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Join us each Tuesday as Bob Ingersoll analyzes how the law
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THE LAW IS A ASS for 05/22/2001
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 96
Originally written as installment # 85 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 669, September 9, 1986 issue
We live in wonderful times!
Okay, gas prices are rising faster than a speeding bullet while the stock market is disappearing faster than Alaskan wildlife preserves. Energy reserves have California Edison singing the theme song to Rawhide, "Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep those blackouts rolling." And there's that whole Temptation Island thing...
But still we live in wonderful times.
Star Trek: Voyager ends tomorrow. Shrek was every bit as good as it looked. And, as additional proof I offer this fact: When I wrote this column back in 1986, the only way I could read the story from All-Star Comics # 25 was to have someone send me a photostatic copy of it. Today, thanks to the wonderful Archives series from DC--such as All Star Archives # 6--I own a copy of the story.
So, see? We live in wonderful times.
What? Tom Green has another movie in 2002...
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 96
by
Bob Ingersoll
Old comics, that's the ticket. Real old stories that nobody cares about anymore. They're safe, 'cause nobody cares about them anymore. I won't get so much hate mail. Stories like, "The Mystery of the Forgotten Crime" from All-Star Comics # 25, the Summer 1945 issue (which was kindly sent to me by DC staffer, E. Nelson Bridwell.)
A mysterious stranger--is there any other kind in comics?--visits the Justice Society. Said stranger tells them that he knows Rob Victor, who twenty years earlier was convicted of murdering Tim Kimball, is innocent. The man has had amnesia and doesn't remember every detail, but he was hit by an automobile earlier that morning which restored part of his memory; enough that he knows Victor is innocent, but not enough to know how he knows. He only knows that if he could remember his name, that would prove Victor was innocent.
The JSA decides to investigate. Meanwhile, another mysterious stranger--this one masked so, yes, apparently there are two kinds of strangers: masked and unmasked--was outside the window and heard everything. And he says he won't let them--whichever "them" he means--get away with it, he'll get them one by one. Whoa, the tension mounts!
The JSA splits up to track down the clues it has. The JSA learns the following facts. Victor and Kimball were at the same dinner party. Kimball was about to marry the girl Victor loved. Victor had too much to drink. Kimball's cousin, Hengast Kimball, who "most benefitted" from Timothy Kimball's death, inadvertently showed Victor his gun, which he kept in a desk drawer. At some later time, everyone heard a shot and when they investigated they found Rob Victor standing over Tim Kimball's body holding the smoking gun. Poor Rob was too drunk to remember what had happened.
Rob held everyone at bay with the gun, then dumped Kimball's body on a boat, set the boat afloat and burned it up. He figured that, if he burned up the body, there would be no corpse, hence no corpus delicti, and no one would be able to convict him. However, the boat didn't burn completely. Oh, there were the charred remains of a corpse which were burned beyond recognition, but it was enough of a corpse to be the corpus delicti. Rob Victor was convicted and sentenced to prison.
The JSA finds out that Rob Victor escaped from prison eighteen years ago. The prison records officially listed him as dead, to protect the prison warden's reputation. They also learn that the DA who prosecuted Victor disappeared mysteriously, just after he discovered the murder weapon only had one bullet in it, a fact that he felt was very important.
The masked stranger keeps popping up. He steals the murder weapon. He tries to kill Hengast Kimball, but Dr. Mid-Nite deflects his aim at the last minute. He helps Johnny Thunder escape a death trap and tells Johnny he wants to kill the Kimballs, and that they killed the DA and buried his body. In addition, he tells the JSA that Hengast Kimball hired some goons to keep the JSA from investigating, a fact that the Flash confirms.
At this point the JSA compares notes and Hawkman announces that he knows who killed Tim Kimball. Do you? Murder competitions, like cruises or parties where the participants compete to solve a murder and win valuable prizes are all the rage now, so I'm going to run a little whodunit competition of my own. And to prove I'm no piker, I'm offering one hundred Gs to the person who wins my contest.
What I'm going to do is discuss the bad law in this story. You knew there had to be some of that, right? While I'm doing that you have to send me a letter telling me 1) Who killed Tim Kimball? 2) Who is the mysterious stranger with amnesia? 3) Who is the mysterious masked stranger? 4) What is the significance of the fact that the murder weapon only had one bullet in it? 5) Why did it take the JSA so long to figure out the answers to these questions? The first person who sends me the correct answer to the five questions, before I reveal them at the end of this column, will win one hundred Gs.
Ready? Here comes the law. Start writing. (I should have thought of this years ago. Everyone who reads my column is either bored with the law discussions or reads it to try and catch me in a mistake. Now no one will read the law part, because they'll all be writing.)
Corpus delicti is a Latin phrase meaning body of the crime. The legal principle of corpus delicti means that the prosecution must prove the body of the crime, before it can convict anyone of the crime. However, "body of the crime" doesn't have to mean a real, dead body. All it means is that the prosecution has to prove that a crime occurred, that is, the elements of crime exist. That, the existence of a crime, is what is meant by the 'body of the crime' or corpus delicti. Honest, the state has to prove a crime occurred, think how awkward it would be otherwise: "Your Honor, we've proven that no crime actually occurred. But heck let's convict the defendant anyway, so we haven't wasted all this time.") The prosecution does not, however, have to establish the corpus delicti by proving there was an actual dead body. If it did, just imagine how inconvenient all those pesky, little non-homicide trials would be. "I'm sorry, Sergeant, I know you caught Benny the Dip with his hand in the man's pocket, but Benny didn't kill anyone. There's no body, so there's no crime. Let him go."
Rob Victor's destroying the corpse wouldn't keep him from being prosecuted any more than his reading Slingers would. But at least if he tried the latter, he could make a good case for insanity. A whole room of people saw Rob standing over what they thought was a dead body and with a gun in his hand. In order to prosecute Rob for murder, the state didn't actually need the body, it could have used the testimony of the eyewitnesses to establish the existence of a murder. The state could have proven the body of the crime without the body of the deceased.
One more thing about burning the body. It also didn't work, because the body didn't burn up completely. Maybe Rob should have dipped the body in Shake 'n Bake and eaten it. Then the corpus delicti would have been the corpus delecta...
No! I can't do it! There's not enough money in the world to make me finish that joke!
I also like the idea that the prison would pretend an escaped murderer had died in order to protect a warden whose incompetence let the man escape. Such concern for others makes you feel all warm inside, doesn't it? Almost enough to let you ignore the fact that they were endangering thousands of lives by letting a convicted murdered roam free.
******
Time's up!
******
Gee, I haven't received any letters answering my questions. I guess nobody wins the one hundred Gs. Too bad!
Here's what happened. Hengast Kimball shot Tim. He intentionally plied Rob Victor with enough alcohol to blur Rob's mind, showed him the gun accidentally on purpose, then, shot Tim and put the smoking gun in Rob's hand to frame him. Both Hawkman and the DA figured this out, because the murder weapon only had one bullet in it. As the gun was Hengast's, he would have known it wasn't loaded, after Tim was shot. He wouldn't have allowed Rob to hold him at bay with an empty gun, unless he didn't want to stop Rob. But he would have wanted to stop Rob, unless he were really the murderer. (Okay, so he would have done the same thing if he forgot how many bullets there were in the gun, or just wanted Rob to get away, because he didn't like Tim. So Hawkman's deductions aren't worth the price of Nth Metal in zero G. Even Ellery Queen messed up once in a while.)
The masked stranger was Rob Victor, who learned that he wasn't guilty, and wanted to get revenge on the Kimballs for framing him. The unmasked stranger was Tim Kimball, whose full memory had only now returned. That's why remembering his name would prove that Rob Victor didn't kill Tim Kimball, Tim wasn't dead.
It appears Tim was only unconscious after Hengast shot him. He woke up on the boat, while a convenient tramp was trying to rob him. Tim knocked out the tramp and left him on the boat. Then, when Rob returned, he set the boat on fire thinking it was Tim's body lying there. But it was the tramp who burned up in the fire and whose body was found. You think that was a coincidence, wait until you read the next paragraph.
Tim Kimball left the boat and wandered around in a daze. Before he could reveal that he was alive, a lightning bolt knocked a tree down on him giving him amnesia. Years later Rob Victor saw Tim Kimball alive. As he was about to talk to Kimball, Tim was hit by a car. This blow partially restored Kimball's memory, so that he sought out the JSA in order to have them clear Rob Victor. Rob put on a mask, the natural act of any rational being who's been on the lam for eighteen years and wouldn't want to attract any attention to himself and followed Kimball. He overheard what Kimball told the JSA, realized that the Kimballs had framed him, and set out to kill them. See, I told you there were more coincidences.
The JSA, so happy that everything has turned out so well, leave Tim and Rob to get on with their lives. And every one lives happily ever after, except your faithful columnist. He's bothered by the fact that the JSA let Rob Victor go. True, Rob didn't kill or even shoot Tim Kimball. But he did burn up the Kimball boat. That's arson, which is a felony. When Rob burned up the boat, he killed the tramp, that Tim had left on it. Causing someone's death while committing a felony like arson is first degree murder. In addition Rob committed the crimes of escape and the attempted murder of Hengast Kimball. But, hell, he spent the last eighteen years on the lam and Hengast was, himself, a murderer, so all was forgiven. Then, there's also the fact that Rob performed the invaluable service of saving the life of Johnny Thunder, the JSA's much-needed comedy relief. Given all this, is it any wonder the JSA felt sorry for Rob and let him go.
Me, I wouldn't have let him go, given that he was an escapee, an attempted murder and an actual murderer. (Gee, does this mean that I have to turn in my Card-Carrying-Bleeding- Heart-Liberal Card?)
Incidentally, the answer to the last question, "Why did it take the JSA so long to figure out this case?" is simple, too. They've got the collective intelligence of Astroturf.
******
ROBERT M. INGERSOLL, comic book collector and legal columnist isn't as dumb as you people think. Even if one of you had sent me in an answer to my contest in time, I had it covered. I never promised to give the winner money, I only promised the winner one hundred Gs. I figure my computer could have printed up one hundred letter Gs in a couple of minutes.
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