Chez Chesler

Answers.com cites West's Encyclopedia of American Law on Outlawry:

A declaration under Old English law by which a person found in contempt on a civil or criminal process was considered an outlaw—that is, someone who is beyond the protection or assistance of the law.

During the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, a person who committed certain crimes lost whatever protection he or she had under the law, forfeited whatever property he or she owned, and could be killed by anyone. If the crime committed was treason or a felony, a declaration of outlawry was tantamount to a conviction and attainder. Outlawry for a misdemeanor did not, however, amount to a conviction for the offense. The Norman Conquest led to significant changes in the law governing outlawry, eventually leading to its abolition.

It seems that New Hampshire has revived this status. An AP wire story seen in this morning's Boston Herald describes video of the police stop on May 11 during which Bruce McKay attacked Liko Kenney, who then shot and killed McKay before being killed himself by a passerby.

According to the story, "Prosecutors say McKay was justified in using nondeadly force on Kenney, 24, partly because of a violent confrontation between the two men four years earlier." 

We can't ask Victoria Snelgrove how nondeadly police pepper spray is, because she was killed by Boston Police using similar so-called non-lethal force.  And in any case deadly force is justified against an attacker using incapacitating force (cite?) because there is no reason to think that the attacker will stop once the victim is incapacitated, and if the victim doesn't defend himself while he has the capacity he will lose the opportunity to defend himself.

But what does that statement by the prosecutor mean?  McKay and Kenney had had a confrontation four years earlier.  This certainly justified McKay being cautious and calling for backup.  Why is that sufficient provocation to justify McKay attacking Kenney?

Moments after Kenney shot McKay, former Marine Gregory Floyd killed Kenney using McKay's gun.  Quoting further from the story, "The attorney general also said Floyd was justified in shooting Kenney."  McKay was already dead.  I haven't seen any evidence that Kenney was threatening Floyd or anyone else.  So what justified Floyd's executing Kenney?

Has New Hampshire revived outlawry, and had it declared Kenney to be an outlaw?

Update: The Concord Monitor story gives more details: Floyd claims to have killed nineteen people before Kenney, and Floyd threatened to murder passenger Caleb Macaulay unless Macaulay complied with his orders to either "stop crying" (per Macauley, note that Macauley had also just been pepper-sprayed by McKay before seeing his friend killed) or "to get out of the car and get on his knees" (per Floyd.) Macauley also noted that Floyd ordered him to pick up McKay's gun, which Macauley had the sense to realize would have given Floyd an excuse to murder him as well. The story notes that Kenney was apprehensive about the encounter with McKay and requested that another officer handle the stop instead.

Labels: murder, outlawry, police

Over on the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein comments on the BBC apologizing for calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel. This got me wondering, how big is a capital region? For instance, the capital of the US is "Washington, DC" but that city is a lot bigger than the region around the Mall that contains the White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court. Maybe the notion of "city" is so unambiguous that people don't ask the question, since the answer is obviously "the capital region is bounded by the city lines of that city where the seat of government is located". (This is of course setting aside the questions raised in that comment thread of cases where for some reason some or all of the branches of the government actually meet elsewhere, temporarily or permanently, or the base question, of a capital which some other countries ignore, and also the question alluded to by another commenter, the situation where the capital city is not the "Queen" city, such as in New York State, where the most important city is New York, not Albany, or in the USA where the most important city is New York, not Washington.) If the capital of the US were moved back to New York, would we say that the capital is "The City of Greater New York", or would we say "Manhattan" or "Turtle Bay"? What if some of the key buildings, or embassies, were actually in Lake Success, or White Plains, or Murray Hill, NJ?

So Barry Bonds is going to deserve an asterisk when he tops Hank Aaron's home run total because steroids -- then legal and permitted by MLB -- enhanced his performance. When I was a kid we had Wonder Bread that helped kids grow twelve ways. Neither Babe Ruth nor Hank Aaron had all the nutritional advantages of the younger generation. (And I wonder if Bovine Growth Hormones or whatever else it is that is causing girls to mature so much younger gives an athletic advantage.) Does this mean that anybody who beats an older record after having grown up on Wonder Bread deserves an asterisk?

I don't subscribe to premium cable like HBO.