Boston Marathon Bomber Charged With Using 'Weapon of Mass Destruction' 533
New submitter bunkymag writes "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has now been indicted on over 30 charges relating to his part in the Boston Marathon bombing. Of particular note however is a charge of using a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction.' It's a bit out of line with the commonly-held perception of the term, most notably used in justifying the invasion of Iraq. However, U.S. criminal law defines a 'weapon of mass destruction' much more broadly, including virtually any explosive device: bombs, grenades, rockets, missiles, mines, etc. The question arises: is it wise for Tsarnaev to face such a politically-loaded charge? From an outsider perspective, it would seem easy enough to leverage any number of domestic anti-terror laws to achieve anything up to and including the death penalty if required. Why, then, muddy the waters with this new WMD claim, when the price could be giving further ammunition to groups outside of America that already clearly feel the rules are set up to indict them on false pretenses, and explicitly use this sense of outrage to attract new terrorist recruits?"
Re:Yes (Score:4, Informative)
there is a difference between federal law and state law. Murder is not generally considered a federal offense (in one of the civil rights murders it was federal only because it occurred on federal land http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ex-federal-prosecutor-who-led-historic-case-dies [ap.org])
That is why people entering the country have to say they will not commit a crime while they are here. Any crime they commit is probably only a state issue, but lying on your federal entry form ...
Re:the way I see it (Score:5, Informative)
Keeping them alive makes the rest of us pay for it...
That's just stupid.
You want him kept alive forever? YOU pay for it... I'd rather pay $.005 for a bullet and be done with it.
You are an idiot. [deathpenaltyinfo.org]
Please stop talking until you learn something about the topic.
Re:the way I see it (Score:5, Informative)
Cool, so when does the President go on trial for authorizing the murder of civilians using WMDs? [policymic.com]
Before you respond with any of that , "at war blah blah blah" nonsense, keep in mind that Congress has not declared war on Pakistan.
Re:the way I see it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A Cheapening of the Charges (Score:4, Informative)
Tsarnaev is guilty of terrorism. It is guilty of murder. It is guilty of harming other people and property. It is guilty of robbery. It is guilty of kidnapping. It is guilty of manufacturing and deploying destructive devises (of which WMDs are just a very small subset.) One could argue that he is guilty of organized crime (with the objective of committing acts of terrorism.)
While I agree with most of what you say, calling him "it" doesn't seem helpful. He's still human and I'm not sure what you hope to achieve by excluding him from the species. Sounds like the kind of language that would get a prosecutor a reproach for turning the court into the kind of circus you've advocated avoiding.
He's also not guilty of anything yet.
Authorities, please: Let us not make one more mockery out of legal institutions and charge this criminal appropriately.
Don't make a mockery of legal institutions by assuming a suspect's guilt before his trial.
Re:We're making this all up anyway (Score:4, Informative)
The term "weapon of mass destruction" has meant things like grenades, flamethrowers, and improvised explosives for at least a century in law. The term is defined in every state's gun laws, and has nothing to do with NBC weapons. Bush's use of it to describe chemical weapons, which is the first time many people heard the term, was non-standard. (Basically, it's been clear for as long as there have been gun laws that they don't include the right to make arbitrary improvised weapons, and during the "bomb throwing anarchist" years ~100 years ago these laws were given real teeth.)
Re:We're making this all up anyway (Score:5, Informative)
For example:
1972 UN Treaty http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/sea_bed/text
1998 CNN article http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html
Or a billion other examples that are easy to find if you search any news or legislative archive.
And I used the government code web search for California, Louisiana, and Massachusetts to look up your state law claim. Only Louisiana had any law with a reference to "mass destruction" and that was most definitely not about simple explosives.
So for a typical West Coast, East Coast, and Southern State there is no mention of Weapon of Mass Destruction and certainly not in the ridiculous manner of the federal law that says that a potato gun is a WMD ("any destructive device as defined in section 921 of this title"->"expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, and which has any barrel with a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter").
It's so broad that they had to specifically mention that shotguns are not WMDs! Absurd.
It's the only way to kill him (Score:4, Informative)