Boston Bomber Charged With Using WMD

I saw on the news that the surviving Boston bomber is being charged with using a WMD. Which as I'm sure most of us will take to mean a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Which we normally think of as being something on the scale of a nuclear weapon of some kind that'd at least wipe out a few city blocks.

So does an improvised bomb in a backpack count as a WMD? I'm pretty sure this is not what we were looking for in Iraq.

 

I expect there is some kind of legal definition for WMD that the IEDs in Boston met.

 

I found the definition here at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332a

For those that are on their phones or don't want to click the link, here are the definitions. (Copied and Pasted ofcourse )

(2) the term “weapon of mass destruction” means—
(A) any destructive device as defined in section 921 of this title;
(B) any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors;
(C) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as those terms are defined in section 178 of this title); or
(D) any weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life; and
(3) the term “property” includes all real and personal property.

 

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/921

Seems the charge technically fits the events. But I have to say. It really cheapens the whole concept of WMD.

 

I was thinking the same thing when I read the definition myself. Well, grenades eh, I heard they were throwing a lot of grenades while they were running from the cops.

 

But if this stuff is considered WMD. Then why aren't we back in Iraq right now using our own WMD to get rid of the WMD we let in when we were there looking for the WMD's we failed to find? And just how did we manage to miss them if these things are WMD's and just what did our governments think the Iraqi's were going to do with a few grenades in 45 minutes?

It's dumb. Charge the guy with something real and relevant like "murder" or just put a bullet in him.

 

Serial Murder and mutilation seems to make more sense. I imagine it's a WMD so that he is an "enemy combatant" rather than "Citizen of the State" and so is up for being tortured.

 

aiki, destructive device and weapon of mass destruction are not the same thing

 

Legal terminology and everyday speech are often different. WMD in everyday speech means nuclear, chemical, and biological weaponry, but it's defined entirely differently under federal criminal law, and always has been.

Timothy McVeigh was also charged and convicted under the same federal statute (using a weapon of mass destruction) even though his bomb was conventional, not NBC.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/04/23/why-a-homemade-bomb-is-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction/

Conversion in everyday speech means changing religion. Conversion under tort law means taking intentionally taking or destroying the personal property of another person. It doesn't mean either definition is wrong; it's just legal terms aren't the same as everyday terms.

 

He is being tried in federal criminal court, just like Timothy McVeigh was. He is not being classified as an enemy combatant.

 

That's a shame.

 

No it's not. The system worked just fine for Timothy McVeigh and Eric Robert Rudolph; it'll work just fine for Tsarnaev too.

 

The problem I have with it is that it's not the same type of offense. Timothy McVeigh was not attacking the American people as a whole, he was going after the government to try and start a "revolt against tyranny", according to him, in response to Waco and Ruby Ridge. These guy's were attacking the American people as combatants in a "holy war" as Jihadist's. Totally different set of circumstances.

 

They were not part of a larger organization. They were not al-Qaeda agents or Taliban soldiers or anything. The investigation so far suggests that they were just lone wolfs who were self-radicalized and who looked up the bomb designs on the internet. He's just one angry American who wanted to hurt strangers, just like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Robert Rudolph.

And even setting that aside, what's the practical downside to trying him as a criminal defendant? We have more than enough evidence to put him away for life (or give him the death penalty). Since he's not part of a larger organization, he has no information to give us. So why not?

 

Hi Obewan,

I'm not from the US, and as such would never want to tell you what isright for the place that you come from, but if the same thing happened here I definately wouldn't want to give the government the capacity to essentially make me a non-citizen.

I get that in this particular case you might be able to make a reasonable argument for treating them as an enemy, but what is to stop the precedent from being mis-applied later? It looks like your domestic law has this well and truly covered.

paul

 

Could it be that the authorities want him to be tried by a federal court rather than a Massachussetts (sp?) court, and that will affect the nature of what he is charged with? (Please excuse me if that's nonsense, because my knowledge of American law is about as great as most American's knowledge of the rules of cricket!)

 

The expansive definition is so they can execute people whose crimes were committed in non-death penalty states.

 

And Massawhatsits is one of those, right?

 

Yes, no capital punishment there.

I think the enemy combatant argument was ludicrous in this circumstance. The younger brother is a citizen. He should be tried in a court of law. Give him Tim McVeigh's old room at Supermax and let him spend the rest of his life in a cell.