application of a speed law to a policeman pursuing a criminal or the driver of a fire engine responding to an alarm”).[1]
The touchstone for the analysis whether section 1119 incorporated not only justifications generally, but also the public authority justification in particular, is the legislative intent underlying this statute. Here, the statute should be read to exclude from its prohibitory scope killings that are encompassed by traditional justifications, which include the public authority justification. The statutory incorporation of two other criminal statutes expressly referencing “unlawful” killings is one indication. See supra at 10–11. Moreover, there are no indications that Congress had a contrary intention. Nothing in the text or legislative history of sections 1111–1113 of title 18 suggests that Congress intended to exclude the established public authority justification from those justifications that Congress otherwise must be understood to have imported through the use of the modifier “unlawful” in those statutes. Nor is there anything in the text or legislative history of section 1119 itself to suggest that Congress intended to abrogate or otherwise affect the availability of this traditional justification for killings. On the contrary, the relevant legislative materials indicate that, in enacting section 1119, Congress was merely closing a gap in a field dealing with entirely different kinds of conduct from that at issue here.[2]
The Department thus concludes that section 1119 incorporates the public authority justification.[3] This paper turns next to the question whether a lethal operation
- ↑ Each potentially applicable statute must be carefully and separately examined to discern Congress’s intent in this respect. See generally, e.g., Nardone, 302 U.S. 379; United States Assistance to Countries That Shoot Down Civil Aircraft Involved in Drug Trafficking, 18 Op. O.L.C. 148 (1994); Application of Neutrality Act to Official Government Activities, 8 Op. O.L.C. 58 (1984).
- ↑ Section 1119 was designed to close a jurisdictional loophole—exposed by a murder that had been committed abroad by a private individual—to ensure the possibility of prosecuting U.S. nationals who murdered other U.S. nationals in certain foreign countries that lacked the ability to lawfully secure the perpetrator’s appearance at trial. See 137 Cong. Rec. 8675–76 (statement of Sen. Thurmond). This loophole is unrelated to the sort of authorized operation at issue here. Indeed, prior to the enactment of section 1119, the only federal statute expressly making it a crime to kill U.S. nationals abroad (outside the United States’ special and maritime jurisdiction) reflected what appears to have been a particular concern with the protection of Americans from terrorist attacks. See 18 U.S.C. § 2332(a), (d) (2006) (criminalizing unlawful killings of U.S. nationals abroad where the Attorney General or his subordinate certifies that the “offense was intended to coerce, intimidate, or retaliate against a government or a civilian population”).
- ↑ 18 U.S.C. § 956(a)(1) (2006) makes it a crime to conspire within the jurisdiction of the United States “to commit at any place outside the United States an act that would constitute the offense of murder, kidnapping, or maiming if committed in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States” if any conspirator acts within the United States to effect any object of the conspiracy. Like section 1119(b), section 956(a) incorporates the public authority justification. In addition, the legislative history of section 956(a) indicated that the provision was “not intended to apply to duly authorized actions undertaken on behalf of the United States Government.” 141 Cong. Rec. 4491, 4507 (1995) (section-by-section analysis of bill submitted by Sen. Biden, who introduced the provision at the behest of the President); see also id. at 11,960 (section-by-section analysis of bill submitted by Sen. Daschle, who introduced the identical provision in a different version of the anti-terrorism legislation a few months later). Thus, for the reasons that section 1119(b) does not prohibit the United States from conducting a lethal operation against a U.S. citizen, section 956(a) also does not prohibit such an operation.
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