|
A
|
|
|
Did Buffy have any legal excuse for stabbing Faith? |
|
VOX
We've never seen Buffy harder than in her final roof-top confrontation with Faith. The ethics of her decision and the lasting effect on her character are still the topics of much heated debate. But did she have a right to stab Faith? Can it even be legally excused? It is the finest example of Buffy pushing her jurisdiction to its limits and perhaps beyond.
Go to Vox's Slayers and the Right to Slay- Buffy's jurisdiction
I asked my old Criminal Law supervisor and he gave me a very quick answer. I've posted his reply below, but the floor is still open. And remember, the law of other countries is just as significant (even more significant in the case of US law, as that's where a trial would be held) I just use English law because that's all I know.
Here's the email that started it all off:
Diandra 29/11/99
The one I would have trouble defending would be Buffy when she goes to kill Faith to save Angel. The only sort of precedent I can think of is a really old case, in which a captain of a ship which sank decided to throw certain passengers over the side so that others could live. The problem faced by the captain when he came ashore was how he justified his choices about who lives and who dies.
There's the same problem here. As viewers, we know Faith is evil and will be no great loss to the world, whereas Angel is a whitehat, and will be a loss to the world. We trust Buffy to make that decision, because we know Faith and we know Angel, but more importantly, we know Buffy. But as Buffy's defense attorney, I'd have a hard time countering the prosecutorial argument, which would be along the lines of "Who is this girl that she gets to decide who lives and who dies? Even if in retrospect we agree with her choice, can we refrain from punishing her? If we set a precedent in which we don't punish this girl for deliberately planning the death of her enemy, don't we validate vigilante justice?" Buffy's defense is rendered considerably more difficult by the fact that her actions were undertaken with calculation, generally an aggravating factor in the commission of a crime, without the mitigating factor of sudden heat.
Buffy's prospects of escaping criminal punishment are rendered even worse by the fact that she did indeed have an alternative to killing Faith, an alternative which she wound up taking, with little long-term harm to herself or to Angel.
Nor can Buffy argue that she was provoked by Faith into a confrontation, because Faith didn't know that Slayer's blood was an antidote.
Unless I'm missing something, Buffy better hope that Faith doesn't come out of that coma deciding to name names.
Vox 3/12/99
There is a similar ancient English case which established the rule on the validity of necessity as a defence to a charge of murder (or, more to the point, hammered the nail into its coffin), the case is so famous now as to have become apocryphal but its name is usually lost:
R v Dudley 1884
The two accused had found themselves adrift in a small boat on the high seas with another man and the young cabin boy. They had virtually no food or water for twenty days and had been reduced, for example, to drinking their own urine. Finally they killed and ate the cabin boy who was likely anyway to have been the first to die and without this deed would probably themselves not have survived the further four days before they were rescued. The judge rejected any defence of necessity on these facts. The two men were sentenced to death.
If you think that was a bit harsh, well, so did others and their sentences were later commuted to six months imprisonment.
Vox's Supervisor says:
(7/12/99)It sounds like attempted murder. Gotts held that duress, of threats or circumstances, is not a defence to such a crime. So it sounds as though the defendant
[Buffy] is guilty.
Vox 7/12/99
The facts of the case are these:
Gotts (1992)
The defendant, aged sixteen, was threatened with death by his father unless he killed his mother who had fled to a woman's refuge with the other two children to escape the violence, depravity and abuse inflicted upon her and the children by the husband, Subsequently the defendant stabbed his mother but was restrained by bystanders so that, although she sustained serious injuries, she did not die. He was charged with attempted murder and sought to plead duress. The trial judge ruled that duress was not available on a charge of attempted murder whereupon the defendant pleaded guilty and appealed. The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's ruling and the House of Lords, by a majority of three to two, dismissed D's further appeal.
Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle stated:
It is of course true that withholding the defence in any circumstances will create anomalies but… nothing should be done to undermine in any way the highest duty of the law to protect the freedom and lives of those who live under it. I can therefore see no justification in logic, morality or law in affording to an attempted murderer the defence which is withheld from a murderer. The intent required of an attempted murderer is more evil than that required of a murderer (the difference in the intention between murder and attempted murder, attempted murder requires an intention to kill, murder just requires an intention to kill or to inflict grievous bodily harm) and the line which divides the two offences is seldom, if ever, of the deliberate making of the criminal (i.e. that is down to luck, rather than the criminal's intent, whether he is guilty of murder or of attempted murder).
Gotts involved duress as to threats (what is normally meant by duress) but the defence as to duress of circumstances is subject to the same limitations as the defence of duress (Pommell (1995)).
This means that Buffy, in an English court, would be guilty of the attempted murder of Faith.
The court would, of course, have regard to the extenuating circumstances of the case, including the fact that it was Faith who was responsible for infecting Angel, in sentencing. Buffy might be able to walk away from the court that very day, as attempted murder has no mandatory sentence (Gotts himself was given three months probation, quite a jump from the life prison sentence he would have received is his mother had happened to die from her wound), but she would carry a criminal record with her.
Want more?
Go to Maquerade's Was Buffy's stabbing of Faith justified?
The Jolly Red Giant 21/2/00
It seems to me that, while a vampire slayer in name, Buffy holds jurisdiction over
all supernatural threats. This includes humans who become a supernatural threat. (ie Gwendolyn
Post) Faith is more than human, she is a Slayer, which means she is endowed with supernatural
abilities which render her beyond the capacity of normal law enforcement to deal with. My only
fault is that she waited for Faith to become a threat to Angel personally to deal with her.
Faith was aiding a plot to wreak armageddon and death upon the innocents of Sunnydale, and should
have been slain at first opportunity.
Your opinionOr you can |
Picture is copyright © 1998 The WB Television Network and is from the Official Buffy the Vampire Slayer Site. Above The Law banner is copyright © 1999 Vox. |