Assuming you exonerate yourself when free which couldn't have happened if you remained inside.

Of course you will all say that you would beat the assault charge.

But what if I changed it to escaping and proving your innocence by killing the guy who was about to inject you?

Like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape?

I cannot punch the guard, I guess.

I don't know but I never seen you post before and I read your book The Theory of Poker and feel like I'm conversating with a celebrity so this is a big deal for me. I'm star struck right now. You should be able to punch who you want Mr Sklansky. You're a celebrity. It's your right.

This was inspired by the trump obstruction charge. I brought it here because I thought the posters would be less nutty than in the politics forum. My mistake.

As I recall, in jurisdictions where escaping from prison is not a crime, you can still be prosecuted for any crimes committed during the escape. I can imagine in a situation where escape is crime and escape is required to prove one’s innocence, that a jury may nullify an escape charge, but that’s an imaginary jury.

Ah, that’s the topic....
well here’s another topical question....

Is obstructing what can be viewed in a justice report obstructing justice?

The basic questions is whether a certain amount of violence is justified against a person that is blocking your attempt at freedom. Assuming you have been wrongfully imprisoned (for crime Z) and can prove that fact beyond a reasonable doubt once free.

You would be guilty of assault; the wrongful imprisonment has no bearing on violence against a person X that is dutifully doing their lawful job after you have been imprisoned. So once free, and assuming you establish that you are innocent of crime Z; you still have the assault against person X that you can be prosecuted for.

The second qualifier is a bit tricky and somewhat muddled. I'll pass on that one.

Punch em if ur guilty

Sure, so long as it's the only option and whatever I do is not worse than what's being done to me.

You are being unethical and guilty of crime when you kill the guard that is simply doing his job as Zeno said. It may be more unethical to die though on occasion. Only if the guard knows you are innocent and is still choosing to kill you and not protest it then they are part of the problem and your enemy and ethically responsible giving you the right to attack them and free yourself (or if after your crime you spend the rest of your life recovering from it serving society).

The proper thing is not to kill them but injure them if possible and then escape. If you kill to escape someone that is unaware of the situation and is not a terrible person given their actions, then you become the person you are trying to prove you never were. You better then modify your life to recover from it as much as possible.

If you kill in your escape a terrible person then by law you are still in trouble but ethically we are somewhat better depending on how possible it would have been to recover that human and not have them killed to escape.

Basically if people are aholes then all bets are off for ethics. But the law cannot see it that way because determining who is ahole is often inaccurate and selfish too. We cannot put ourselves above the law even if we deserve to be sometimes lol. If we do it anyway we then need to modify our lives to recover from such selfish choice and statistically recover the system. We can never be arrogant enough to believe we will succeed in it always. It is very hard to determine because of chaos theory. It is possible to think without being arrogant about it that you living is better than the guard of course at a level besides the personal selfish gain.

If you kill you then need to prove your innocence and then accept the new crime and face the consequences. Both can occur. A man with integrity will have no problem owning all of it and rarely choosing to kill anyway especially someone that did nothing wrong.

One can argue its your priority to protect life against those that try to take it away. Its probably ethically neutral to try to save yourself in exchange for someone that is helping kill you for something you never did. The principled thing is to not kill them but i can understand whoever chooses to become a killer of people that work in a system that kills as a better alternative to dying. They are in the business of killing so what on earth is going on here? They are also guilty say 1% of the time they kill innocent people and still choose to play this game. It is a lot more different if in your escape you have to kill a completely neutral person that is not part of the system that harmed you.


So i can understand choosing life but you have to face the consequences. I would make a personal decision based on the quality of character of the other person because i do not personally respect to death a law, any law that is stupid when it comes to my own logic and standards. A lot of laws out there are naive and serve as better alternative to nothing until they meet you and fail you!

I believe in my own ethics and they are above human law often although of course i must remain cautious about how correct in such position i really am. I try to hold my own ethics at a higher level than law does.

I do understand an argument for saving a very intelligent and educated person that is innocent vs someone that is obedient to a stupid unforgiving system is probably a better choice of action.

But this is possible only if you have clear clues that the other person is not a substantially important human being that doesn't deserve such brutality.

I would kill, escape, and spend the rest of my life ethically recovering my crime and the impossible debt to the person that had to die for me to live. I choose to live, naturally, but i can only do that if i then face the consequences of my action. I will of course try to avoid getting punished but i will make sure i service society for my crime. I of course deserve to be caught and punished by the letter of the law anyway but i will serve it better if i don't.


PS: F Trump and everyone that voted and will still vote for him in the future and anyone that enables him. F you all. You are traitors to your country and humanity and even your own conservative ideals that deserve better representation than such mfer.

I want to also make clear i am not advocating for an approach to put yourself above the law. I hold myself responsible defending the spirit of the law constantly to the best i recognize and do not justify criminal behavior in the name that eventually it will turn out ok. No this is a dangerous path to follow. I only reserve the position that in rare occasions it can be true that you deserve to be above the law if your life meets certain standards and the law proves poor or unreasonable. It cannot hold of course in the eyes of others that do not know you and it can also be ethically wrong if you do not rise up to your own standards. So you cannot take such an approach but only super infrequently.

We have a civilized society because we have laws that get better over time. It is your responsibility as a citizen to improve those laws and respect them typically and always their ethical spirit. But it is possible to prove superior to the letter of the law by respecting its spirit at a deeper level.

Imagine this example. I am guilty of not entirely coming to a perfect stop in 4 way stop signs (like what 1-4 miles/hour low? vs literal 0) when there is absolutely nobody around that has the right to move before i do or any pedestrians etc are around. I consider it idiotic to come to a full stop and waste more time and more energy. But i do hold myself to constant observation of the environment to protect against the consequences of such "arrogant" position. In other words i very carefully examine what is going on around me and i am instantly ready to stop and prevent anything wrong to the best of my awareness. In other words i do respect the spirit of the law of coming to stop ie to recognize what is going on around you well before you move again.

The law exists because most people are not holding themselves to such high standard of observing the others around them and because there is such a thing as first time in a place that you are not yet very aware of its geometry and what can go wrong. Therefore we all need to obey the law if we do not take the other steps and even if we do its still probably better to obey the letter of the law if no further detail is available. I naturally also constantly observe for police around when i have to come to stops. I am extra careful if near a school and then always come to a full stop and move slowly after thoroughly checking all sides.

But compare now my casual behavior to that of a person that comes to a full stop and delay but does that totally mechanically without regard for what is really going on around them. Now exactly what is the better behavior here? I constantly anticipate something wrong happening when i drive. So in that sense i defend the law more than an average driver probably.

I will drive at 65, 70 or 75 or 80 when not alone in the freeway with limit at 65 (miles/hr). I will not drive at 85 or higher unless there is a very important reason momentarily that requires me to do so for a few seconds and this doesnt happen at all often. I have no problem driving at 60 or 55 or 50 if there is heavy rain and keeping big distances from others. So what is the idea here? Drive legally but dangerously at 65 when heavy rain vs drive above 65 at 75 or 80 when it looks safe and others are far away and driving similarly fast?

What do you do? You have to obey the law all else being equal. Not because you are afraid of the consequences but because you believe in its spirit and purpose. But you can also choose to respect more the spirit of the law than the letter when the case is more clear. The important thing in driving is not to increase the probability that something can go wrong with your choices. How you choose to do that can be flexible but never abandon your responsibility to the others and yourself under the premise you are different and better.

So in the absence of very strong conviction about the opposite one must obey the law and always its spirit.

Ps: 0 lifetime tickets or accidents in over 120k miles. I am not daring my luck here. I methodically care about the process when i drive. Eventually something will happen if you expose yourself to risk long enough, hopefully not something bad.

You are forgiven.

I think it'd be okay.

I think traditional moral philosophy would say that just because you've been wronged and unfairly treated doesn't give you the right to mistreat someone else who's also innocent. Unless you're utilitarian in which case I think rightfully being set free triumphs over punch.

But traditional philosophy would probably be some kind of more eloquent shape of "deal with it (without hurting others)"

So Trump punches Mueller?

I would argue that the guard and the executioner are not completely innocent, as they are part of a system that is responsible for imprisoning and potentially executing an innocent person. It would be very different than if a gang kidnapped you and threatened to kill you unless you kill a random person on the street.

Not nearly enough information given to properly answer question.

Of course I'd punch someone to get out of jail, but punching a prison guard is just going to land you bleeding in solitary confinement with the guards poisoning your food and water.

if you are doing life you don't have much to lose



same w high speed chases etc.
start w economics ans then predict what would happen... 9/10 it begins as a problem of incentives (or solution depending on your point of view)

law itself is a product of arbitrage, not ethics or divinity... and it too faced incentives.

the mainstream view that "its unethical to break the law" is simplisic especially since law while inspired by philosophy can hardly be equated or born out-of ethics.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_utilitarianism

David you seem to leave out details or explanation in your posts a lot.

How long am I in jail for? How long would the assault charge put me back in? I think honestly you'd beat the assault charge if you were proved innocent to get out. If I'm about to be put to death and was innocent I'd probably kill the guy, or at least wouldn't blame somebody for doing so. It's like war to me, just doing your job you must understand sometimes dangerous **** is going to happen. A punch is no big deal, if you handicapped a guy to leave jail 6 months earlier I'd say that might be too much. Also it depends on the circumstances of your situation in jail- are you getting raped by bubba repeatedly? What if the guard is turning a blind eye to that?

killing an innocent life to save yourself does not save oneself.

First your daughter has naked pics on the internet, then you get a finger cut off, and now you are in jail for a crime you didn't commit?!?

The world is clearly against you.

The prison guard if not another guard would need to press the charge though. Upon knowing the full context, he should take it on the chin, again. There is no definite assault charge, here.

I guess a jury or judge could be convinced that the murder was an actual act of self defense, given the later evidence.

It would be a victim versus victim case. But there's no such thing as a victimless crime. And here we have two. There'd be victims but the question is whether there's a criminal. Interesting. You should write movie scripts.

Given that you are in fact innocent, the person putting you to death is committing murder, and killing him is just self defense.