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January 20, 2006
The Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford

Killing Us Softly With Their Laws

     Those wacky pro-life Republicans are at it again. This time, some of them are supporting a bill in the Alaska Legislature that will encourage Alaskans to intentionally shoot each other. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

     The bill is HB 314, sponsored by Representative John Coghill (R-North Pole). He is the House Majority Leader, so this bill has a real chance of becoming law. The bill is subject to amendment as it works its way through the Legislature, so my comments here are based upon the version of the bill as it was originally filed.

     At the heart of the bill is a provision that will substantially increase the number of circumstances where a killer can assert “self defense” as a defense against homicide charges. The defense is available even if the victim is completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

     Remember the good old days when Republicans were actually outraged by the occasional case when a killer was able to escape punishment because of a loophole in the law? Forget about those days. Now they want to create a new loophole the size of Alaska.

     Historically, self-defense was a tightly drawn and narrowly limited defense for situations when killing the other person was the only remaining option. You had to retreat from the attacker if that option was safely available to you, unless you were at home. The bill introduced by Representative Coghill significantly expands the number of circumstances where you can use deadly force to protect yourself or others.

     Coghill’s bill also says you have no obligation to retreat from a threat, even if you know to a certainty that you can do so with complete safety, if you are in any place where you have a right to be. Under this bill, if you are on a public street, and you are confronted by an attacker from whom you can retreat with complete safety, you can shoot to kill without even trying to retreat. If you reasonably but erroneously misunderstand the situation, and kill an innocent person, you still get to use the defense.

     But wait, there’s more. Even if you shoot a completely innocent person, you not only get the expanded defense against criminal liability, you also get immunity from civil liability.

     For example, suppose the shooter misses the bad guy, and kills an innocent bystander instead. The grieving widow and children who have lost their blameless loved one and breadwinner will also lose their right to sue the killer in a civil action. If they do sue, and lose the case under the immunity provision of this bill, they will be held liable for one hundred percent of the killers court costs, attorney’s fees, and lost income. We wouldn’t want the killer of an innocent person to be inconvenienced by a pesky civil lawsuit now, would we?

     There is no death penalty under Alaska state law. Yet this bill would give every man, woman and child in Alaska the legal right to kill another person as long as they “reasonably” believe that the killing is necessary to prevent certain types of crimes. Some of those crimes are far less serious than homicide. This bill says that we encourage a greater crime (homicide) in order to prevent a lesser crime, such as robbery in the second degree.

     The fundamental underlying reason for having the state prosecute criminal acts was to move away from the bad old days when these matters were dealt with through private vengeance. Instead of having the aggrieved parties deciding who was guilty, and what an appropriate punishment would be, we created a system in which these matters could be sorted out by an impartial decision maker.

     What Coghill’s bill does is to encourage people to bypass the courts, and move back to a system of private vengeance. While the courts are not perfect, they make fewer mistakes than are made by people who are caught up in the heat of an emotionally charged situation. If Coghill’s bill is passed, innocent people will die. Apparently the Coghill version of the right to life only lasts until birth.

     Everyone who supports a safer, saner Alaska will want to oppose this bill.













Kevin Morford is a political activist and an attorney in private practice in the Anchorage area.  He can be reached at kmorford@insurgent49.com.
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Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

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by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





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in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.