MovieChat Forums > Death Wish (1974) Discussion > What could they charge Paul Kersey for i...

What could they charge Paul Kersey for if caught?

posted 16 years ago by digital_groove
59 replies | jump to latest

I'm not a police officer or district attorney but I'm well rounded in most topics. Watching this I began to wonder, what exactly could they charge him with?

The first murder if they found Kersey, they would find out it was self defense and he shot him. His word against a man with a rap sheet and drug user.

Second time was saving the man who was being mugged by 3 people. He shot the two again in self defense and ok he shot the guy in the back who was running away. Again if caught he could say he was there tried to help the man and shot the 3 people coming after him. It's his word against 3 dead robbers with weapons who were mugging a man who would testify for Kersey's sake. Sure he shot him in the back and that's fishy in itself but he was a mugger and again it's Kersey's word against a dead criminal.

The other time in the subway, two people with weapons trying to rob him, Kersey shoots them both.

My argument is basically all the people he shot had weapons trying to either harm him or rob him. He shoots and kills them and if caught would say it was self defense and he could stretch the truth and say he was chased by them and shot back. Granted it would be clear of his vigilante intentions but in most cases it's just plain self defense and in some dancing on a fine line (shooting man in back), which I'd imagine the police cannot charge you since it's fairly clear the man had a weapon and was committing a crime.

Thoughts all welcome. If anyone is a police officer or knows the legal system I'd love to know what the police would have charged him with during his first few vigilante murders.

[–] duke-verity 16 years ago

Murder, first or second degree. Ten premeditated killings and one attempted murder (the eleventh mugger who escaped). A clever lawyer of the time could probably have got some of those killings categorically reduced from murder to manslaughter.

A plea of diminished responsibility due to temporary insanity might not have stood up overall due to the level of premeditation involved in all of the killings after the rushed and impulsive first kill.

Four of the killings were shots to the back, chillingly cold blooded and ruthless. In no sense could his shootings of fleeing or already fatally injured people in the back be considered Justifiable Homicide.

In all cases he was in illegal possession of a concealed non-registered handgun. He went out on the streets with an illegal firearm and the premeditated express intent of killing people.

If he actually managed to cop a plea of insanity then he would serve at least several years in a psychiatric institution. With a regular penal conviction in the state prison system he would have served twenty years minimum.

In any case, it's all academic because the last thing the state authorities wanted was the public trial and conviction of a martyr. Thet let him go for a reason. Exactly what they would charge him with if caught was never an issue for them.

[–] Mannlaw99 16 years ago

He could be charged with murder, attempted murder, aggravated assualt and so on. It would then be Mr. Kersey's responsibilty to come up with any affirmative defense, such as self defense, that would be applicable to him. An issue in his case would be whether he was a cold blooded vigilnte or a innocent citizen who had no choice but to defend himself.

[–] tonyjack576 16 years ago

Whatever he was charged with, he could counter with self-defense or defense of others, even to those he shot while running away. The criminals each have a contributing factor to the crime, that is, they brought it upon themselves. A private citizen doesn't have to show the amount of restraint that law enforcement does. He could claim that the guys he shot in the back swore to come back and get revenge, so he felt he had no recourse but to kill them before they had a chance to carry out their threat.

[–] BobbyDupea 10 years ago

No jurisdiction allows people to kill someone because they swore they'd come back for revenge. Using a "self-defense" defense requires that one is in imminent danger of serious bodily harm. This harm must be death or severe injury.

There are numerous court cases defining what "imminent danger" means, and in several juisdictions it has been held by the courts that one has a duty to retreat from an attack - even an ongoing attack - before using deadly force. Deadly force is legally justified only when there is no means of escape from an attack that is occurring then and there - not the threat of an attack (with the exeptions of the "stand your ground" laws and the "home-as-castle" laws).

My real name is Jeff

[–] tawdry_hepburn 15 years ago

Being that it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit (and I think at ALL in NYC), a case for first degree murder could easily be filed against the protagonist. I mean, fundamentally, he's a serial killer.

Your confusion over what he was doing wrong is one of the problems with the film. It tries to white wash the morality, and make the lead easy to support, but his ideas are still fundamentally fascist.

,Said the Shotgun to the Head--
Saul Williams

www.myspace.com/ohhorrorofhorrors

[–] saint-21 15 years ago

i think he would have gotten off with almost no time. Now if he downloaded songs off limewire or napster. then he would get 2 million dollar fine and life in prison.

[–] LouisRenault 15 years ago

Whatever exactly he was charged with, any right minded jury would be looking for an excuse to acquit him. His attorney's job would be to provide that excuse.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] nvasapper 14 years ago

Yeah, but he wasn't gunning down innocent people. He was killing scumbag criminals and there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing whatsoever. The decent law-abiding citizenry of New York had nothing to fear from Paul Kersey. He was not John Muhammad or Lee Malvo, shooting innocent people at random. The germbags Kersey blew away needed to be blown away. he was helping to make the city a safer place. And if you want to call that fascistic, well, then I guess I'm a fascist. Because the only thing that counts is order, safety and security-and nothing else.

[–] tawdry_hepburn 14 years ago

If you think a guy in the middle of a mental breakdown deserves to be judge, jury, and executioner, then yeah, you pretty much fit exactly with the worst parts of fascist thought.

Also, the film, though told with omniscient narration, is entirely from the subjective viewpoint of Kersey. In reality, he's basically just killing minorities for the crime of being poor. The fact that all of his victims are made to be so clearly guilty is a weak point of the movie. The real world doesn't work like that, and you know it.

But I mean, whatever, maybe the reign of terror was a fluke and serial killers like Kersey are a good thing, right?

,Said the Shotgun to the Head--
Saul Williams

www.myspace.com/ohhorrorofhorrors

[–] mradam-3 12 years ago

He deserves to be judge, jury, and executioner because of the inhuman scum he deals with.

He's killing minorities for the crime of being poor? If you call raping women and attacking people for money simply "being poor", then I'm afraid your opinion isn't worth the sh!t it reeks of.

Kersey is doing the right thing. Self-defense is not the point, punishment is. So it's useless to bring up the point that he shot those scumbags in the back. They shouldn't have attacked someone, then turned their back. And just like every other "victim" of Kersey's, they brought it on themselves.

[–] tawdry_hepburn 12 years ago

Okay, I'll explain again; Kersey is killing people who are, 'scumbags,' yes. However, since the movie is told entirely from inside of Kersey's own head, we aren't seeing any of the reality of these, 'scumbags.' Rather, we are seeing Kersey's paranoid delusions.

As you know, in the real world, things are never as cut and dry as they are in the movie. In both the novel on which the film is based, the original Death Wish film and the sequel novel, "Death Sentence" (Which was later adapted into a very good thriller by James Wan), the protagonist is very morally questionable. We aren't even really supposed to like Kersey. He becomes more and more of a monster as the story progresses until we see the abject moral poverty of his reality by the climax.

In the real world, vigilantes are very rarely heroic, and never heroic time after time.

Does that make more sense?

,Said the Shotgun to the Head--
Saul Williams

[–] mradam-3 12 years ago

You didn't explain the "crime of being poor" and how raping women and attacking people simply amounts to "being poor".

"we aren't seeing any of the reality of these, 'scumbags.' Rather, we are seeing Kersey's paranoid delusions."

What "reality of these scumbags"? With all due respect, when you write a phrase like that, you should explain its meaning.

Are the attacks he's experiencing and witnessing just his paranoid delusions, and not really happening? Why is scumbags in quotes? Is it too harsh a word or something?

Yeah, I get that things are not as cut and dry in the real world as they are in the movies. But I don't get how any of these protagonists are even slightly morally questionable. Please give an example of actions that are morally questionable. And why aren't we supposed to like Kersey? I did. And he's not even the least bit a monster. Abject moral poverty of his reality? None. Zero. What are you talking about?

[–] MisterHex 12 years ago

The movie's innate message is a warning, that vigilantism isn't the solution to stopping crime -- better policing is. Kersey had some justifiable intentions at the start of his killing spree, but he takes it too far. He goes out at night looking for trouble and is no better than the muggers he targets who also go out looking for trouble.

That's where the comment about abject moral poverty comes into play. Kersey starts the movie as a left-wing, bleeding heart pacifist. By the end of the film, he's lost any semblance of what morals he had in the beginning. He becomes more and more brave and bold each time he kills a group of muggers and gets away with it. By the end of the film, he's limping after the last mugger in Central Park like he's some kind of crazed ogre.

This descent into madness is also where Kersey's paranoid delusions take hold. Notice how there are no witnesses each time Kersey blows a thug away. In the subway, the train conveniently empties out just before he kills. The old man with blood in his eyes was too dazed to see much. And the others? Nobody around. What we see on the screen is Kersey's point of view of the events at hand: paranoid delusions about criminals and their motives, colored by the attack on his wife and daughter. For all we know, if we saw the muggers' side of the story, they could have been begging for mercy in the subway tunnel or back alley as Kersey shot them in their backs.

The movie is very black-and-white in that regard: citizens are good, street denizens are evil and must be stopped. If the movie had been made with Jack Lemmon as Kersey and Sidney Lumet directing (like originally proposed), a lot of these points might have been fleshed out a bit more fluidly, with more grey area. Kersey isn't all good, and the muggers he kills aren't all bad.

[–] cloudslide 10 years ago

The movie's innate message is a warning, that vigilantism isn't the solution to stopping crime -- better policing is. Kersey had some justifiable intentions at the start of his killing spree, but he takes it too far. He goes out at night looking for trouble and is no better than the muggers he targets who also go out looking for trouble.

That's where the comment about abject moral poverty comes into play. Kersey starts the movie as a left-wing, bleeding heart pacifist. By the end of the film, he's lost any semblance of what morals he had in the beginning. He becomes more and more brave and bold each time he kills a group of muggers and gets away with it. By the end of the film, he's limping after the last mugger in Central Park like he's some kind of crazed ogre.

This descent into madness is also where Kersey's paranoid delusions take hold. Notice how there are no witnesses each time Kersey blows a thug away. In the subway, the train conveniently empties out just before he kills. The old man with blood in his eyes was too dazed to see much. And the others? Nobody around. What we see on the screen is Kersey's point of view of the events at hand: paranoid delusions about criminals and their motives, colored by the attack on his wife and daughter. For all we know, if we saw the muggers' side of the story, they could have been begging for mercy in the subway tunnel or back alley as Kersey shot them in their backs.

The movie is very black-and-white in that regard: citizens are good, street denizens are evil and must be stopped. If the movie had been made with Jack Lemmon as Kersey and Sidney Lumet directing (like originally proposed), a lot of these points might have been fleshed out a bit more fluidly, with more grey area. Kersey isn't all good, and the muggers he kills aren't all bad.

This is an old post, but I just watched this movie again last night. The film is not shot or framed in a way that suggest that what we are seeing is delusion. Yes, Kersey IS operating under a kind of wild western justice delusion of his own, but that is merely his state of mind when he responds to violence. The movie is not shown from his perspective it displays several in that compacted way that older movies tend to do.

It's also not morally bankrupt to walk around and ride the subway. It's not Kersey's fault that the city is overrun with criminals. You say this is a weak point of the film, but I think that IS the point of the film and you either didn't like it or are letting your desired interpretation color the facts of what happened. The fact is, crime is SO BAD in the city that such acts as walking in public areas at night can be considered "baiting criminals." Think of the absurdity of that. It is also true that his actions reduced the crime rate by about half.

So it's not so far fetched to see him as a hero, seeing as his actions more or less ONLY had a positive effect on the public as a whole. Yes, he was crazy. And yes, he was breaking the law. But the fact of the matter is, if he was out on patrol and no crime was committed, he wouldn't have reason to kill anybody. It's not like he created reasons for crimes to happen, the crime rate was so high that there was almost nowhere anyone could go where they wouldn't witness or be a victim of one.

As an aside. Look at all of the police resources they put into finding him. What the hell were the cops even doing besides. I don't think I saw a single cop respond to a regular crime until after the fact the entire movie. The city was practically lawless.

Crying children will dry their eyes. Sleeping babies will awaken and take to the skies!

[–] nvasapper 14 years ago

At the very least- Criminal Possession of a Weapon and Criminal Use of a Firearm. In New York City the gun laws are so restrictive that you need an NYPD permit to possess and carry firearms. This permit is impossible to get if you're an ordinary civilian who just wants to protect himself from criminals. It's mostly given out to celebrities and the rich and powerful who have connections downtown. (What else is new?).Since Kersey didn't have a carry permit, he was carrying and using his revolver illegally. That's because he wasn't authorized to have it. They could also hit him with Assault in the First Degree charges as well, not to mention the homicide counts.

Remember the Bernie Goetz case? The criminal court jury only banged him on the illegal weapon count because they couldn't get around that. They gave him a pass for shooting those slimebags on the subway. though. YAAAY!

[–] MacDeth 12 years ago

He would be charged for being a national hero.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] jefgg 11 years ago

He would be charged with making the police look shabby.

[–] CaZSuede 10 years ago

Manslaughter. Some of the killings were of them running away. You have the right to defend yourself, not to execute people.

[–] chiluvr1228 10 years ago

I've never understood how NYC can take away its citizens rights to have a gun. The criminals have no problem getting guns. Bunch of bleeding heart liberals running the city.

[–] BobbyDupea 10 years ago

Nobody has taken away the New York citizens' rights to have a gun. They have restricted the places and manner in which one can carry a gun. That type of law has existed in many U.S. jurisdictions since before there was a U.S.

My real name is Jeff

[–] 10 years ago

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