. Peel – were standing off against S.H.I.E.L.D. because of Pleasant Hill. As it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve been able to write about Avengers: Standoff!, I thought a quick recap might be in order.

S.H.I.E.L.D. and its director Maria Hill got a hold of some fragments of a Cosmic Cube, a device which is controlled by the will of its holder and can reshape reality. It’s kind of like Green Lantern’s power ring but without the weakness to yellow or the need to make all its constructs curry the favor of Kermit the Frog. They used the fragments to create Pleasant Hill, an idyllic, all-American small town somewhere in Connecticut which was neither idyllic or all-American. See they populated Pleasant Hill with super villains whose memories had been wiped so that they believed they were non-powered residents of Main Street, USA. Various Avengers teams were getting ready to square off against Director Hill and S.H.I.E.L.D. because they didn’t agree with what had been done to the villains. Meanwhile, the super villains, who had regained their memories, were getting ready to square off against Director Hill, and S.H.I.E.L.D., not to mention the various Avengers teams, because they didn’t agree with what had been done to the villains either. And, for good measure, math students were getting ready to square off against Geometry teachers, because… Well wouldn’t you?

That’s where I left you last time I wrote about Avengers: Standoff! It’s also where I’m going to leave you this time, too, because the same things that kept me from writing columns for the past few weeks also kept me from reading comics for the past few weeks. I haven’t finished reading Avengers: Standoff! yet so have no idea how it ends. Or even if it ends. (Considering what goes on in comic books these days, that’s not as facetious as it sounds.)

Last column, I wrote about how Pleasant Hill prison violated the Eight Amendment to the United States Constitution and it’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. My friend and fellow comic-book writer Tony Isabella didn’t fully agree with me. Oh he thought my analysis was fine, up to a point. That point being the USAPATRIOT Act. He didn’t think my analysis took into account what provisions might have been enacted to imprison super villains in a post-9/11 world.

I told him that because so many of the early villains in the Marvel Universe were super powered Communists, Congress in the Marvel Universe probably enacted it’s version of the USAPATRIOT Act in 1961, not 2001. However, considering the USAPATRIOT part of the USAPATRIOT Act is an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, it’s Marvel Universe version would probably have been called something like the Emergency Xenogenesis Containment and Elimination Legislation and Super-powered Individuals Oversight and Regulation Act.

So what affect would our hypothetical act have on a place like Pleasant Hill? Depends. No, I’m not claiming that the answer might make you poop your pants, I’m saying that some inmates in Pleasant Hill might be treated very differently from other inmates.

We know from our own real-life experience that people designated as enemy combatants are treated differently from US citizens under the USAPATRIOT Act. Prisoners who are not US citizens and classified enemy combatants can be held indefinitely and without being charged in places like the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. So prisoners in Pleasant Hill such as Helmet Zemo or Ulysses Klaw, who are not American citizens, could receive the enemy combatant designation. Especially Zemo. Even money says the government would designate a German national who headed the terrorist organization Hydra an enemy combatant without even a second thought.

Other Pleasant Hill inmates, such as Mr. Hyde, the Trapster, and the Absorbing Man are American citizens. I practiced law for 8 years after the USAPATRIOT Act was enacted, so I know from personal US citizens who became inmates didn’t lose their 8th Amendment rights. Even after 9/11. Thus, it would be harder for Director Hill or S.H.I.E.L.D. to deny the American inmates in Pleasant Hill of their constitutional rights, with or without our hypothetical congressional act.

When governmental agencies – such as S.H.I.E.L.D. – seek to curtail the constitutional rights of inmates, they must be able to show they’re using the least invasive means possible. That is to say, their method of imprisonment must be consistent with both keeping the inmates in while depriving them of the fewest number of constitutional rights possible as possible. Pleasant Hill wiped its inmates’ memories and personalities and replaced them with different memories and personalities. I still think that was an invasive and unconstitutional assault which deprived the inmates of their constitutional rights, and I think many courts would likely rule in this manner, even after our super-human control act.

Prisons in the Marvel Universe have power dampening mechanisms which can take away inmates’ super powers. Super villains without super powers are just as easy to keep in prison as normal prisoners; you know, the ones who aren’t being mind-wiped. So mind wiping them wouldn’t be the least invasive form of imprisonment.

Sure super powered inmates would be kept in facilities whose security was even more maximum than Alcatraz. Call it a supervillainmax prison. But I just don’t think courts would side with the mass mind-wiping of the inmates.

Moreover, Maria Hill obviously didn’t think the courts would side with her. Or anyone else. After all, she kept the Pleasant Hill prison a secret from three different Avengers teams, her bosses in the World Security Council, the courts, and pretty much everyone else in the world. If she thought she was on firm footing with Pleasant Hill, she wouldn’t have pussyfooted around in secret.

I’m sure that when Avengers: Standoff! ends – no, I haven’t suddenly gotten caught up on my reading, I’ve been writing this column – Pleasant Hill prison will be somewhat more public. Super hero/villain battles tend to make things public, even when they happen in rural Connecticut. Then after Maria Hill’s pet prison has been outed, the World Security Council will have to decide how do they solve a problem like Maria. Ms. Hill and allies must now face the music. And I have confidence they’ll do something to her. I wish I could be sure it would be something good, like them telling her so long, farewell, but it’ll probably be little more than a slap on the wrist. Still, a guy can do-re-mi-m, can’t he?

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #387

THE AVENGERS GET STANDOFFISH

It’s getting so that in comics nowadays you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys without a scorecard. And sometimes even then.

Maria Hill is currently the director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division or S.H.I.E.L.D. for short – or SHIELD for even shorter and guess which route lazybones Bob is gonna take. So Maria should be one of the good guys, right? Then she came into possession of some fragments of a Cosmic Cube. A Cosmic Cube, when it was in full on cube form and not fragments, is a device that answers to the will of whomever possesses it and can be used to control matter and energy and even alter reality. So whomever holds the Cosmic Cube has to be careful with it, lest reality be warped in strange and dramatic ways. When the Cube is in fragment form, it’s just about as powerful but the holder has to be even more careful with it, because those fragments can go all Julia Child on you and cut the dickens out of your finger.

Avengers-standoff-welcome-to-pleasant-hill-1Hill and SHIELD experimented on the Cube fragments, hoping to be able to use them to reshape reality as SHIELD deemed necessary. What they got was a little girl. The Cube fragments merged into a sentient being and did what newly-formed fictional A.I. that are confuse about their identity have been doing for years; it adopted the form of a little girl.

Seriously, what is it about the symbology of little girl that screams confused and unsure of one’s self? I know a 63-year-old man who fits that descriptiPleasant_Hill_from_Avengers_Standoff_Welcome_to_Pleasant_Hill_Vol_1_1_001on pretty well, but you don’t see confused A.I. programs going all mid-life crisis.

Anyway, the little girl called herself Kobik. Director Hill called her an asset. Hill had Kobik create Wayward Pines… err excuse me, Pleasant Hill, a quaint little town in backwoods Connecticut. It was 300 Kobiks by 50 Kobiks by 30 Kobiks, so was big enough to house a lots of people. Lots of carefully chosen people. 96 SHIELD operatives who oversaw a town populated by super villains.

Hill called them reformed super villains. But they weren’t reformed, they were transformed, because, Hill had Kobik change 58 super villains. Now those villains look and dress like ordinary people. Then Kobik wiped the minds of the super villains; gave them new memories and personalities. They lived like common people and did whatever common people did; except listen to Shatner covers. For all intents and purposes, these super villains were new people, decent people living the American dream in a small American dream town.

A town that was surrounded by a force field so that none of its residents could leave. It wasn’t a small town, it was prison that really looked a picture print by Currier and Ives. Guantanamo Bay in Norman Rockwell drag.

Which is pretty much the set-up of the current cross-over series Avengers: Standoff! that’s currently playing itself out in several books. Then, complications ensued. Several of the Avengers teams opposed what Director Hill was doing in Pleasant Hill which created conflict between SHIELD and the Avengers. But not as much conflict as when the super villains started to get their memories back. (Oops, did I forget the SPOILER WARNING? Not really. Didn’t think it was needed. Seriously, who didn’t see that revoltin’ development coming?)

So why does Bob I. the Lawyer Guy care about this? Because SHIELD is a governmental agency, meaning all those things found in the Bill of Rights apply to SHIELD and its brainwashing Bastille. I wondered is Maria Hill a good guy or a bad guy for creating this program. And is Pleasant Hill was even remotely constitutional.

Obviously, I’m talking primarily about the 8th Amendment. Even the NRA isn’t concerned about denying the right to bear arms to convicts who are actually serving prison terms. (The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with another bad guy with a gun just ain’t gonna cut it.) But how does the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment affect this Attica of amnesia?

It’s unclear. There is no definitive definition of cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court has ruled that courts should follow an “evolving standards of decency” test in determining whether a punishment is cruel and unusual. So the test changes as the standards of decency evolve throughout the world. Centuries ago being drawn and quartered was considered a just punishment. Most societies would no longer consider drawing and quartering to be humane. (And not just because the strain it puts on the horses would be cruelty to animals.)

Pleasant Hill utilizes mind alteration of some sort to keep it’s inmates under control. Such mind alteration would be a form of assault, as they constitute a physiological change to a person. In most jurisdictions assault is a crime and I’m pretty sure that standards of decency wouldn’t permit prisons to commit actual crimes on their inmates.

This isn’t a situation like a mentally ill patient who is given medical treatment to restore that person to mental health. This is taking people who are mentally healthy – criminals, but mentally healthy – and altering their brains so that they don’t behave like criminals anymore. This is an assault on the inmates’ cognitive liberty, which many courts are recognizing as being protected by the Bill of Rights.

The Supreme Court might rule Pleasant Hill unconstitutional because it violates standards of decency and inflicted cruel and unusual punishment. Or it might rule the mind wiping was cruel and unusual, because it a crime. As we don’t actually have a real-world counterpart to Pleasant Hill, I can’t definitively tell you how a real-world court would view Pleasant Hill.

I can tell you this, however, one of the tests frequently used is whether the punishment is unnecessarily severe. We know prisons in the Marvel Universe have power dampening apparatus, which can suppress the super powers of their inmates so super villains can be held in prisons without having their personalities wiped and replaced. That being the case, Pleasant Hill might have difficulty withstanding a legal challenge, because its practice of committing assaults on the mind is a more severe punishment than is necessary.

Another test that is pretty much universal in its application to a cruel and unusual punishment analysis is that prisons may not deprive inmates of the basic necessities of life. While Pleasant Hill does provide food, clothing, shelter, sanitation, and medical care, there is another necessity that Pleasant Hill omits; the inmate’s ability to have visits from family members.

The leading case on this matter is Overton v. Bazzzetta where inmates sued Michigan because of prison guidelines which limited who could visit inmates. The guidelines eliminated visitation rights for inmates who violated certain prison rules. It also denied inmates the right to have visits from their children if their parental rights had been terminated. The inmates sued under the First (free association), Eighth (cruel and unusual punishment), and Fourteenth (due process) Amendments. The Supreme Court upheld these regulations and found they bore a rational relation to the government’s interest in maintaining internal security in its prisons.

Overton only dealt with a partial denial of some of an inmate’s visitation rights. Inmates in Pleasant Hill are Cosmic Cubed into believing they’re different people. They’re not receiving family visits because they don’t know they have any families. And their families don’t know where they are.

Would the Overton analysis apply to the wide-spread and complete denial of all visitation rights by an inmate’s family and friends practiced in Pleasant Hill? How would the courts balance complete denial against the state’s need to maintain order? Especially when, as I noted before, Pleasant Hill’s mind wipe is a more severe form of punishment than is necessary for the purpose of imprisoning super villains.

I don’t know. The courts might rule in favor of the inmates and hold that denying them all visitation from family and friends in a manner that is more severe than it needs to be, is cruel and unusual punishment. Or they might not.

So why did I write this column, if I don’t know the answers to the questions I’m posing? Because these are the sort of things I think of when I read comic book stories. Even if there is no definitive answer, I still wonder what would happen if this happened in the real world.

And sometimes, like when I don’t have anything else to write about, I share what I’m wondering about with you. To see, are you pondering what I’m pondering?

(The first one of you who says anything about getting a monkey to use dental floss is gonna get such a hit!)

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #386

DAREDEVIL IS GIVEN THE FINGER

Truer words were never spoken; or put into a first-person narrative caption.

You may recall that attorney – I mean I hope my old columns are at least a little memorable – Matt Murdock, who is secretly the super hero Daredevil, was recently disbarred in New York state after circumstances forced Matt to reveal publicly that he was Daredevil. When New York realized the number of ethical infractions Matt had committed to keep his secret identity secret, it barred him from its bar. Matt then moved to San Francisco, because he was still a licensed attorney in California. Well, that was then. This is now.

Now, everyone has forgotten that Matt is Daredevil, Matt is back in New York City, and his license to practice law in New York State has been reinstated. Don’t ask how.

Seriously, do not ask how, because I literally do not know. The current run on Daredevil simply dropped us in the middle of Matt’s new life without telling us how it happened. The only No explanation we’ve been given as to how Matt ignored Nat King Cole and proved his secret identity was forgettable is “unspecified circumstances.” Although I think we can safely rule out a deal with the devil though. Marvel tried this trick before; it had Mephisto make everyone forget Peter Parker was Spider-Man in “One More Day.” That bit of Faustian forgetfulness proved so unpopular Marvel retconned the Abaddon amnesia angle out of existence in “One Moment in Time.” (And you know what, don’t ask me about that either!)

All we know is what no one else knows, that Matt is Daredevil, that he can practice law in New York again, that he’s back in New York City, and that he’s working for the New York City District Attorney’s office. Considering Matt’s recent record is rife with a lack of legal ethics, some of us were taking bets on how long it would be before Matt breached legal ethics again.

Well, if you had five issues in the pool, you’re a winner.

For the first four issues of the new Daredevil run, Matt was fighting Tenfingers; a new crime lord in Chinatown who, true to his name, has a double dose of digits on each hand and some magic mojo he stole from the ninja assassin organization, the Hand. (Fingers? Hand? I’m sensing a theme here. I’m amazed we didn’t have guest appearances by Iron Fist or Mitt Romney.)

Anyway, Matt had been fighting Tenfingers in both his identities. Daredevil battled Tenfingers and his underlings in the streets. While ADA Matt tried to assemble a case against Tenfingers so he could be prosecuted. In both endeavors, Matt failed miserably. Not only could he not stop Tenfingers, he couldn’t even get Tenfingers to paws.

Because Matt had such spectacular lack of success, he was demoted from heading up the Tenfingers taskforce to the District Attorney’s E.C.A.B. or Early Case Assessment Bureau; meaning Matt will be spending a lot of time in Night Court. (Yes, the same night court where Harry Stone was a judge, but probably a different court room. Although this being a court room in the Marvel Universe, I’ll bet it has just as many crazies.)

imagesIn Daredevil v5 #5, Matt was heading to what was, I think, his first night in night court, when he got an alert that Daredevil should come to the temple in Chinatown where Tenfingers had his headquarters. Matt told his assistant, Ellen King, to cover for him in court. Ellen protested that she was a paralegal, not an attorney. Matt left anyway and narrative captioned those aforementioned truer words, “This is gonna bite me in the ass.”

I see one of three results from Matt’s actions. First, Ellen did the proper thing and told the judge that the attorney who was supposed to be in court skipped out and that she was only a paralegal, so couldn’t proceed. The judge was understandably upset with Matt then continued the court’s docket until either another day or until the DA’s office sent another attorney to cover for Matt. Either way both the judge and District Attorney Ben Hochberg were going to be pissed at Matt for this. (Can I say “pissed here at ComicMix? I guess we’ll find out.)

And I don’t mean a little bit pissed, I mean massively, Matt-gets-fired-and-brought-up-on-disciplinary-charges pissed. Cause in the real world, that’s what would probably happen to an attorney who was just reinstated after being disbarred for ethical violations and who then intentionally skipped a court date and left an unlicensed paralegal to handle his caseload.

The second possibility is that Ellen still did the correct thing and told the judge she couldn’t go forward. The judge then did the incorrect thing and forced Ellen to prosecute the cases in that night’s docket. Unlikely. This possibility would also result in Matt’s being fired and brought up on disciplinary charges, but it would also result in the judge being brought up on disciplinary charges for forcing an unlicensed paralegal to act as an attorney. It would probably also require all of the people who were arraigned that night to be arraigned again, when someone learned that a paralegal was operating as an attorney without a license. So I doubt the judge would do that.

The third possibility is that Ellen did the stupid thing and didn’t tell the judge she was only a paralegal and actually handled Matt’s caseload. This result is also unlikely. It would still result in Matt being disciplined and still force the court to re-arraign everyone who appeared in night court that evening. It would also probably result in Ellen’s being fired. She couldn’t be disbarred, because she wasn’t an attorney, but the DA’s office would fired her and possibly bring her up on criminal charges for practicing law without a license. I don’t see Ellen doing that to herself.

You may have noticed that in all three of my possible scenarios, Matt gets disciplined for skipping out on court and leaving an unlicensed paralegal to cover for him. No matter what the judge and Ellen did, Matt is going to take it on the chin. And considering he’s a super hero, that’s a pretty prominent chin.

So, yeah, I guess you could say it’s gonna bite Matt in the ass. I think it’s going to do a few more things to him, too, but I know I can’t say what those are here in ComicMix.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #385

ANT-MAN’S PLAYED A HENCH

So are we sick of talking about Serpent Solutions yet? Yes. Then let’s talk about its older brothers, Power Broker  and Power Broker, Inc .

Later.

First, there’s one more thing about Serpent Solutions, that corporation of super villains which would hire itself out to other corporations that needed illegal things to be done. Serpent Solutions did the illegal things and the corporations paid Serpent Solutions for doing them. My recent thrashings of the reasoning – or lack there of; and I think we’ll go with the latter – behind this premise failed to address one important question; how did Serpent Solutions find its clients?

Did some masked serpent villain appear on a TV screen asking, “Do you know me?” then shill their skill on the premise that because Serpent Solutions was were a group of unknown super villain, they were the perfect people to hire to do what ever illegal stuff potential clients needed to be done? Did Serpent Solutions send out mass-market e-mails which they hoped didn’t end up a spam filter nestled between entreaties from Nigerian princes? Craigslist?

Well, the same question could be asked of Power Broker and Power Broker, Inc. Not just could be. In a little bit, will be. But first there’s another question: Who is Power Broker?

I don’t know. That is I knew once but I don’t know now.

The original Power Broker was Curtiss Jackson, a professional criminal who, along with Dr. Karlin Malus – yes him, again – founded Power Broker, Inc. Power Broker, Inc. had a fairly simple business plan; for a price, it gave its customers superhuman abilities using Dr. Malus’s experimental genetic manipulation techniques. Many became wrestlers in the super-human-only Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation. Others just became straight-out super villains.

The second Marvel villain called Power Broker is whoever took over Power Broker, Inc. after Jackson disappeared and maybe died. We don’t know this person’s real name. All we know is that Power Broker II wears a battle suit and probably used the company’s augmentation process on himself, because he can project energy bolts from his hands.

The second Power Broker kept Power Broker, Inc’s original business plan. For a price, usually a hefty percentage of whatever the clients earned with their super powers, he gave super powers to people. In the case of those who wanted to compete in the UCWF, it was what they earned as wrestlers. In the case of the customers who wanted to become super villains, “earned” was a euphemism for whatever ill-getting means got them their ill-gotten gains.

Then Power Broker II branched out. In The Astonishing Ant-Man #1, Power Broker II introduced his newest business plan; the Hench app. The Hench app is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, despite the fact that what it sounds like is silly.

Hench is a smart phone app that uses a proprietary algorithm to match up super villains with jobs. Super villains, either ones that already exist or new ones who got their powers from Power Broker, sign up with Hench to become providers. They offer their services as independent contractors available for hire and are stored in the Hench database. Then customers who need crimes committed use the Hench app. The app would algorithm and algomusic and then suggest the perfect super villain from its database for the customer’s job. Who could ask for anything more?

antmanHench is Uber for the ubermensch. An invaluable service for those who have crimes that need to be committed. However, the Hench business plan begs a question. Begs it more than a terrier taking tables scraps. That question, which I asked before, is how does Hench find its customers?

I imagine it could find its super villains by posting one of those photostated “take a number” ads on the bulletin board in either location of the Bar With No Name, the infamous bar catering only to Marvel super villains that has franchises in New York City and Medina, Ohio. But how does Power Broker, Inc. find potential customers who want crimes committed or link them up with the criminals stored in the Hench app database?

Again, as with Serpent Solutions, Power Broker, Inc. can’t exactly advertise its services or the Hench app. At least not without drawing at least a modicum of unwanted attention from the local constabulary. Then there’s the question of how does Power Broker, Inc. get the Hench app onto people’s smart phones?

Apple screens apps before it allows them access to its App Store. Google does the same before it allows Android apps into the Play Store. I can’t imagine either of these corporations would accept apps whose sole purpose was to help people break the law and get the corporations prosecuted as aiders and abettors.

Yes, Power Broker, Inc. could set up its own web site where people could go to download the Hench app. But that process is not without a significant problem. It’s a very public way for conducting business that absolutely no one would want to be public.

So I’m just stumped. I don’t know how Power Broker, Inc. could attract any sort of client base without revealing itself to the authorities.

You see, I can think up the question, how could anyone actually do these criminal things without getting caught, but I can’t think up the actual ways that anyone could do these criminal things without getting caught. Guess it’s a good thing I became a criminal defense attorney and not a criminal.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #384

583334captainamerica6Sorry I’ve been absent the past couple of weeks. Blame it on the taxing business of prepping for the taxing business. Now I’m back. Not back with a vengeance – I’m not the Punisher – back with a comic book to write about: Captain America: Sam Wilson #6 .

I’ve been writing about the adventures of Samtain America, the portmanteau of Sam Wilson and Captain America I created, quite a bit. There’s a good reason for that, Serpent Solutions. As it’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote my last column, let me recap. (Oh, and DC take note. This is what a recap looks like.)

Serpent Solutions is a “legitimate” business made up of the villainous snake-motifed artists formerly known as the Serpent Society. It hired itself out to major corporations to do the dirty work said corporations couldn’t do. Although said operations were well within the corporations’ budgets, they were, well, outside the law. So the corporations hired Serpent Solutions. Serpent Solutions did the dirty work, then sold the results of their illegal operations back to the corporations which needed those illegal things to be done.

Serpent Solutions’ shareholder reports were a little vague on the services it provided for its clients. Fortunately, Captain America: Sam Wilson was more forthcoming. Serpent Solutions developed new patents for major pharmaceutical companies by kidnaping undocumented Mexican immigrants and having Dr. Karlin Malus use those kidnap victims in illegal genetic cross-breeding experiments. Dr. Malus developed new, hybrid species that Serpent Solutions patented those species and sold the patents to big pharma for obscene profits. Big pharma, in turn, planned to turn the new patents into obscener profits.

As sinister schemes go, this one was straight out of The Island of Doctor Moreau. Unfortunately, it was the Marlon Brando version, because this scheme, like that Brando movie, was monumentally stupid. Before I explain why, let me digress into some more of that endangered species, the recap.

One Dr. Malus’s subjects was Joaquin Torres. Dr. Malus cross-bred Torres with Samtain America’s pet falcon, Redwing turning Torres into a winged avenger. (“Eee-urp!”)  Torres escaped and scientists of the non-mad variety tried to undo the hybridizing. Unfortunately, back in All-New Captain America# 5, the Nazi vampire Baron Blood bit Redwing so Redwing had a vampiric healing factor, which got gene-spliced into Joaquin. Joaquin’s body healed all attempt to reverse the hybridizing, so his wings are permanent. (If it sounds like I’m making that up as I go along; I’m not. Cap’s writers are.)

The fact that Joaquin escaped and teamed up with Samtain America made Viper, head of Serpent Solutions, none too happy. It also made him quite loquacious. (Okay, the fact that Viper was a former Madison Avenue advertising agency executive turned super villain made him loquacious. Verbosity was in his both his job descriptions.)

In the big fight scene, Viper soliloquized more than if he’d been cross-bred with Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III. Viper monologued that Joaquin’s wings were Serpent Solutions’s property. The wings were the “result of [Serpent Solution’s] innovations and patents,” made for them under “a very strict work-for-hire” agreement. Which just proves super villains should be fight scened and not heard. Because nothing Viper said was even remotely correct.

See, kidnapping is illegal; even if the people being kidnapped are coming into the country illegally. Detaining them for the Border Patrol is fine. Kidnapping’s illegal.

Performing unauthorized gene splicing experiments on the people to turn them into people/animal hybrids is also illegal. As Dr. Malus’s medical manipulations happened in New York City, I’m going to go with NY Penal Law § 120.10, Assault in the First Degree. We have kidnapping and assault. There were probably more crimes, but these two are enough for our purposes. (Well, for my purposes, anyway, I’m too damned lazy to look up all the possible other crimes that may have been committed.)

Old court cases such as Riggs v. Palmer, have held that criminals can’t profit from their crimes. New cases do, too. For example, courts prevented convicted wife murderer Scott Peterson from receiving the proceeds of his wife’s life insurance policy. In addition, many states have some sort of Son of Sam law, which say that profits criminals earn from their criminal activities should be paid to the victims instead of the criminals. Under such laws, Joaquin, as the victim, could be entitled to the profits of Serpent Solutions’s crimes, his wings.

In addition, contract law says that a contract for an illegal purpose – such as kidnapping and criminal gene splicing – is not enforceable. So even if Dr. Malus was working under a strict work-for-hire contract, that contract wouldn’t be enforceable. Thus, the fruits of his experimentation would actually be his property, not Serpent Solutions’s. And as he conducted his experiments by way of kidnapping and assault, he wouldn’t be entitled to the profits of his experiments, either. (You were paying attention last paragraph, weren’t you?)

Ditto the big pharmas that hired Serpent Solutions. As aiders and abettors to the crimes, their claims to the patents are just as patently ridiculous, because their methods were patently illegal.

Any way you splice it, those wings belong to Joaquin. Which is a good thing because in Captain America: Sam Wilson #6, Joaquin became the New Falcon to Sam’s Cap. And a falcon without wings is just as bad as a criminal with profits.

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