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Tyler Cowen Pepper-Sprayed by Radical During “Citizen’s Arrest”
A good friend and brilliant scholar, Tyler Cowen, was teaching a class at George Mason University yesterday when a man in his twenties or thirties entered the class and announced that he was placing Cowen under arrest. The man pepper-sprayed Cowen and eventually tried to flee. A GMU student subdued the man, and the Arlington, Virginia police arrested him.
According to ArlNow.com, a white man in his 20s or 30s intruded on Cowen’s 3 p.m. class, declaring that he was placing the author under a citizen’s arrest. Cowen asked him to leave — and in the ensuing brouhaha, the man pepper-sprayed Cowen right in the face.
Paramedics treated Cowen and a dozen other students affected by the pepper spray. Soon afterward, Cowen tweeted, “Back to work! (as usual)…”
Published in General
For what it’s worth – in Michigan a private citizen may arrest someone under the following circumstances: (1) when a felony is committed in the private person’s presence (doesn’t have to be a felony committed against the private person; the private person simply has to witness the felony); (2) if the person to be arrested has committed a felony although not in the private person’s presence, (3) if the private person is summoned by a peace officer to assist the officer in making an arrest; and (4) if the private person is a merchant, an agent of a merchant, an employee of a merchant, or an independent contractor providing security for a merchant and has reasonable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has violated the laws regarding theft in the store, even if the violation was not committed in the presence of the private person. [Mich Compiled Laws 764.16; emphasis supplied by me] Of course, particularly with respect to options (1) and (2), if the private citizen guesses wrong and a felony has not been committed, the private citizen isn’t granted immunity from a civil suit. That’s why I’ve emphasized the phrases in (1) and (2). Contrast the provision in (4) that only requires “reasonable cause to believe.” This suggests the Legislature doesn’t want to encourage citizen’s arrests, but does want to assist merchants against shoplifters.
In my example, I was speaking to physical assaults. I think most people would agree that physically abusing someone is different than depriving them of their property (aka their time). To answer your question, no the death penalty is not appropriate for all crimes especially in a society where the government invents crimes like hiring somebody, opening a business, or purchasing insurance.
Why is it draconian to allow people to decisively protect themselves but it is not considered harsh or cruel to increase the number of people assaulted by removing their right to fully protect themselves? Aren’t voters and politicians wronging the innocent in favor of the guilty when they put limits on how strongly one can protect himself?
Furthermore, pepper spray is an incapacitating weapon. How do you know in advance that all the professor would have wound up with is “a faceful of pepper spray”? It could have been first step to something more. It’s like the people who said that Zimmerman wasn’t justified in shooting Trayvan Martin because he was just getting a beating. In my perfect world, if you’re being assaulted, you have the right to defend yourself with any and all means necessary.
The phrase “decisively protect” is not synonymous with “kill” or “shoot.” Don’t euphemize. The two options you put forward in your initial post – and I haven’t seen you walk them back at all – are either (a) being in favor of uninhibited bodily assaults, or (b) be “permanently stopped,” that is, shot dead. So far you have not admitted that there is *any* room inbetween those two options. So, I ask again. When is death not appropriate punishment?
Whoa, this sounds like crazy talk to me. A nutjob comes and pepper-sprays a professor, and you’d be fine if he were shot dead? I would not be comfortable with that outcome at all.
Nobody’s talking about banning guns. People are merely pushing back against the downright sadistic implication that the solution to this problem is to just kill a few people.
It’s a question of the potential for escalation versus the right of self-defense.
You don’t know until after the fact that the guy with the pepper spray was “only” going to pepper spray him.
Maybe Trayvan Martin was only going to pound Zimmerman’s head on the ground two or three more times and then leave. You want to bet your life on it?
In California you can make a citizen’s arrest on anyone you personally witness committing a crime (misdemeanor or felony), but you have to call the police to take the miscreant to jail and sign a form that you are making a citizen’s arrest. You’ll have to testify as a witness if the case goes to trial, and if the case is a felony, many prosecutor’s offices will require that you testify at the preliminary hearing as well, so they know you’re a good bet to show up at trial.
I’m with some of the other commentators: if I were teaching a class and someone walked up and pepper-sprayed me, I would have no way of knowing what his intentions were, and would probably fear the worst, which would be entirely reasonable under the circumstances. Pepper spray is a nasty experience, and potentially lethal to those with any kind of breathing deficiency. For those who feel shooting the sprayer is wrong, have you ever been pepper-sprayed, and what do you think You’d do in those circumstances?
I would argue that killing your attacker is the very definition of decisive self defense. As Miffed White Male said in #33, how do you know pepper spray was all the attacker had in mind? Putting limitations on a victim’s right to self defense strikes me as highly immoral especially when the goal is to protect the attacker and not innocent bystanders.
There probably are a few scenarios, but it’s frankly none of our business. When someone is unjustly physically attacked and they defend themselves, their attacker brought the consequences upon themselves.