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goetz.3[w85,jmc]		A few issues

jmc - A few questions and comments.

1. What is the appropriate penalty for Mr. Goetz?  What about
the penalty for his attackers?  What are the likely penalties.

2. Peter Karp says
"Muggers are poor, angry, frustrated, and in general live within a
subculture which to a large degree forces many of them to commmit crimes.
I am not attempting to resolve muggers of all responsibility for their
actions - that is another issue.  I am saying that how muggers think
people will react to attack merely influences which victims they choose,
it doesn't deal with the causes of their behaviour."

This suggests that the only way to reduce mugging is to reduce poverty.
This is very difficult, and it may not even work.  Predatory cultures
have existed before, and the most prominent examples have nothing to
do with poverty.  I have just been reading David Hume's History of
England, and the period from the Norman Conquest to the accession
of Henry VII is just one long struggle among muggers.  The situation
improved after that somewhat, because Henry VII was a dictator, and
because the worst of the noble families killed each other off in the
Wars of the Roses.

My impression is that past predatory cultures have been replaced only
by violent suppression of the predatory behavior.  Often this suppression
has been accomplished by the most violent of the predators.

3. Mr. Goetz will probably get off of everything but the gun charge
if he adopts the Twinky defense, i.e. claims temporary insanity.
Less feasible is a claim of self defense, because the present legal criteria
for self defense may not be met.  Still a jury may accept that claim
no matter what the judge tells them.

However, it looks like he may be another Michael Kohlhaus.  He may
say that the reason he carried the gun was in order to shoot some
muggers and demand that the court system agree that this was a
proper thing for him to do.

Let me recommend the novel "Michael Kohlhaus" by Heinrich von Kleist.
In that story the muggers were robber barons.  In it the hero gets
revenge for a robbery, and everyone agrees that he was entitled to
some revenge, but he demands a degree of absolution and reparation
that the Emperor can't give, and Kohlhaus eventually perishes when
his rebellion is suppressed.