Power Tools for Murderers

[yeloson]

Judge rules it's "ok to taser" in order to get DNA:

Smith was handcuffed and sitting on the floor of Niagara Falls Police Headquarters when he was zapped with the 50,000- volt electronic stun gun after he insisted he would not give a DNA sample.

72 year old woman, tasered over speeding ticket.

ETA:

Broken back? Taser!

Researching Taxes? Taser!

Comments

[the_future_modernes]

Th tasering was not made out of malicious intent, you see. Remind me agion why I should pay attention to teh police.

[yeloson]

It's like the "intent" argument taken to the Nth level. "It wasn't torture, there was no malicious intent!" at which point, serial killers become completely innocent in the eyes of the law!

This is just one of teh many reasons that I'd like the USA to STFU about leading the free world

[the_future_modernes]

Hullbaloo points out that its the same reasoning that we used to authorise torture:

The argument is the same as the OLC used when it authorized torture of terrorist suspects. As long as the intent is to get information and not to injure the suspect or leave any lasting damage, then they could use pain to coerce the suspect into compliance.

[the_future_modernes]

I had read the broken back one before, but teh taxes? Dear heavns.

[inalasahl]

Although there are no New York cases specifically dealing with using a Taser to accomplish that, the judge did find a Wyoming case where a court ruled it was legal to use a Taser to force a suspect to open his hand for a search.
I admit I know very little about certain aspects of the court system, but since when do New York judges comb Wyoming cases for precedents? I mean, if the prosecution brought it up that would be one thing, but this sounds like the "judge" was deliberately trolling for a scrap to hang his decision on.

The intent thing is just scary.