Spoilers Daredevil: Born Again season two discussion

[Kaodi]

Daredevil commited hundreds of criminal assaults over the course of both series, including attempted murders, assault on police officers and attempted murder of police officers. He waived Miranda at his arrest, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts he chose to waive his right to a jury trial–he pled out to a grateful District Attorney, and allocuted to as many of criminal offenses as he could remember the details of.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm guessing what Murdock pled to was some ridiculous number of charges of assault in the second degree (dropping the enhanced penalty for assaulting police), for 2-7 years each but served concurrently. How long he actually serves would be a crapshoot, but this is where the comic book logic would override–he'd serve as long as the story didn't need him to be released.

My memory isn't great, but over the course of both series, I remember Fisk only committing two actual murders with his own hands–the guy whose head he crushed in the car door, and Vanessa's doctor. He's on the hook for felony murder in the death of Vanessa's boyfriend, and for any number of murders carried out by his subordinates, but those murders would require a lot of legwork to trace back to him.

Everyone he kills with his bare hands in City Hall is as open-and-shut a case of justifiable homicide in self-defense as the law allows. He's outnumbered and surrounded by an angry mob who are attacking him with lethal intent; "outnumbered" is lethal force on the crowd's part, surrounded negates his duty to retreat, they're trying to kill him, and there is no legal argument whatsoever that his speech–"I love this city and did everything for you"–qualifies as inciting violence.

Sic semper tyrannis, but the law is entirely on Mayor Fisk's side here. Everything he can be tried and convicted of in a court of law is a RICO case that would take decades and millions of dollars to prosecute.

I was under the impression that Daredevil committed exactly one count of attempted murder: on Bullseye. Everything else was assault.

I also do not buy that Fisk's murder spree would be so easily reduced to self-defence. He was literally running an extra-legal death squad and tried to assassinate the governor. If anything the mob was an act of self-defence against him. Not to mention a lot of jurisdictions require you to use "reasonable force" when protecting yourself. Maybe he walks on the first few counts but by the tenth to twelfth at least no one is going to not believe he knew exactly what he was doing.

 

[trappedslider]

He waived Miranda at his arrest,

I'm gonna stop you right there, he ONLY waived advisement,he did not waiver Miranda. Which means he basically told the cop to stop reciting Miranda.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

I was under the impression that Daredevil committed exactly one count of attempted murder: on Bullseye. Everything else was assault.

I also do not buy that Fisk's murder spree would be so easily reduced to self-defence. He was literally running an extra-legal death squad and tried to assassinate the governor. If anything the mob was an act of self-defence against him. Not to mention a lot of jurisdictions require you to use "reasonable force" when protecting yourself. Maybe he walks on the first few counts but by the tenth to twelfth at least no one is going to not believe he knew exactly what he was doing.

I gotta go with @DammitVictor here. An armed mob storms the government building calling for Fisk to be killed. There's no way that's not self defense. In New York, you're supposed to withdraw, but, he was trapped in the building and surrounded by a mob. A mob that does actually begin beating him to death. Given all sorts of reports which would be conflicting after the fact, it would be pretty solid to say self defense. And, let's not forget, it could be argued that Fisk was protecting people from the mob as well.

 

[DammitVictor]

I'm gonna stop you right there, he ONLY waived advisement,he did not waiver Miranda. Which means he basically told the cop to stop reciting Miranda.

Miranda isn't the rights, it is the advisement. You have the right to be told that you have the right to remain silent before you incriminate yourself. Waiving the advisement isn't the same thing as waiving the right to remain silent or the right to have an attorney, but it's removing one possible set of legal grounds to have his statements disqualified from being used against him.

Which, from an experienced trial laywer, is a very strong signal that he doesn't intend to go to trial.

 

[trappedslider]

Miranda isn't the rights, it is the advisement. You have the right to be told that you have the right to remain silent before you incriminate yourself. Waiving the advisement isn't the same thing as waiving the right to remain silent or the right to have an attorney, but it's removing one possible set of legal grounds to have his statements disqualified from being used against him.

Which, from an experienced trial laywer, is a very strong signal that he doesn't intend to go to trial.

here's the subtitle for the scene when he's arrested

and for those wondering what they are charging him with that we know of here's what the cop says as they put him under arrest

 

[DammitVictor]

I also do not buy that Fisk's murder spree would be so easily reduced to self-defence.

Then you're wrong, period. Even in New York, every single one of the factors I listed that makes him beating those kids to death with his bare hands legally self-defense is enough to make it legally self-defense on its own. The blind, willful ignorance that most people exhibit about self-defense and use of force laws where they live is appalling.

The fact that Mayor Fisk damned well deserved to be beaten to death and torn apart by an angry mob does not create any legal obligation for him to allow it to happen.

He was literally running an extra-legal death squad and tried to assassinate the governor.

Yes. He hired people to commit violent crimes on his behalf. That's illegal, that's the same as committing those crimes himself, but he didn't do that on camera.

If anything the mob was an act of self-defence against him. Not to mention a lot of jurisdictions require you to use "reasonable force" when protecting yourself. Maybe he walks on the first few counts but by the tenth to twelfth at least no one is going to not believe he knew exactly what he was doing.

There are no circumstances, absolutely zero circumstances, under which participating in a riot is legally self-defense. No matter how morally justified, and no matter how unwilling a prosecutor would be to press charges against those participants.

The post that you are erroneously responding to, the post that you quoted, explains how and why beating those people to death with his bare hands is, by every single applicable legal standard, "reasonable force". He was fully legally justified to hit every single one of those people with his fists so hard they died. He was fully legally justified to beat them to death with sticks. He was fully legally justified to hack them apart with machetes. If he had gunned down all of those people with a machine gun, then–maybe then–it could be argued that the rioters were subduing an armed assailant to prevent a mass shooting.

And. Finally. You are mistaking accidental death for justifiable homicide. Killing people on accident is only legally excused when there's no reasonable expectation your actions could cause harm. Killing that many people in a series of accidents would be more illegal than what he did on screen.

Wilson Fisk knew exactly what he was doing when he killed each and every single one of those people, and he knew that he was wholly legally justified in doing it.

 

[pukunui]

One guy that Fisk murdered in the previous season was the former police commissioner, and there were a heap of witnesses too.

 

[Tonguez]

One guy that Fisk murdered in the previous season was the former police commissioner, and there were a heap of witnesses too.

They were all handpicked taskforce members though, and they were then given the job of covering it up - so they're not good witnesses.


Also the other thing I think people are missing is that the Safer Streets Initiative only operated for 7 months, with the events of season 2 only taking place over a month or so before Matts revelation that he is Daredevil.

With how slow courts and bureaucracy are I can believe that a corrupt mayor could get away with using a State of Emergency and a Safer Streets initiative to get away with lots before he gets called out

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

The other underlying plotline that has always threaded through Daredevil is the comparison between DD and the Punisher. Matt even talks to Karen about it a couple of episodes ago. Punisher will never compromise, so, the war will never end. No matter how many innocent people Frank Castle murders, he simply doesn't care. And, he has murdered LOTS of innocent people. Collateral damage he would call it. All justified because he's at war.

Matt refuses to take that route. And getting Fisk to just stop and walk away is the win for Matt. Matt could have killed Kingpin anytime. Heck, he could have just not saved him. But, for Matt, that's not an option.

This was the only real win condition ending for how Matt Murdock is presented. Matt's own guilt over the pain he has caused because of this war meant that he was never going to ride into the sunset. So long as he kept wearing the suit, things were only going to escalate endlessly in a perpetual cycle of violence. The only way to break that cycle was for one side to just stop and then convince the other side to do the same thing.

 

[pukunui]

FWIW I am now watching the original Jessica Jones series so I can understand her character and her place in the “street level, NYC-based MCU” better.

I didn’t enjoy DD S2 much because of all the mystical BS and the infinite, unkillable ninjas, so I’m going to pass on The Defenders because I understand it’s more of that (complete with Elektra), but are any of the others worth watching? I’ve heard Iron Fist isn’t that great, but is Luke Cage’s show any good?

I wish Disney would do more of the low stakes MCU stuff that Netflix used to do. Yes, they’ve brought back Daredevil (with mixed results), but I’d like to see more stuff like Agent Carter and Agents of SHIELD and the like. You know, the stuff that’s more about ordinary people living in a world of superheroes rather than stuff about said superheroes.