Can Batman be held responsible for the Joker's murders?

Ah, how I've missed having to disagree with you.

And agree with Olantern, pretty much.

Which is funny, because the darker incarnations of Batman have had no issues crippling people if necessary. That said, there is a distinction. Someone killing an attacker in self-defence comes down to them not being able to find a better solution, and it being preferable to the attacker killing the victim. It has to fall under acceptable losses.

But a criminal that has been arrested and 'neutralized'? If Batman had any interest in seeing that happen, he'd testify in court against the three or four of his enemies that aren't legally insane. With the rest actually being legally insane, it's a non-issue unless they move Gotham to Texas.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

IRL, legally insane people are insane... and while dangerious, aren't Joker level dangerious. And Supermax prisons are not easy to excape... if fact, i don't think anyone has ever gotten out of a true supermax... I may be wrong.

So, it's difficult to blend fact with fiction in this case, but, if i had to hazzerd a guess, if someone ever proved themselves to be as dangerious as the Joker, and couldn't be held, like the joker, the goverment, in the intrests of public safety, whould have to put him down, reguardless of his mental issues. At the end of the day, your elected officals are there to keep the public safe. And sometimes, doing so can be a dirty job. Which is why i don't really blame Batman for Jokers constent excaping and murdering spress. It's a failing of Gothems legal system and general common sence IMO.

People escaped Alcatraz, and has been proven, in all likely hood survived.

That's not how the law works, though. And most likely, after many US States have moved to abolish the death penalty, going back to executing the insane in those States that do keep the death penalty but exempt the legally insane would probably cause just as much sympathy for the Joker than it would create sympathy for the politician trying to get the law changed.

And I guess you could technically somehow get a special clause that only pertains to the Joker, but I also guess most people could see that for the slippery slope it would be. So you kill the Joker because he's a mass murderer who's managed to escape from the loony bin. Who else fits that bill? Who else is so dangerous you might want to make an exception for them? How many victims does it take to deserve death, how many successful escapes?

I'd like to think people are smarter than that. Of course, they're not.


As to the Joker actually being legally insane, my yardstick is John Hinckley, who tried to kill Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. While Hinckley is not exactly a supervillain, their obsession and willingness to go to any length to impress the object of their affection seems to match.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

"Prior" means before. You seem to be looking for a period of time *in* the 80s-90s when Last specifically said "prior" to that time. Batman has been shown carrying a gun and killing in his early days. I believe thats what he's talking about.

If only!

Except you don't see Batman or Bruce Wayne as a vocal opponent to the death penalty. And I believe there have been situations where Batman has talked to police officers or soldiers that had to kill and reassured them that they did the right thing. So, really, it isn't as if he believes that any type of killing in any type of situation is wrong, which is what I was responding to.

This really depends on the interpretation of the Joker. In The Dark Knight (Nolan's), he very clearly is sane and has a specific agenda that he can outline and explain rationally. You can see how everything connects. In the end, he convinces Harvey Dent to join his side, because it -can- make sense.

In the Animated Series, it's all for the lulz.

well, one can base the ethical nature of self defense against one's ability to defend themselves. batman can easily(thanks to author madness) defeat a room full of trained goons with firearms in a nonlethal manner. a normal cop could not. to hop comic companies, one could reason that with the power to non-lethally stop a criminal comes the responsibility to do so when possible. Even in real life self defense trials, a jury will be more sympathetic to a less physically imposing, less trained individual than if someone has military or significant martial arts training, or physically over-matches his/her assailant, and still kills or cripples them. So bats could still console a normal person who kills in the lie of duty while still see himself doing it as wrong because he can do it without killing.

I always thought it was more along the lines that Batman knows, he can't be judge, jury and executioner.

He also knows he can't work outside the law, and kill people, without becoming what he's trying to stop.

Soldiers and Police Officers are in a different position, as they're in a legal area to beable to do such acts.

I think it's best said by Gibbs to McGee in NCIS, "If you wanted to kill him, you should of shot him when he was running."

Well that doesn't really conflict with what I was saying because I was responding to someone who said that basically Batman believes that anyone killing anyone else for any reason was wrong, which is different than Batman believing that him killing anyone for any reason was wrong.

So his argument is "between" 35 and 54 Batman had no kill code less stringent....

Maybe. He did carry a gun for a short time... which is handled in like one issue of LotDK which takes place in the first 3 years of Batman's career... In fact if you want to add all of those 20 years into cannon those years are all in the first 3 years of Batman...

But the argument wasn't that Batman had a less stringent kill policy in his first 3 years. It was that the no kill policy being more stringent was a recent development... not 55 years in the past at a minimum.

I could've sworn I have seen exactly this, especially the second part. That is, I think I've seen Batman dressing down police officers who've killed in self-defense. I'm certain that I've seen him (or his author, which amounts to the same thing, to me) criticizing other characters for failing to save characters from "third-party" causes of death, such as burning buildings or falls.

Edit: Forgot the whole reason I posted again. BlueBattler asked whether the Joker would be considered "insane" in a legal sense. Whether the Joker could successfully argue that he wasn't guilty of a crime by reason of insanity (or any of the corresponding formulations of the insanity defense found in various jurisdictions) depends on a number of factors; there's no yes-or-no answer.

One critical factor is what the jurisdiction's standard for establishing insanity is. It's been over a decade since I studied Criminal Law, but I recall enough to know that standards vary wildly. They range from inability to appreciate the wrongfulness of conduct (doubtful, given what I've seen posted about him in this thread) to whether a mental disease or defect can be established to whether the defendant has "diminished capacity" to have the necessary mental state to be charged with a crime to a variety of other standards. Since we don't know much about Gotham City's jurisprudence, it's difficult to say anything with much certainty. Note that that's "mental disease or defect" or "inability to appreciate wrongfulness" in the eyes of law, not in the psychological sense. A defendant might very well be medically "sane" yet legally "insane" or vice versa, depending on how the jurisdiction's cases have interpreted the standards and how much weight, if any, its courts give to psychiatric testimony. It's worth mentioning that in spite of how often insanity is mentioned in fiction about criminal trials, it's rarely raised in practice and even then is rarely established successfully.

The second important factor in determining this issue is the factual circumstances of the specific crime with which the Joker is charged. As with other affirmative defenses in the law, insanity isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. A defendant might be able to establish the defense successfully on one count (crime) but not another.

The important thing to take away from this is that whether the Joker is legally insane is only tangentially related to whether he has a mental defect as described in the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and even less related to whether he's "crazy" in the eyes of his author or us as readers.

Of course, that doesn't answer the question. For what it's worth, back when I was taking first year law classes like Criminal Law, I was watching The New Batman/Superman Adventures every day, and I'd often assess the legal consequences of the situations in the shows as a way of reviewing the material.* I remember thinking when studying the M'Naghten rule and other aspects of insanity that it would be impossible for most of Batman's foes to establish insanity defenses, though I can't recall why now.

If I were stuck defending the Joker after he'd been thwarted by Batman (well, someone presumably does it), I'd probably argue that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated at some stage of Batman's investigation. Batman is arguably an agent of law enforcement, in fact if not in name, and he certainly doesn't go around obtaining warrants for his searches or looking for exceptions to the requirement for obtaining one. This kind of determination would be made long before the stage of presenting an insanity defense, and I believe there's a fair chance it would succeed, which would get the case "thrown out" relatively early in its potential life. This suggests that even in the DC Universe's courts, the issue of the Joker's legal insanity may never have come up. (Oh, and if I got stuck defending the Joker, even if he was ultimately convicted, he could probably establish a good habeas corpus claim for postconviction relief based on ineffective assistance of counsel, since criminal law is most definitely not my field of practice.)

As an aside, I've always assumed, without much evidence, that Batman's foes are locked up in Arkham because of post-arrest civil commitment proceedings, not because of any crimes of which they may have been accused or convicted. That is, a villain gets captured, the Gotham D.A.'s office determines whether to charge him with anything, and meanwhile, apart from that, a different division of the D.A.'s office brings a proceeding to have the villain sent to Arkham because he's a danger or himself or others, totally apart from anything he may have already done. This brings in a completely different set of standards (civil commitment vs. criminal insanity) that lies both beyond the scope of this post and beyond my knowledge, aside from what I've posted already.

* Further aside: I do clearly remember being certain that the Joker could be considered to have proximately caused damages inflicted by Batman during a car chase for purposes of a civil damage suit. This doesn't mean the Joker would automatically have to pay damages. It just means someone could sue him over Batman's, say, running over a bystander's foot. Of course, successfully collecting damages from the Joker would be a battle in itself. Imagine how the Clown Prince of Crime would react to being sued, let alone losing! I think this would make an interesting premise for an episode of one of the Batman cartoons, don't you?

For more on the law and superheroes, consider the opening sequences of The Incredibles, which shows an example of plaintiffs who attempt to use the tort doctrine of negligent rescue, and the fascinating section "The History of Metahuman Law in the United States of America" in the RPG Silver Age Sentinels, which deals with such issues as whether a hero can testify while masked and who has jurisdiction over crimes committed with superpowers (and was also written in part by Jesse Scoble, a.k.a. Arctic Sun, formerly of these fora).

Everything I've seen so far has been Batman reserving those kind of criticisms for fellow costumed crimefighters.

I'll see if I can find something in my collections about him talking to a police officer for a more specific reference.

There are a few times I remember but it wasn't because of them doing their job but rather when they were taking criminal actions or endangered civilians or some such thing like that. If I remember right, the first time one of the officers shows up Batman and Gordon are talking and then an officer says or does something and Batman tears into him.

Heh. The mini-figure was built from the Helmet and Cape from the Royal Guard mini-figure, the torso was used from the Penguin mini-figure and the black legs were taken off of some random mini-figure with black legs.

Heh, I never thought I would thread jack. :P

Thanks for your post on this. It was quite informative.

That is a different discussion.

You're at least partially right about police access to portions of the city Wayne owns, though police would be able to enter with a warrant or in a situation where an exception to the warrant applies (and there are a lot of those situations). For property owned by the Wayne Corporation rather than Bruce Wayne personally, whether he could do so would depend on whether Wayne could act as a legal "agent" of the corporation. (Since he's usually characterized as some kind of corporate officer, I'd argue that he could act on the corporation's behalf.)

With regard to using deadly force, you're confusing the concept of trespassing with what's really a form of self-defense, which is a separate legal issue. Even if a villain trespasses on Wayne Corporation property, that doesn't necessarily mean the property's owner can use deadly force (or any kind of force) against him.

In general, the only situation where where deadly force could be excused would be in a case of self-defense. Self-defense, like insanity, is an affirmative defense to a crime, in this case, murder. That is, if person who used deadly force is charged with murder, even if the state meets its burden of proving he killed the victim (the villain, in our scenario), the person cannot be convicted if he can prove he had an objectively reasonable belief that he must use deadly force to defend himself or another person (but not to defend property).

This can interact with property rights and trespassing because some jurisdictions have a judicial or statutory addition to the doctrine of self-defense called the "castle doctrine." This varies in form, but some formulations state that use of force is presumed to be self-defense if the person used it while in his home (but not other property). This wouldn't apply in the Bruce Wayne scenario unless the villain attacked stately Wayne Manor.

This seems unlikely, but I haven't read anything about the DC heroes operating or being recognized as a government of their own.

Even if they do, it doesn't seem like a winning argument for the Joker. To use an analogy, if an official of the U.S.S.R. visited the United States in 1960 and was killed there by an American, the American could be prosecuted for the murder under American law and could not escape conviction simply by arguing that the Soviet was an agent of a hostile, foreign power. All that said, I've seen real cases in which mentally unsteady people have argued things like this (often claiming that the U.S. government is illegitimate in one way or another), so though it doesn't sound like it stands much chance of success, it would certainly be realistic for the Joker to argue this.

As for diplomatic immunity, since I know next to nothing about international law, I'll content myself with saying that I'm fairly sure it wouldn't allow Batman to avoid criminal charges for the sorts of things he does. Turning the example above around, if the Soviet diplomat kills an American, I'm fairly certain the U.S. would attempt to try him for murder under American law, even if he could claim diplomatic immunity, which I doubt he could.

In any case, diplomatic immunity in comics, like so many other aspects of law in comics, doesn't necessarily work the way it does in the real world. For instance, in some Fantastic Four stories, it's little more than a plot device to enable Dr. Doom to return issue after issue because he's a foreign ruler.

That's the most important point this discussion brings up: all that I've posted so far assumes that American law in the DC Universe is fairly similar to American law in the real world. There's no guarantee that that's so.

You've got it backward. Under American law, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees them due process rights before being deprived of their liberty by being involuntarily committed. People who may be committed can't be "checked in by anyone" precisely because they lose pretty much all rights once committed.

Instead, in order to be committed to an institution involuntarily, someone must initiate a court proceeding for commitment. In a situation like the Joker's, as I implied in my last post, that would be the state, represented by a subdivision of the District Attorney's office that handles such cases exclusively. In other cases, it might be a relative who cannot care for the person the relative wants committed. (I believe the state will still present the case for commitment even if it's being urged by a private party, but I'm not certain. This is fairly far outside my area of expertise.) The person threatened with commitment will present the case against it.

I'm not too familiar with the legal standard applied in these cases, though I believe that you're right that it's whether the person is a danger to himself or others. The party seeking commitment will be the burdened party in a case like this.

By the way, for a fairly realistic example of what how a case like this might be litigated, see the original (1948) version of Miracle on 34th Street. Note how in that case, an Assitant D.A. is one arguing commitment, and the case is styled State v. Kringle.

You might be surprised. In many places, attorneys (and sometimes law students acting under attorney supervision) provide pro bono representation to individuals under threat of commitment as part of programs administered by the courts. In other places, I believe these cases are handled by public defender's offices. The person who may be committed can hire a private attorney if he has the funds available. And, of course, the person can always choose to represent himself.

Given that the Joker's pockets contain only "knives and lint," according to The Dark Knight, he probably receives pro bono representation through either a public defender's office or an attorney assigned by the court. Judging from what I know of regular, criminal cases involving infamous defendants, the court probably appoints his representative with extraordinary care, seeking someone with a great deal of expertise, either a very experienced litigator who has handled many commitment cases or a law professor specializing in the law of commitment (and probably criminal law as well).

Of course, the Joker isn't noted for sensible decisions, so he might chose to represent himself, which is likely to result in a pretty short hearing.

Yes. That would fall under the exception I outlined. The exception doesn't apply to Bats himself cause you know he can dodge bullets and stuff, but a normal police officer or soldier faced with an armed assailant, and without a Batman around to pull their *** out of the fire would likely have to shoot the other guy if they wanted to survive. Batman is not Gandhi or Jesus after all; peaceful resistance is not on his agenda, nor is turning the other cheek.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill