Has the justice system failed? Absolutely. Morally, some rando killing The Joker is well beyond justified at this point.
After all, when the justice system fails, it falls upon the victim to find justice for themselves.
In its basic definition, the U.S. is a failed state in the DC universe. The government contract has broken down, it no longer offers protection for citizens at the cost of obedience.
That being said? A better system has yet to show up. The Justice Lords might have been on the right track at first, but they quickly fell to being too emotional to do the job properly and became petty tyrants instead.
I don't think a Justice Lords sort of superheroic coup is necessary to straighten DC's supervillainy situation out.
If I were a high government official I'd propose a few reforms.
Firstly, special units with special training and equipment designed for dealing with supervillains. Something like Worm's PRT, but with no interest in upholding any unwritten rules. (If a villain uses lethal force against them they can expect to get lethal force in return, just like regular criminals and regular cops.)
Some supervillain threats might be too great for people with special training and equipment to deal with, but I can't think of anything in Batman's whole rogue's gallery that couldn't be dealt with by military level force except maybe Clayface.
Secondly, something's got to be done about the revolving door prisons. I can think of three options. Other people might be able to add to the list.
Make the prisons a whole hell of a lot more secure. The doability of this might hinge on whether exotic means like shuffling people off-world are available. (Throw them in the phantom zone, make a deal with the Green Lanterns, whatever.) Given the sheer scope of threats in DC that might attempt a breakout I think this is the least viable option, though.
Get liberal with application of the death penalty for using superpowers to commit the worst crimes; murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, etc. They can't escape if they're dead, and that would get rid of the really problematic villains. This might seem distasteful, but one of the big reasons why execution was a whole lot more common for much of history is that long term imprisonment wasn't an option in much of the world. If a crime was serious enough that you couldn't afford to force someone to pay compensation somehow and then release them death was pretty much the only alternative available. If you have no way to keep the worst offenders imprisoned and can't afford to have them running around because they'll surely kill again, then executing them is the rational and (I would argue) moral choice.
Find someone with mind control powers of some sort willing to work on the side of the angels, and reform the villains into decent human beings whether they want it or not. Obviously this is contingent on having some source of irreversible mind control. People might argue that this is morally much the same thing as execution. I'll leave that debate for philosophers, but it's inarguable that this approach doesn't require killing prisoners and is very resource efficient. Every converted villain is another super available to protect the world from all those nasty threats the DC universe has. You can of course attempt conventional rehabilitation first, and there are some villains that could work for, but there are an awful lot of villains in DC that are just lost causes.
Edit:
As for the point earlier that the superheroes and cops can't be blamed for the justice system fucking up, I can and do blame them for one thing. The whole bit about how they can't be judge, jury, and executioner?
Whoever first wrote that as a justification for heroes and cops not killing actively murderous villains in the process of trying to kill people wasn't really up on law or moral philosophy.
It is both lawful and ethically and morally permissible to shoot someone who is trying to kill people. Or commit other terrible crimes. It's codified in law as the self defense/defense of another exception to the various forms of homicide. Morally, if someone can stop a murderer from murdering more and doesn't because of blind adherence to some absolute 'thou shalt not kill' edict, they fail at not only moral philosophy but basic understanding of cause and effect.
To refuse to kill in any circumstance 'because it's wrong' is an uninformed, even childlike understanding of morality. The higher moral good is saving innocent lives, not refusing to kill people. Villains like the Joker should never have been spared lethal force when apprehended in the first place. They would have attempted to use lethal force, then found themselves met with it in kind and died.
The Justice Lords might have been on the right track at first, but they quickly fell to being too emotional to do the job properly and became petty tyrants instead.
I'd personally love to see a version of the Justice Lords where Barry is still alive (so probably with a different name) but they still decide that they need to deal more aggressively with the whole Failed State problem and screw what the powers that be think.
Not necessarily a full coup, but going in and dealing actual justice to the big problems instead of slapping a bandaid on so the profitable villains can be reused.
The Justice Lords might have been on the right track at first, but they quickly fell to being too emotional to do the job properly and became petty tyrants instead
I don't think a Justice Lords sort of superheroic coup is necessary to straighten DC's supervillainy situation out.
If I were a high government official I'd propose a few reforms.
Firstly, special units with special training and equipment designed for dealing with supervillains. Something like Worm's PRT, but with no interest in upholding any unwritten rules. (If a villain uses lethal force against them they can expect to get lethal force in return, just like regular criminals and regular cops.)
Some supervillain threats might be too great for people with special training and equipment to deal with, but I can't think of anything in Batman's whole rogue's gallery that couldn't be dealt with by military level force except maybe Clayface.
Secondly, something's got to be done about the revolving door prisons. I can think of three options. Other people might be able to add to the list.
Make the prisons a whole hell of a lot more secure. The doability of this might hinge on whether exotic means like shuffling people off-world are available. (Throw them in the phantom zone, make a deal with the Green Lanterns, whatever.) Given the sheer scope of threats in DC that might attempt a breakout I think this is the least viable option, though.
Get liberal with application of the death penalty for using superpowers to commit the worst crimes; murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, etc. They can't escape if they're dead, and that would get rid of the really problematic villains. This might seem distasteful, but one of the big reasons why execution was a whole lot more common for much of history is that long term imprisonment wasn't an option in much of the world. If a crime was serious enough that you couldn't afford to force someone to pay compensation somehow and then release them death was pretty much the only alternative available. If you have no way to keep the worst offenders imprisoned and can't afford to have them running around because they'll surely kill again, then executing them is the rational and (I would argue) moral choice.
Find someone with mind control powers of some sort willing to work on the side of the angels, and reform the villains into decent human beings whether they want it or not. Obviously this is contingent on having some source of irreversible mind control. People might argue that this is morally much the same thing as execution. I'll leave that debate for philosophers, but it's inarguable that this approach doesn't require killing prisoners and is very resource efficient. Every converted villain is another super available to protect the world from all those nasty threats the DC universe has. You can of course attempt conventional rehabilitation first, and there are some villains that could work for, but there are an awful lot of villains in DC that are just lost causes.
Edit:
As for the point earlier that the superheroes and cops can't be blamed for the justice system fucking up, I can and do blame them for one thing. The whole bit about how they can't be judge, jury, and executioner?
Whoever first wrote that as a justification for heroes and cops not killing actively murderous villains in the process of trying to kill people wasn't really up on law or moral philosophy.
It is both lawful and ethically and morally permissible to shoot someone who is trying to kill people. Or commit other terrible crimes. It's codified in law as the self defense/defense of another exception to the various forms of homicide. Morally, if someone can stop a murderer from murdering more and doesn't because of blind adherence to some absolute 'thou shalt not kill' edict, they fail at not only moral philosophy but basic understanding of cause and effect.
To refuse to kill in any circumstance 'because it's wrong' is an uninformed, even childlike understanding of morality. The higher moral good is saving innocent lives, not refusing to kill people. Villains like the Joker should never have been spared lethal force when apprehended in the first place. They would have attempted to use lethal force, then found themselves met with it in kind and died.
Those are all the smart decisions... but DC and Marvel are of the (somewhat realistic to me) stance that a decent chunk of the people seeking power and authority in government will use said power to piss all over those who they don't like. Government follows culture... culture is guided by media and politics. So all it would take for something like batman getting labelled a villain is one decent frame job by a crimelord which gains media coverage and x/y/z politicians will use that to demand that he be taken in.
That is a paradox that I find to be rather interesting in comic book settings. You have the heroes who are trying to right the wrongs of an inefficient government... but a government that can handle those wrongs will likely do its utmost to regain the monopoly on violence/authority and place those with powers under their authority... Yet politics and power will ensure that those heroes will either leave or bend their morality... but if a government has the ability to hunt down villains and remove corruption then those heroes are not needed...
Those are all the smart decisions... but DC and Marvel are of the (somewhat realistic to me) stance that a decent chunk of the people seeking power and authority in government will use said power to piss all over those who they don't like. Government follows culture... culture is guided by media and politics. So all it would take for something like batman getting labelled a villain is one decent frame job by a crimelord which gains media coverage and x/y/z politicians will use that to demand that he be taken in.
That is a paradox that I find to be rather interesting in comic book settings. You have the heroes who are trying to right the wrongs of an inefficient government... but a government that can handle those wrongs will likely do its utmost to regain the monopoly on violence/authority and place those with powers under their authority... Yet politics and power will ensure that those heroes will either leave or bend their morality... but if a government has the ability to hunt down villains and remove corruption then those heroes are not needed...
I would expect that a government facing supervillains would err on the side of overreaction, rather than apathy. Politicians have powerful electoral incentives to want to be seen to be doing something when a crisis arises. Everybody just kind of shrugging and continuing on with business as usual when Joker blows up another building or whatever doesn't feel like the way real humans or a real government would react, to me. I'd expect swelling police budgets, escalating militarization of police or outright domestic use of military units, recruitment of superhumans into government service to combat the threat, and (if things go down a dark road) public fear and repression of supers in general like some of the X-Men storylines.
HAHAHA! It actually worked! It seems all anyone needs to do to break Alchemist's toad spell is just get a girl to kiss the toad. That is a big weakness but not completely crippling. It's not like his enemies can quickly get a girl to kiss the toads to turn them back before he turns the girl into a toad too lol. I wonder if the kisser has to be a princess or someone of a high enough social ranking. It might have only worked because she was an assassin princess or something along those lines.
Ok... i feel like i need to way in on this No Killing thing... at the end of the day beyond personal morals you need to remember, its not his job or responsibility to judge the lives criminals. He is a fucking super swat officer and a god damn maveric he has caught the joker hundreds of times and handed them over to the proper authoraties and you know what they do? They send him to an INSANE ASYLAM not prison where he should be going an insane asylam for the mentaly ill. He's a man who has commited some horendus crimes against humanity and has more than met the threshold for the death penalty so with all of the times he's been caught and turned over to the authoraties even across state lines and at the international level. Its the Justice system's failure when he escapes and does it all again. Not batman and or any super hero hell not even some random cop wjo takes him in. It was their job to sentince him and they have had ample chance to reconsider.
Actually, you said it, the Joker is legally insane and gets off on the insanity defense. The system just isn't set up to deal with a lunatic that can't be safely contained.
What suspends my disbelief is that whatever State contains Gotham hasn't changed the law so that anybody who repeatedly escapes from the mental institution and kills again can be put to death as too dangerous to try to contain with something like a "3 strikes" law. The same could be done with regular criminals sentenced to life in States that otherwise ban the death penalty.
It would only apply to people like the Joker, and only if they escape more than twice and kill or severely injure somebody. Also the criminals would have a chance to convince a judge for an exception in extenuating circumstances when they are convicted of the new crimes.
I know it's Watsonian vs Doyalist explanations, and I don't read a lot of D.C. fanfic, almost all of which are crossovers, but I've yet to see a sane law like that being passed and exploring the effects on the revolving door.
Yes, it would mean that the regular criminals would probably fight to the death to avoid capture if they've escaped multiple times.
I also carefully limited it to repeat escapees who kill or maim again to protect the Richard Kimble's of the world. No having Richard Kimble escape, commit fraud, B&E, petty theft, and eluding police suddenly getting a death penalty for those minor crimes committed while on the run.
Oh i totally get that. Its more a matter of fixing the goverment and sorting out the Justice League so they can keep doing what they are doing without it being a weird grey area. But we have people like Amanda Waller taking reasonable conserns and taking the absolut worst aproach and meathods to counter them. A Failed State indeed.
Just once, I'd like to see the government instead of turning their superweapons or supersolider infiltrators on the Justice League or equivalent private/independent hero organization, I'd like to see them prioritize organizations like the League of Assassins/Shadows, the Legion of Doom, the Injustice League, The Light, etc.
Similarly, I'd like to see the anti-supers organization prioritize the villains instead of causing trouble for the heroes.
In its basic definition, the U.S. is a failed state in the DC universe. The government contract has broken down, it no longer offers protection for citizens at the cost of obedience.
That's the basic premise of all Superhero-vigilante settings.
The government is evil and/or incompetent so the vigilantes step up.
This gets weird when you have storylines like Justice Lords or Civil War where the Superheroes take the role of government.
They immediately become evil and/or incompetent.
After all, if you had a story where the government fails, and superpowered people take over, that's not a superhero story, it's a story about a tyrant with superpowers taking over a nation.
Even if they're justified and pretend to respect some form of democratic government, it only works as long as that one person/group chooses to obey every single order from it.
I don't think a Justice Lords sort of superheroic coup is necessary to straighten DC's supervillainy situation out.
If I were a high government official I'd propose a few reforms.
Firstly, special units with special training and equipment designed for dealing with supervillains. Something like Worm's PRT, but with no interest in upholding any unwritten rules. (If a villain uses lethal force against them they can expect to get lethal force in return, just like regular criminals and regular cops.)
Some supervillain threats might be too great for people with special training and equipment to deal with, but I can't think of anything in Batman's whole rogue's gallery that couldn't be dealt with by military level force except maybe Clayface.
Secondly, something's got to be done about the revolving door prisons. I can think of three options. Other people might be able to add to the list.
Make the prisons a whole hell of a lot more secure. The doability of this might hinge on whether exotic means like shuffling people off-world are available. (Throw them in the phantom zone, make a deal with the Green Lanterns, whatever.) Given the sheer scope of threats in DC that might attempt a breakout I think this is the least viable option, though.
Get liberal with application of the death penalty for using superpowers to commit the worst crimes; murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, etc. They can't escape if they're dead, and that would get rid of the really problematic villains. This might seem distasteful, but one of the big reasons why execution was a whole lot more common for much of history is that long term imprisonment wasn't an option in much of the world. If a crime was serious enough that you couldn't afford to force someone to pay compensation somehow and then release them death was pretty much the only alternative available. If you have no way to keep the worst offenders imprisoned and can't afford to have them running around because they'll surely kill again, then executing them is the rational and (I would argue) moral choice.
Find someone with mind control powers of some sort willing to work on the side of the angels, and reform the villains into decent human beings whether they want it or not. Obviously this is contingent on having some source of irreversible mind control. People might argue that this is morally much the same thing as execution. I'll leave that debate for philosophers, but it's inarguable that this approach doesn't require killing prisoners and is very resource efficient. Every converted villain is another super available to protect the world from all those nasty threats the DC universe has. You can of course attempt conventional rehabilitation first, and there are some villains that could work for, but there are an awful lot of villains in DC that are just lost causes.
Edit:
As for the point earlier that the superheroes and cops can't be blamed for the justice system fucking up, I can and do blame them for one thing. The whole bit about how they can't be judge, jury, and executioner?
Whoever first wrote that as a justification for heroes and cops not killing actively murderous villains in the process of trying to kill people wasn't really up on law or moral philosophy.
It is both lawful and ethically and morally permissible to shoot someone who is trying to kill people. Or commit other terrible crimes. It's codified in law as the self defense/defense of another exception to the various forms of homicide. Morally, if someone can stop a murderer from murdering more and doesn't because of blind adherence to some absolute 'thou shalt not kill' edict, they fail at not only moral philosophy but basic understanding of cause and effect.
To refuse to kill in any circumstance 'because it's wrong' is an uninformed, even childlike understanding of morality. The higher moral good is saving innocent lives, not refusing to kill people. Villains like the Joker should never have been spared lethal force when apprehended in the first place. They would have attempted to use lethal force, then found themselves met with it in kind and died.
There are old legal traditions that could be unboxed for this purpose. Outlawry and publicized trials en absentia.
A masked villain goes around killing a bunch of people, and the government posts a "Wanted, Dead or Alive" bounty on said villain after trying that villain for their crimes in a televized trial in an undisclosed location with a well funded and experienced defense attorney with at least six professional and character witnesses for their competence who are themselves in good standing with the Bar. Legal defense fund will be capped at something like five million dollars (federally subsidized.)
If convicted, that's it. You're now Outside of The Law, and it is no longer illegal for anyone to walk up to you and shoot you in the face in broad daylight. Not only not illegal... depending on the criminal they might get a few million dollars from Uncle Sam. No questions asked.
Appeals process can put this on hold but only the actual defendant can initiate the appeal.
For lesser supervillain criminals you do something moderately similar, designating them Wanted Alive and that makes them basically street vigilante catnip.
Then you just require vigilantes to be licensed outlaw bounty hunters.
HAHAHA! It actually worked! It seems all anyone needs to do to break Alchemist's toad spell is just get a girl to kiss the toad. That is a big weakness but not completely crippling. It's not like his enemies can quickly get a girl to kiss the toads to turn them back before he turns the girl into a toad too lol. I wonder if the kisser has to be a princess or someone of a high enough social ranking. It might have only worked because she was an assassin princess or something along those lines.
Yep, Alchemist has three debuff spells (Four if he uses Ironize correctly, but that one is temporary) and they can all be broken without magical means.
Toad does what it says, and can be cured with a Maiden's Kiss. In most of the FF games, this is just an item without an image, but in Final Fantasy Tactics it takes the form of a bust of a young woman's head.
Break, the FF version of Flesh to Stone, has a significantly lower accuracy rate but turns the target to a non-living statue. It can be cured by stabbing said statue with a golden needle.
Curse, so far unused, reduces the targets stats by half. It's cured by going to church. (Actually by use of a cross, and crucifix necklaces are surprisingly common...)
Metamagic: Lock prevents them from being magically dispelled by those weaker than Alchemist... But not from being broken by the spells intended counter-means.
And how familiar Ra's is with 'The Princess and the Toad' I can't say. He might've watched the disney classic while raising one of his kids... Or he might've heard about it when the whole thing happened over in Europe back in the 'Good' old days. Either way, the man is at least familiar enough with magic to have tried having Jade give it a smooch.
I remember this argument about the incompetence of the government in DC and Marvel. I am not that involved in Marvel except that Marvel Canada is Hell and that the hate on Mutants is weird because there are a lot of beings with the same thing.
Anyways, I had the idea of a story about some guy who lands as the governor of the state where Gotham and Metropolis are situated in. It's supposed to be a comedy with a guy handling the paperwork and the money involved with fixing damages. And asking the age-old question of why does Superman keeps fighting in the city when he could move them out of the city. However, I can't write jokes to save my life and my lack of experience interacting with individuals in various countries.
Plus I know nothing about the laws in the United States of America so yeah.
You can't know less about law than the comic book writers at this point, and it's been my experience that the people in the forums are incredibly helpful and knowledgeable.
So does anyone else find it super hypocritical that Ras is upset at the destruction caused but seems to be ignoring that it only happened because he was trying to enslave someone?
Also super akward moment when artemis calls alchemist to heal her sister when?
There are old legal traditions that could be unboxed for this purpose. Outlawry and publicized trials en absentia.
A masked villain goes around killing a bunch of people, and the government posts a "Wanted, Dead or Alive" bounty on said villain after trying that villain for their crimes in a televized trial in an undisclosed location with a well funded and experienced defense attorney with at least six professional and character witnesses for their competence who are themselves in good standing with the Bar. Legal defense fund will be capped at something like five million dollars (federally subsidized.)
If convicted, that's it. You're now Outside of The Law, and it is no longer illegal for anyone to walk up to you and shoot you in the face in broad daylight. Not only not illegal... depending on the criminal they might get a few million dollars from Uncle Sam. No questions asked.
Appeals process can put this on hold but only the actual defendant can initiate the appeal.
For lesser supervillain criminals you do something moderately similar, designating them Wanted Alive and that makes them basically street vigilante catnip.
Then you just require vigilantes to be licensed outlaw bounty hunters.
Two things wrong with this.
One, the "Wanted: Dead or Alive" never meant the same thing as the "Kill Orders" in Worm.
Wantedead or Alive did not give you license to go out and murder the person.
It was mostly put out by private sources who indicated they would pay it out if the person was captured or killed resisting arrest.
However, bounty hunters did not have any more legal rights to kill the offender than a police officer. In some States it didn't even grant that much in special exemptions.
Look up the death of Jesse James and the trial of Robert Ford. Ford misunderstood this key fact about the "Wanted: Dead or Alive" and shot Jesse James in the back hoping to collect the bounty. He was convinced of murder.
Second, the "tried in absentia" goes against the 6th Amendment to the Constitution.
Sixth Amendment said:
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Next is who is going to pay that five million dollars, and is that $5 million fund for a single trial or per year for all such villains?
I ask because if it is per person or trial, that is far more generous than any other defendants in the system who get attorneys through the public defender's office. The vast majority of criminal trials don't have that kind of budget. If you're using the OJ Simpson trial as a guide, don't, that was one of the most expensive criminal trials on record.
The public defender system is chronically underfunded and often overworked. Why would villains being tried in absentia get such generous terms where the henchmen have to make due withe public defenders on a shoestring budget.
If it's $5,000,000 per year, spread out over 50 States that's $100,000/State (which probably would be divided differently with States with smaller villain populations getting less, but let's not make this more complicated.), and that number gets divided for every trial.
Furthermore, I just did a quick Google search, and Cook County, Illinois (where Chicago is) alone spends $80 million on the Pubic Defender's Office and it is considered overworked but they can't afford to hire more people.
You can't know less about law than the comic book writers at this point, and it's been my experience that the people in the forums are incredibly helpful and knowledgeable.
Just keep in mind that the 21st century has a major advantage that even 1990's writers couldn't utilize when it comes to writing legal stuff.
The Internet, which makes searching laws far simpler. Even in the late '90s, most of the laws on the internet were behind paywalls. These days you can usually look things up easily for free, and most local libraries have database portals to get behind some of the paywalls.
So if you have any doubts about something, be smarter than Wildbow and look it up.
Although I have two written/printed sources of the Constitution and Bill of Rights available to me dating back from when I was a kid in grade school, I just did a quick internet search to copy/paste the text instead of retyping it. Faster than getting up and digging it out of the 2-volume dictionary appendix my dad bought when I was in 1st grade sitting on the bookshelf near my computer (I still rarely use it if I'm reading a paper book and find an unfamiliar word when the computers are off. Rare these days, and 3/4 of the time the word isn't in the dictionary as it's either made-up for the setting or a foreign word the author is either using to be gratuitous or a loan word. Still only works out to a couple times a year)
The Joker has very limited superpowers that are not even remotely sufficient to escape from containment designed specifically to contain his unique capabilities, and Wayne has done plenty of things way more outlandish than funding a Joker containment unit and the required staff considerations. They could even provide mental health care with some limitations on privacy. The thing is? None of that would work, because it is not more possible to contain Joker than it is to kill him than it is to permanently kill Batman, or even get the better of Batman most of the time... . The Joker is protected by narrative forces. If ever one truly manages to permanently erase The Joker? Then they will become The Joker, it is inevitable.
With narrative forces in play, whatever permanent solution one thinks that they hat to The Joker's antics? It won't work.
Absent narrative forces? The Joker just isn't that big of a problem. His sprees aren't nearly as unstoppable and his ability to escape from confinement starts at "very little" and becomes pretty much impossible if he reaches two escapes and they realise just how ridiculous a threat he is in comparison to what he is.
For "just kill The Joker" to be an issue, then things have to be ridiculous enough that doing so is no longer an option.
Two things wrong with this.
One, the "Wanted: Dead or Alive" never meant the same thing as the "Kill Orders" in Worm.
Wantedead or Alive did not give you license to go out and murder the person.
It was mostly put out by private sources who indicated they would pay it out if the person was captured or killed resisting arrest.
However, bounty hunters did not have any more legal rights to kill the offender than a police officer. In some States it didn't even grant that much in special exemptions.
Look up the death of Jesse James and the trial of Robert Ford. Ford misunderstood this key fact about the "Wanted: Dead or Alive" and shot Jesse James in the back hoping to collect the bounty. He was convinced of murder.
Second, the "tried in absentia" goes against the 6th Amendment to the Constitution.
Next is who is going to pay that five million dollars, and is that $5 million fund for a single trial or per year for all such villains?
I ask because if it is per person or trial, that is far more generous than any other defendants in the system who get attorneys through the public defender's office. The vast majority of criminal trials don't have that kind of budget. If you're using the OJ Simpson trial as a guide, don't, that was one of the most expensive criminal trials on record.
The public defender system is chronically underfunded and often overworked. Why would villains being tried in absentia get such generous terms where the henchmen have to make due withe public defenders on a shoestring budget.
If it's $5 per year, spread out over 50 States that's $500,000/State (which probably would be divided differently with States with smaller villain populations getting less, but let's not make this more complicated.), and that number gets divided for every trial.
Furthermore, I just did a quick Google search, and Cook County, Illinois (where Chicago is) alone spends $80 million on the Pubic Defender's Office and it is considered overworked but they can't afford to hire more people.
1) You missed a lurch. Look up the legal definition of Outlawry. That is where the ability to simply kill the target comes from: having the protections of the law removed from said individual. It's also why the conviction is necessary; one can only have their protections under the law removed judicially after conviction.
2) Yes, trial in absentia would require a constitutional amendment. They're superpowers. Existing legal systems weren't designed to handle that -- which is literally why amendments exist.
3) Dead. Caged. Removed from society is what matters. Anyone who keeps revolving door the prisons and going on killing sprees? Declared Outlaw and bounties for them posted with equal dollar values for their corpse. Eventually some civic minded individual will "fix the glitch."
4) I expressly stated where the five million comes from: federal subsidy. I didn't spell it out expressly but it would be per defendant-case. Since this system would be reserved for "the worst of the worst", having federal subsidy and such is a protection against the abuse of the introduction of trial-en-absentia into a system which was not built with it in mind.
5) The very fact that the Public Defender's office is overworked is the very reason for the subsidy for Outlaw declaration en absentia trials.
There are no problems here. The solution is pretty clear and derived from standing and historical legal practices. (Other countries allow trial en absentia, and while no nation today allows formal Outlaw declarations, they were used frequently in the late 1800's in the US Federal Territories.)
Worm's Kill Order system on the other hand is utterly depraved and ruinous to the Rule of Law. Courts or exigent circumstances can decide if a criminal is to die. Not Police chiefs and political appointees: that's simply summary execution without due process. (Note that my model first ensures trial, and further has defined appeals process. Worm Kill Orders do not.) To add insult to injury the idea that PRT Troopers are incapable of using live fire ammunition against "active shooter" villains without Kill Orders is one of the more grimderpy forced four color-ism of the setting. That's not how policing has ever worked.
Nah, Ultra-powerful best goddess Terra-Tan was the one who designed the ID system and the dungeon's contents. Not that it's going to save Alchemist from Ra's wrath at this point.
Movies don't count for cartoon/comics characterization. If it did every Batman would be a liar of the highest degree, because as far as I'm aware every live action movie Batman has killed at least one person, almost all of them deliberately.
I don't think a Justice Lords sort of superheroic coup is necessary to straighten DC's supervillainy situation out.
If I were a high government official I'd propose a few reforms.
Firstly, special units with special training and equipment designed for dealing with supervillains. Something like Worm's PRT, but with no interest in upholding any unwritten rules. (If a villain uses lethal force against them they can expect to get lethal force in return, just like regular criminals and regular cops.)
Some supervillain threats might be too great for people with special training and equipment to deal with, but I can't think of anything in Batman's whole rogue's gallery that couldn't be dealt with by military level force except maybe Clayface.
Secondly, something's got to be done about the revolving door prisons. I can think of three options. Other people might be able to add to the list.
Make the prisons a whole hell of a lot more secure. The doability of this might hinge on whether exotic means like shuffling people off-world are available. (Throw them in the phantom zone, make a deal with the Green Lanterns, whatever.) Given the sheer scope of threats in DC that might attempt a breakout I think this is the least viable option, though.
Get liberal with application of the death penalty for using superpowers to commit the worst crimes; murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, etc. They can't escape if they're dead, and that would get rid of the really problematic villains. This might seem distasteful, but one of the big reasons why execution was a whole lot more common for much of history is that long term imprisonment wasn't an option in much of the world. If a crime was serious enough that you couldn't afford to force someone to pay compensation somehow and then release them death was pretty much the only alternative available. If you have no way to keep the worst offenders imprisoned and can't afford to have them running around because they'll surely kill again, then executing them is the rational and (I would argue) moral choice.
Find someone with mind control powers of some sort willing to work on the side of the angels, and reform the villains into decent human beings whether they want it or not. Obviously this is contingent on having some source of irreversible mind control. People might argue that this is morally much the same thing as execution. I'll leave that debate for philosophers, but it's inarguable that this approach doesn't require killing prisoners and is very resource efficient. Every converted villain is another super available to protect the world from all those nasty threats the DC universe has. You can of course attempt conventional rehabilitation first, and there are some villains that could work for, but there are an awful lot of villains in DC that are just lost causes.
Edit:
As for the point earlier that the superheroes and cops can't be blamed for the justice system fucking up, I can and do blame them for one thing. The whole bit about how they can't be judge, jury, and executioner?
Whoever first wrote that as a justification for heroes and cops not killing actively murderous villains in the process of trying to kill people wasn't really up on law or moral philosophy.
It is both lawful and ethically and morally permissible to shoot someone who is trying to kill people. Or commit other terrible crimes. It's codified in law as the self defense/defense of another exception to the various forms of homicide. Morally, if someone can stop a murderer from murdering more and doesn't because of blind adherence to some absolute 'thou shalt not kill' edict, they fail at not only moral philosophy but basic understanding of cause and effect.
To refuse to kill in any circumstance 'because it's wrong' is an uninformed, even childlike understanding of morality. The higher moral good is saving innocent lives, not refusing to kill people. Villains like the Joker should never have been spared lethal force when apprehended in the first place. They would have attempted to use lethal force, then found themselves met with it in kind and died.
Every comics universe has multiples of these folk running around.
DC has both Checkmate and the DEO and whichever department ran the Suicide Squad, off the top of my head. Marvel has SHIELD and Weapon X and Department H and god knows what else.
They often end up as part of the problem. Just ask the XMen about the Sentinel program, or ask Batman about Brother Eye.
You are talking of a universe where Embodiments of fundamental forces occasionally take a hand in things for the giggles.
Nekron will decide to bring back every villain you ever executed, with superpowers. Demons from Hell stage overt and covert invasions. Fifth dimensional demiurges "lose" their power to the Joker. The Spectre is running around nuking randos.
Thats just DC.
Death often has a revolving door for narratively significant characters, heroes or villains, and often enough they come back with a boost of some sort, and a grudge. The death penalty is actively contraindicated if you consider the possibility of the dead guy cutting a deal with the underworld and coming back as the infernal equivalent of Captain Marvel.
PS
If you ever have the opportunity, read Greg Rucka's run on Checkmate.
That was glorious.
Serling, it turned out, would be a guest of Mount Justice for a few days as her apartment was retrofitted with whatever security measures Batman could fit in to it.
Which was probably both more and less than what she'd be expecting.
Secured door bar? Yes.
Automated laser turret? Maybe.
Today was apparently the first day of school for many of the kids. For three of them, it was their first day going to a human school at all. The green Martian girl and the two silent, almost expresionless superhuman teens.
That left her alone with the magician, Alchemist, and the World War Two era android, Red Tornado.
Surprisingly, they were rather good company.
They accomplished that by being -quiet- company.
Red Tornado had informed her of where he could be found, a small apartment in the mountain above the Ops Center.
And Alchemist just loaned her his laptop while he was working on something spread across nine sheets of paper arranged in a three by three grid on the table in the rec room.
It was kind of nice, even if her mind kept stuttering back to last night. It was calm here, quiet. The most noise in here actually came from either her typing or the calico cat laying against her side purring.
Occasionally she'd catch Alchemist mutter something to himself, a quick 'That's not right' or sometimes an 'Almost, I think'. She had no idea what he was working on, but at least it kept him busy and not bothering her.
She was keeping herself busy, too. Checking the news in Star City. And, well...
She wasn't even reported as missing.
She didn't have many friends, but seriously? None of them had noticed she was gone? She knew she wasn't exactly personable, and she wasn't exactly good at communicating...
Huh. Well.
She may have partially been at fault, but at this point it's a matter of scale. She'd never just disappeared for a week in the past.
She lifted her eyes from the laptop screen to look at the boy, Alchemist for a moment. Watching him transcribe his messy and oft corrected scribbling to fresh sheets of paper.
Well, he had told her to do whatever she wanted on his computer after all...
His bookmarks weren't terribly interesting. Material and density reference charts, conversion calculators... How-to videos on wiring and plumbing? Even an interesting article explaining that the maximum theoretical potential output of a standard sized solar panel would cap out close to four-hundred watts between the suns intensity and the opacity of the Earth's atmosphere.
Actually a rather interesting read, though what he needed it for she had no idea.
And she got distracted, wonderful.
Alright, what would the little perv have in his history?
More of the same. Youtube videos, news, science articles... He spent a good amount of time on a message board called 'Relativistic Speed', but it was just people arguing about how the superheroes could use their powers better.
Wait, there was one. Blonde chicks in glasses... And it was baby chickens with drawn on glasses. Hilarious.
He had a lot of entries to Gotham1stbankonline? She clicked that and...
"What? What!? How?!" He had more in his bank account than she did! By several orders of magnitude!
"You okay over there?" She looked up at him. Wearing scruffy, grease-stained jeans and a well worn shirt. Back down to the monitor with the nine digit figure, then up at him again.
"How do you have two-hundred and fifty million dollars?!" He just blinked at her, processing that for a moment before comprehension dawned on him.
"I stripped Fort Knox down to the bedrock and then hit the bullion repository next door in an alternate reality." He brought his pencil up and scratched the side of his head with the eraser. "But I could only fit ten tons on the back of a flatbed cargo hauler."
...Between taxes, commissions and fees, that sounded about right. At least for the value. But those two sentences had so many implications it left her head spinning.
"When you say stripped down to the bedrock...?" She asked leadingly.
"Guns, guns, more guns. Enough ammo to drown in, hundreds of BDU's, about two-thousand canteens, a platoons worth of blankets and sheets... I left the MRE's behind because it's a zombie world and I wasn't sure if it was in the food. Probably not, but better safe than sorry." He moved his fingers in front of him, his eyes locked on something that wasn't there. "Claymore mines, anti-material rifles, anti-material rounds... A dozen ghillie suits, every first aid kit I could find. Grenade launchers, grenades..." As the list went on and on she felt increasingly nervous.
On the other hand, she was absolutely certain anyone or thing trying to attack her here would meet a very sticky end.
"Actually." She interrupted him somewhere around the word 'Kabar'. "Would you be willing to teach me how to shoot?"
He tilted his head to the side, just a bit. It kind of reminded her of the dog she'd had when she was little, honestly.
"Sure." He finally decided. "Let me just tell Red Tornado what we're up to. He can give the cops a heads up so we don't get someone coming around and throwing a fit."
He put his papers away in... Somewhere. They just disappeared from right in front of him when he tapped them. Standing up, his eyes roamed over her form, settling uncomfortably on her hips, chest and finally... Her shoulder?
"Hmm... M11 nine-millimeter, because it's small and easy to use. Everyone would expect that." A small gun appeared in his hand and, with a motion that was almost too quick to see, he did something that caused a brass shell to pop out the side and the magazine to drop out. "Some jackass left their sidearm loaded."
He shook his head, setting the gun down on the table before holding out his hand again.
This time, the gun that appeared was significantly bigger. And meaner. He pulled on something on the bottom half that slid back, but nothing happened this time. "And we'll get you trained up on how to use the Mossberg M500 shotgun. Because nobody would expect a boom stick from someone as small as you."
"First rule." The kid said as he put the shotgun down on the table next to the handgun. "There is no such thing as a safe gun. There is no such thing as an unloaded gun. A gun is always loaded, a gun is always live. Period. Especially when it isn't."
Name: (@**&@%$#%) Leslie Winters
Race: Human
Level: 42
GP: 1750000
USD: $15000
Stats-
VP: 7
HP: 1200
MP: 682
-STR: 16
-VIT: 60
-DEX: 7
-AGI: 16
-INT: 91
-WIS: 91
-LUK: 8
Abilities:
-Alchemy
--Transmutation (78)
--Conversion (30)
--Advanced Homonculus Creation (1)
-Divination
--Scrying (12)
-Magical Engineering
--Living Steel Manufacturing and Production (Max)
-Fusion
--Synthesis (27)
Spells:
--Final Fantasy series!
-( FFII )
-Esuna (16 -Max)
-Life (16 -Max)
-Teleport (16 -Max)
-Cure (16 -Max)
-Blink (16 -Max)
-Protect (16 -Max)
-Toad (16 -Max)
-Flare (16 -Max)
-Osmose (16 -Max)
-Break (7)
-Haste (12)
-Berserk (11)
-Shell (9)
-Curse (1)
-Holy (8)
-( FFXI )
-Dispel (6)
--Dark Souls series!
-Repair (28)
-Twisted Wall of Light (25)
-Hidden Weapon (1)
-Hidden Body (2)
-Cast Light (2)
-Dark Blade (100 -Max)
-Carthus Flame Arc (1)
-Blessed Weapon (1)
-Lightning Blade (1)
-Crystal Magic Weapon (1)
-Frozen Blade (1)
--Dungeons and Dragons
-Prestidigitation (26)
-Regenerate (9)
-Dragonkind -Form of the Dragon- (4)
-Create Food and Water (1)
-Create or Destroy Water (5)
-Create Item -Expanded Bag- (1)
-Create Item -Assisting Armor- (1)
-Create Item -Infinite bag of Spice- (1)
-Create Item -Enchanting Pipe Organ- (1)
-Create Item -Lyre of Truth- (1)
-Create Item -Fortifying Bedroll- (1)
-Create Item -Summoner's Bell- (1)
-Create Effect -Bind Demiplane- (1)
--Dragon Warrior
-Ironize -Kaclang- (1)
Inventory:
-Weapons
--Nagrarok (Atk: 1, Evade +50%, On-hit: Toad)
--Magic Wellness Stick (On-hit: Heal)
--9mm Semi-Automatic Carbine (Nothing special to note)
--Zastava M93 .50 Caliber Long Range Rifle (Nothing special to note)
-Equipment
-- Lichbone Pendant (Dark/Negative Damage +100%, Dark/Negative Damage Resistance +50%)
-- Midnight Cowl (Intelligence -10, Wisdom +20, Dark Damage Resistance +75%)
-- Bootyshorts of Evasion (Defence +15, Agility/Dexterity +10, Respect -20)
-Skillbooks
-- Transmutation (read)
-- Scrying (read)
-- Advanced Homonculi by C.Grande (read)
-- De Le Metalica (read)
-- Synthesis: Fusion (read)
-- MP Boost (Failed!)
-- Heward's Handy Handbook of Magical Mysteries (read)
-Consumables
--Nectar X61
--Magic Carrot X77
--Heal Berry X99
-Spellbooks
-(Read spell books have been removed to condense space)
-- Necronomicon X3 (Unread)
-Familiars
-- ??? Dragon Egg
-Miscellaneous
-- Metal Sample "Necrodermis"
-- Metal Sample "Darksteel"
-- Magical Nectarine Pit X2
-- Darksteel Magic Condenser ??%
-- The Journal of Goffard Gaffgarion (Requirements not met!)
Perks:
-Bright Soul (MP regen +50%)
-Shining Soul (MP +50%)
--Combined effect! Magical attunement is now visible!
-Metamagic: Expand (Double spell area of effect OR double spell duration)
-Metamagic: Lock (Persistent spell effects are more difficult to dispel based on level. Mastered spell may be cast permanently until dispelled)
-Metamagic: Pierce (Spells ignore magic resistance. Up to 50% at max level)
-Metamagic: Minimum Powah! (Spells retain potency when multicast. Up to 50% at max level)
-Metamagic: Entangle (Spells may be cast on objects or foes sharing history with the target)
-Magically Apprenticed (Spell values are increased by 10%. Spell costs are reduced by 10%)
-Magically A-Practiced (Spell Values are increased by 20%. Spell costs are reduced by 20%)
-Adept Arcanist (Spell Values are increased by 30%. Spell costs are reduced by 30%)
-Wizened Warlock (Spell Values are increased by 40%. Spell costs are reduced by 40%)
-Hero Of Rime (Ice and Cold based damage and effects +50%, Ice and Cold Damage Resistance +25%)
-Polymind (Maintain human levels of consciousness within animal forms)
-Greatest Wilder (Retain spellcasting capabilities within animal forms)
-Crafter's Luck (25% chance to recieve duplicate crafted item)
--Special Perks
-Briar's Dream (+1HP/MP per minute. +1VP per day.)
I'm going to be out for the day, so you all get to have this early today.
Also never aim it at anything that you're not deliberately intended to fire at.
Also also, trigger safety: Never put your finger close to the trigger until you are actively planning on firing your weapon.
