Tagged: Ulysses Cain

The Law Is A Ass #410: Captain Marvel and I Indulge in Conspiracy Theories

I’ve never lied to you.

Last time I said I had no more Civil War II columns and here I am writing about Jessica Jones #6 and things that wouldn’t have happened without Civil War II happening. But writing about things that happened after Civil War II ended is not a Civil War II column. It’s a Civil War II aftermath column. So I didn’t lie. Technically.

And now that I’ve cleared my conscience, let’s get this over with.

Alison Green was one of the people that the Inhuman Ulysses Cain predicted was going to commit crimes. Which made her one of the people Captain Marvel arrested before they committed the crimes and threw into a preventative justice prison so that they couldn’t commit their future crimes. Unfortunately, Alison wasn’t going to commit a crime. Ulysses was as wrong about Allison as that soothsayer was about the Powerball numbers she gave me last week. And Captain Marvel was even more wrong to arrest Alison than she had been in arresting all the other people she was wrong to arrest.

Alison created an anti-super hero organization. Captain Marvel and Jessica Jones tricked Alison into believing Jessica Jones was disgraced so Alison would recruit Jessica into the organization. Which Alison did and got stung worse than Doyle Lonnegan after stepping on a hornet’s nest. Jessica helped Alison capture Captain Marvel, Then, when Alison thought she had the upper hand, she showed she had what it takes to be a comic-book villain; she went into full-blown monologue mode and revealed her master plan. Which was to kill the Champions in a way that would foster a huge anti-hero backlash and end the age of the super hero forever. (End the age of the super hero? I don’t think Disney pictures would like that very much.)

Captain Marvel said Alison’s Champions plan added conspiracy to commit murder to her other crimes. But I don’t know. See, the crime of conspiracy to commit a crime entails more than conspiring to commit a crime. As the details about Alison’s plan were sketchier than an Artist’s Alley commission, I’m not sure there’s enough there for a conspiracy charge.

Conspiracy has three basic elements. First, two or more people have to be involved. Second, they have plan together to commit a crime. Third, at least one of them has to commit some overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Let’s take those one at a time. If only one person is involved, there’s no conspiracy. No one can conspire with him or herself. Even if all three faces of Eve agreed to commit the crime, that’s not a conspiracy because there’s only one Eve. And conspiracy is all about Eve and someone else planning a crime.

Second, the two or more people have to create a plan to commit a crime. They don’t all have to commit the crime. Even if only person commits the actual crime, as long as two or more of people planned the crime, they’d all be guilty of conspiracy. That’s two defendants for the price of one, what a bargain!

Third, at least one of the conspirators has to commit some overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. If Bonnie and Clyde create a plan to rob the Commerce Bank in Beverly Hills then go to sleep so they can get a fresh start in the morning, they have not committed a conspiracy yet. However as soon as they do something else – drive to the bank, steal the getaway car, kidnap Sonny Drysdale  to use as leverage against the bank president – they’ve completed the crime of conspiracy. It doesn’t even matter that they haven’t actually robbed the bank yet. By making the plan and then doing an overt act in furtherance of the plan they committed conspiracy, even if they never accomplish their ultimate objective.

So did Alison conspire to commit murder? Well, first we’d have to know did Alison make her plan to kill the Champions with one or more people? And, if so, with which people? If the only person Alison made her plans with was Jennifer Jones, then there can be no conspiracy. Jennifer wasn’t really part of the conspiracy, she was an undercover government operative. Traditionally, when the only other party to a conspiracy is a government operative, then two or more people aren’t agreeing to commit a crime. One plans to commit the crime, the other is just pretending as part of the undercover sting and we’re back to the a person can’t conspire with him or herself rule. Recently, some states and the Model Penal Code have started to move away from this position and allow conspiracy convictions when the co-conspirators are government agents, because the criminal thinks he or she has entered a conspiracy.

So if New York allows conspiracies with undercover police of if Alison made her plans with anyone in her organization other than Jessica, then the first element of the conspiracy is met. She probably did, but we weren’t given enough information in the story to know this for sure.

Assuming that Alison and others did plan to kill the Champions, the second element is also met. I trust that I don’t have to convince you that murder is a crime. I think I have to convince some writers of that, based on the way they have their heroes kill. But you, I shouldn’t have to convince. As murder is a crime, making plans with other people to commit a murder would hit conspiracy’s second element.

Third element, did any of the conspirators commit any overt act in furtherance of the plan to kill the Champions? We don’t know. We do know they were supposed to carry out the plan later that same night, so it’s likely that somebody had done something, because time was a wastin’ but the law doesn’t allow us to assume the existence of an element. So I can’t say for sure that anyone did an overt act or that Alison is guilty of conspiracy.

Sure Captain Marvel said Alison committed conspiracy. But let’s face it, Captain Marvel’s grasp of the law is about as firm as if she were noodling for mercury. While wearing a catcher’s mitt on both hands.

Now while I may not be able to tell you whether Alison’s guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, I can tell you this; I just checked my pile of write-about-these-someday comics and there isn’t one of them that’s connected to Civil War II. So I should be done with it. Unless Marvel’s got some new story coming up that connects back to Civil War II. And I don’t think they do. Civil War II is so last year. This year Marvel’s too busy secreting Secret Empire stories.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll The Law Is A Ass #403

HAWKEYE’S TRIAL IS OFF THE MARKS, MAN

When is a murder not a murder? Give up? What say we find out.

It all started with Ulysses Cain. You remember Ulysses Cain, don’t you? Inhuman who can predict the future and caused the whole Civil War II imbroglio when Captain Marvel and Iron Man disagreed over how he should be used. Lord knows I remember him. In Civil War II #2, Ulysses predicted that Bruce Banner would become the Hulk again and go on a murderous rampage.

So in Civil War II #3, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, and more costumed heroes than you can shake a double-page spread at confronted Dr. Banner in his secret lab. You can probably guess from the fact that was only part three of a nine-part story, the confrontation didn’t go as planned.

While all the heroes except one were talking to Bruce outside his secret lab, the Beast went inside and hacked into Banner’s computers. He learned Banner was injecting “treated dead gamma cells” into himself. (Interesting biology note: a gamma cell is a cell in the pancreas that secretes pancreatic polypeptide. Somehow, I don’t think those would have had any inhibiting effect on the Hulk. I think Beast meant to say dead gamma-ray-irradiated cells, but he probably didn’t have enough space in the word balloon for all that.) When Maria Hill, director of S.H.I.E.L.D., heard that Dr. Banner was experimenting on himself, she placed him under arrest.

Which made Banner angry. And do we like Dr. Banner when he’s angry? Who know? No sooner had Banner raised his voice than an arrow struck him in the head. Killing him. (Civil War II is over-achieving. It’s met its “Someone Has To Die Or It’s Not An Official Cross-Over” quota twice now.) Then Hawkeye revealed himself as the shooter and gave himself up.

Hawkeye stood trial for murder; in a sequence that jumped back and forth in time between prosecution witnesses, defense witnesses, and flashbacks so often you’d think Quentin Tarantino was the court reporter. Hawkeye testified that Banner gave him a special arrowhead that Banner had designed; one that would kill the Hulk. Banner told Hawkeye, “If I ever Hulk out again, … I want you to use that.” Banner asked this of Hawkeye, because Hawkeye was one of the few people Banner knew who would be able to live with the choice.

Hawkeye also testified that his eyesight was more acute than most people’s eyesight. That’s what made him such a good archer. He saw Banner was agitated and that his eye flickered green. He knew Banner was about to Hulk out and shot the arrowhead. (Hawkeye saw a green flicker in Banner’s eye from his perch up in a tree that was more than one hundred yards from Banner? That isn’t just acute eyesight. That eyesight is better looking than a super-model.)

In Civil War II #4, the jury found Hawkeye not guilty. How did the jury reach that verdict and find Hawkeye’s murder not a murder? I think we can safely eliminate the persuasive powers of Henry Fonda. So what did sway the jury to vote not guilty? Let me count the ways.

One: the jurors believed Ulysses’s prediction that Banner was going to Hulk out and kill someone. So it found that Hawkeye acted in self-defense. Two: they could have found that because Banner asked Hawkeye to kill him it was a mercy killing. Three: they could have found that they didn’t care that Hawkeye was actually guilty, the world was better off without the Hulk and they weren’t going to punish Hawkeye for killing the Hulk. That last one would be what we call jury nullification; a jury finds the defendant not guilty despite the defendant’s actual guilt for some sympathy reason. Juries aren’t supposed to do that but some do. And when they do, it’s still a valid not guilty verdict even if the reason is invalid.

The jury could have found Hawkeye not guilty on any one of those theories. Or on any combination of those theories. Juries only have to be unanimous on their verdicts, not their reasons for the verdict. So if eight jurors believed self defense, three believed mercy killing, and one believed in jury nullification; it was still a valid verdict, because all twelve voted not guilty. Hell, a juror could even have found Hawkeye not guilty because the juror believed the costumes some artists forced Hawkeye to wear through the years was punishment enough.

So there you have it. When is a murder not a murder? When it’s self defense, a mercy killing, or a jury nullification. Of the fourth way, which is the way I think really applies here: a murder is also not a murder when the plot needs it not to be a murder.

Bob Ingersoll: Captain Marvel Fails At Being Civil

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The Law Is A Ass Installment # 401

Despite Marvel’s claims about Captain Marvel being a human-Kree hybrid, she must really be an X-Man… because she certainly x-acerbated the whole Ulysses Cain problem.

Civil War II is a series about said the Inhuman Ulysses Cain and the problems he caused for the Marvel Universe. Ulysses, you see, was a seer; able to predict the future. He used mathematics to, “determine, to within a fraction of a percent, the probability that certain events are going to take place.” Kind of like Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory, only more refined. In Dr. Asimov’s Foundation series, Hari Seldon used psychohistory – a discipline that combined history, sociology, and statistical analysis – to make general projections about the future acts of very large groups of people. Ulysses’s brand of mathe-magic let him make specific projections about the future acts of specific people.

And why am I dragging the good Doctor into this? Foreshadowing. Psychohistory contains “psycho.” In comic books, has anything good ever come from something with psycho in its name? Or Civil War in the name, for that matter.

Iron Man overreacted to what Ulysses could do. Ulysses predicted that Thanos was going to invade. Captain Marvel heeded that prediction and sent a superhero team to Thanos’s predicted landing point, so heroes would already in place when Thanos put boots on the ground. Iron Man’s best friend, War Machine, died fighting Thanos. And the Shinola hit the fan. Iron Man kidnapped Ulysses and tortured him to find out how his powers worked. That’s how Iron Man overreacted.*

*(See last week’s column, Boisterous Bob.)

But let’s not spend all our time criticizing Iron Man. It’s not like Captain Marvel didn’t pull out the cooling rods on her own overreacter.

Captain Marvel saw Ulysses as having more potential than stopping random alien invaders. Ulysses could predict when people were about to commit crimes. Captain Marvel realized that if she acted on those predictions, she could “stop tragedies before they happen.”

So Captain Marvel went up to the people who were about to commit crimes and said to them, “Hey, I know you’re about to [insert whatever Ulysses predicted the person would do here]. Don’t do it. Because if it happens, I’m coming right back and arresting you.” Right?Unfortunately, no. That’s only a little onerous. Not nearly bad enough. Think bigger.

Captain Marvel assigned some superhero or government agent to follow the predictive baddie around very noticeably, until the time window for the prediction was over, to make sure the bad guy didn’t do whatever it was Ulysses predicted would happen? That might be a little sword of Damoclesian, but still not nearly authoritarian enough. Think even bigger.

What Captain Marvel did was…

Assembled the Cadets, a “predictive justice” task force composed of volunteers with “unique skill sets.” Then in Ms. Marvel Vol 4 # 8, put the Cadets under the supervision of Ms. Marvel. And not any of the first three Ms. Marvels, you know the adult versions. No Captain Marvel put the current Ms. Marvel in charge. The one who’s still in high school. What’s the matter, Captain Marvel, no supervisors in their terrible twos available?

And why did Captain Marvel think her Cadets needed a teenage mutant ninja babysitter? Well, as Captain Marvel put it, “Until we understand exactly how Ulysses’ powers work, [the Cadets] need to stay within the law.”

In Ms. Marvel Vol 4 # 9, we learned exactly how Captain Marvel and her Cadets stayed within the law. By physically rounding up all the people Ulysses predicted would commit crimes and imprisoning them in a makeshift jail in Jersey City until the time frame for their predicted future crimes had passed.

That’s staying within the law the way a kid with a coloring book stays within the lines.

Captain Marvel was an operative of a defense agency which was overseen by a multi-national Board of Governors, so she was an operative of several governments, America included. For our purposes, how many governments doesn’t matter. Just as long as she was an operative of the American government. The government which is, itself, governed by the United States Constitution.

That Constitution says that when a government locks people up for something they haven’t done yet, it denies those people of their liberty without due process of law. The pre-crime detainees haven’t committed a crime yet so, obviously, they haven’t had a trial, let alone been convicted of anything. Nevertheless, they’re being imprisoned. It’s like that old Dostoevsky novel in reverse, Punishment and Crime. Or worse, punishment without crime.

By imprisoning people without due process of law, Captain Marvel was acting unlawfully. People who unlawfully restrain people aren’t the luckiest people. They’re criminals. After all, New Jersey may have been willing to look the other way over Snooki, but it actually has a law against false imprisonment.

So, good job of staying within the law, Captain Marvel. When you were a kid, did you keep secrets by saying, “Daddy, we didn’t go get ice cream today?”

Look, I know this sort of thing happened in the past. During World War II, thousands of Japanese Americans were interned without trial for fear of what they might do. But that was decades ago. Has anything like that has happened more recently? Guess I’ll have to Gitmo .

However, just because something that was wrong happened once before, or twice before – or probably more times than any of us really want to know about before – doesn’t mean it’s right for that same wrong to happen now. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Two 45̊ angles do.

And, yes, I know Captain Marvel had good intentions. Doesn’t matter. Because it wasn’t just Dostoevsky that got flopped. Captain Marvel’s road to good intentions was paved with hell.

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