Re: Overheard on the scanner

In article <eaf034phsfqqbpevmqcnk6opiiavkulmfj@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Douglas Berry <penguin_boy@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> >Suppose I'm one of the two physicians in a town, and someone murders
the 
> >other. There is nothing morally or legally wrong with my benefitting 
> >from the reduced competition.
> >
> >Do you disagree?
> 
> Except that in the case of the ripped fence, you are taking advantage
> of the physical act.  A better analogy would be a bank robber drops a
> bag of money in front of you while fleeing. You haven't robbed the
> bank, but if you take the money you are just as guilty of theft.

You are also guilty of theft if the bank courier dropped the bag of 
money. The fact that the op****tunity came from someone else's crime is 
irrelevant.

> >Consider a more recent and less defensible example. The state of Texas 
> >decides that a pregnant woman is a minor, despite her showing them a 
> >birth certificate showing that she is 22. Since they claim she is a 
> >minor, they hold her in state custody. She has a baby. They finally 
> >decide to concede that she is, in fact, 22. But since her baby was born

> >in Texas and they have been arguing that all members of her religious 
> >sect are presumptively unfit as parents, they claim the right to seize 
> >the baby. 
> >
> >The baby was born in Texas only because they had held her there, which 
> >they now concede they had no right to do. Does that mean they can't 
> >claim control over the baby? Legally speaking I'm pretty sure it
doesn't.
> 
> That is indefensible because it violated her right against
> unreasonable search and seizure.

The question isn't whether their original act was defensible. It wasn't, 
although I don't think it will lead to any legal liability. It was 
whether taking advantage of the previous indefensible act, which 
resulted in the baby being under their jurisdiction, was itself 
undefensible or illegal.

Consider another, real, case.

The governor of state A believes that someone now in state B has 
committed a murder in state A. Unfortunately, the governor of state B 
disagrees and is clearly unwilling to extradite him. So the governor of 
state A arranges to have the person in question kidnapped in state B, 
brought to state A, and tried. He is convicted and imprisoned.

The court's conclusion was that the kidnapping was illegal but that the 
victim, now being under the jurisdiction of the courts in state A, could 
be tried by them--an illegal act with no legal remedy.

This is a real Supreme Court case, from the final stage of a very famous 
conflict.

-- 
 http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
 Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
 Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now