from Hacker News

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev charged with using ‘weapon of mass destruction’

by a_p on 4/22/13, 7:06 PM with 41 comments

This is the most bizarre and dangerous definition of 'WMD' that I've ever seen.
  • by brianchu on 4/22/13, 7:50 PM

    Everyone here talking about how this definition is stupid is seriously missing the point. Just because the legal use of a term doesn't fit in with your conception of what a WMD is doesn't make it a stupid definition. I think it's clear that the federal government just wanted a separate criminal category for explosives and other extremely hazardous materials (chemical and biological).

    Seriously, this should not be the first time that some of you guys have encountered a legal term that doesn't match up with the colloquial sense of the term.

    And we shouldn't be predicating crimes on the competence of their perpetrators - their pressure cooker bombs did injure more than a hundred people. Had they engineered it optimally, they likely could have killed tens of more people.

  • by gknoy on 4/22/13, 7:11 PM

    When did "WMD" go from describing something intended to kill thousands or millions of people to an IED? Both are bad, but it seems like a dilution to make "WMD" effectively synonymous with "bomb".
  • by zeteo on 4/22/13, 7:59 PM

    The events in Boston are tragic, but this stoking of mass hysteria around them is not that great either. I find it hard to believe that someone like John McCain, who had no problem with dropping bombs from his plane onto Vietnamese civilians [1], is so terrified by three civilian deaths at the hands of low-tech [2], deluded criminals. The big question, of course - possibly bigger than the terrorist act itself - is who benefits from this absurd inflation of the threat's magnitude.

    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder#Concl...

    [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)#History

  • by ry0ohki on 4/22/13, 7:39 PM

    I don't understand what people think is wrong with the usual criminal justice system. If we can't convict someone of 3 murders, 140 attempted murders, destruction of property, using an explosive, etc... without resorting to wacky terrorism laws, then we have bigger problems.
  • by mpyne on 4/22/13, 7:32 PM

    I like how the comments here are recycling Reddit from yesterday, almost word for word.

    The term "WMD" being used here has a specific legal meaning which is far different from the more well-known military meaning, and is valid for the charges in question.

    If it makes you feel better, imagine they charged him with "homocidial douchebaggery"...

  • by awnird on 4/22/13, 7:30 PM

    If those pressure cooker bombs were WMDs, then I guess the Iraq invasion was justified after all.
  • by DanielBMarkham on 4/22/13, 7:33 PM

    So there is no difference between killing 3 or 4 and maiming a hundred, and killing 4 or 5 thousand and maiming ten times that many?

    I must have missed where the "mass destruction" part was defined.

    Don't get me wrong, if he's guilty, I'm about as hardcore as a person could be about what to do with him. I'm just trying to figure out what the hell the government has done to our criminal justice system in the name of the war on terror.

    EDIT: From a friend on FB, the definition of Mass Destruction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Crim...

    "other device with a charge of more than four ounces"

    So a few shotgun shells in a mailbox, which is a mean, vile, lethal weapon and might easily deserve the death penalty, but now it's also a WMD?

    I hate to put this so bluntly, but the only thing that this tells me is that idiots are defining legal terms.

    Are there any grownups in charge of making these laws?

  • by mindslight on 4/22/13, 7:56 PM

    And what happens if a court actually correctly decides that such charges violate the second amendment? I'm sure Bostonians everywhere will be thrilled.
  • by illuminate on 4/22/13, 9:35 PM

    I don't understand what is particularly special about this case of domestic terrorism where persons are now wanting to treat the attackers somehow differently than the Turner Diaries brand of American bomber (aside from that the brothers were lawful residents, not citizens, of course.)
  • by mtgx on 4/22/13, 7:52 PM

    Since Carmen Ortiz will be his prosecutor, I'm not surprised by this. She seems to identify someone's crime, then look for an order of magnitude worse charge, and go with that. It seems to be her style of prosecution.