Recently there have been a few sleep-walking rapists. Since they are not conscious during the attack, they are found not guilty. They did not make the choice to rape, so they aren’t guilty of the rape.
I find this perverse. If you do a crime, why should consciousness matter? If I intentionally kill a person or do so in my sleep, the result in the same.
I noticed this difference in approach in traffic law as well. A friend of the family in America ran over and killed a kid on a bike. It was determined that it was an accident, and the woman was not charged with a crime.
In Japan, accident or no accident, you’re responsible. You go to jail.
Not really concerned with the laws so much as the concept of responsibility.
Who here is dumb enough to believe that he was really sleepwalking, anyway? I’d like to see multiple non-inter-referencing studies demonstrating reason to believe that such actions should be called “sleep”.
I don’t know much about sleepwalking, but it’s more believable if you were sleepwalking in your own home or an environment that’s common to you (like going to your fridge and eating), instead of raping someone in someone else’s house.
Rape itself is a controversial issue, especially in the courts. I don’t believe you can accidentally rape someone, and raping someone while unconcious just makes it seem that your unconcious self is trying to say something. How someone can be cleared of rape because they were sleepwalking makes no sense. Especially if their is a lot going on that should snap the person out of it.
This is just about the stupidist example of current-day law I’ve ever seen.
Do we have a victim? Yes. Do we have a person responsible? Yes. Conclusion: he should pay damages.
Either he is guilty of a crime of intention or he is guilty of a crime of neglect (I forget the technical term for that). He is responsible for his actions, NO MATTER WHAT. If he can’t control his actions, then he’s a psychopath. I guess if he had a secret crush on her, and his mind was in a dream-like-state, then that’s unfortunate, but that doesn’t change what he did.
If my car-tire blows up and I drive into someone’s house, then I’m liable for damages. It’s as simple as that.
It would only be justified to jail him if there is good reason to believe that he IS unable to control his actions (even if only when asleep) AND he doesn’t take proper precautions to prevent himself from doing these things. In other words: if he is a threat to others.
I’ve read some ridiculous rulings Judges have made on rape cases. I don’t remember exactly, but one Judge made it so the defendant couldn’t say “rape” in the trial. They’ll also try to make it seem like the woman was provoking the attacker by what she was doing or wearing, or that she was drinking. Rape cases can make my head explode sometimes.
To answer John’s question, are you asking how the non-aggression axiom applies here (you mentioned that you’re not necessarily asking about the law)?
To me, it seems crazy that people do this (rape, kill etc. while they sleep) and is suspect as an alibi. But if it really is true, are they guilty of something under libertarian law?
To take a crack at this, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume that they are telling the truth, they were in fact unaware of their actions while they took place (unconscious). Let’s also assume that they are not aware of this as a preexisting problem (in the case of the murder, he only did this once so there’s no long standing pattern of sleep violence he needs to compensate for).
I’d say he’s still guilty of aggression against a person.
Without citing any sources (I know Block covered something similar, but I think it was about drunkenness), here is how I rationalize this:
Let’s make the scenario a little more complicated. Imagine a property owner using their property to start a food manufacturing business. Say that they cut corners and end up releasing food of questionable quality. The quality is so low that the food ends up killing people (assume bacteria was the end culprit or something like that). The owner is still liable for their actions even though they did not intend to harm or know that their actions would lead to harm (planning to sell crappy food is much different from planning to kill with your food).
Under a libertarian “system” the sleep killer and the crappy food maker would both be guilty of causing the death.
How to deal with that guilt is another question but I think in both cases the person is guilty of causing someone’s death. And just like with theft, we don’t care why they stole just that they did steal, here the two “death causers” should be responsible just as a murderer would be responsible.
Lol, I asked me people, it turns out everyone already knows all about this thing. It has its name and all, even a documentary on the “plight of sexsomniancs” that apparently everyone has seen already. And then there is this.
Now this is eerie.. I remember reading about an utterly weird disorder like this on Wikipedia yesterday, and wondering if there’d be some kind of debate on Mises about it.