by a_p on 4/22/13, 7:06 PM with 41 comments
by brianchu on 4/22/13, 7:50 PM
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
by zeteo on 4/22/13, 7:59 PM
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder#Concl...
by ry0ohki on 4/22/13, 7:39 PM
by mpyne on 4/22/13, 7:32 PM
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
by DanielBMarkham on 4/22/13, 7:33 PM
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
by illuminate on 4/22/13, 9:35 PM
by mtgx on 4/22/13, 7:52 PM