Self-Defense Against the State

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

On May 11, 2014, Charles “Chuck” Dinwiddie, an 18-year member of the Killeen Police Department in Texas and 15-year SWAT Team veteran, died from injuries received in the line of duty. In the early morning hours of May 9, 2014, members of the Killeen Police Department Tactical Response Unit and the Bell County Organized Crime Unit attempted to serve a narcotics search warrant. When the members of this team were breaching a window into the house, a 49-year-old male occupant of the house opened fire, striking four officers. Two officers received only minor injuries, Officer Otis Denson was struck in the femur and required surgery. Officer Dinwiddie received a critical wound to his face and later died.

The man who shot and killed Officer Dinwiddie was Marvin Louis Guy. Guy had been arrested in 2011 for assaulting a family member. He pleaded guilty and served 40 days in jail in 2012. Guy had no police record for drug offenses. The Killeen Police Department were executing a no-knock warrant based on the information of an informant who claimed to have seen bags of cocaine transported to Guy’s house. The Killeen Police found no cocaine or any other narcotics in the Guy residence. They recovered a glass pipe, a grinder, and a safe. While perhaps this is evidence of drug use, it is hardly a sign that Guy was a dangerous drug kingpin. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Guy.

Officer Chuck Dinwiddie bravely served and protected his community, and he died in the course of doing his duty. But consider this from the point of view of the middle-aged African-American Marvin Louis Guy. At 5:30 am, he is awakened by loud sounds. He witnesses what appears to be a home invasion. His significant other is in the house, and he wishes to defend her and himself against these intruders. There are no drugs or any other contraband in the house. Perhaps Guy has used cocaine in the past, but why would a petty drug user with one small criminal offense years earlier expect a SWAT Team to bust into his house to execute a simple search warrant? It is not like the Killeen Police knocked on his door and presented their badges and a search warrant. Simply stated, how could Guy possibly know these were police officers and not home intruders? If he had assumed that anyone breaking into his house with guns before dawn were police officers and they turned out to be criminals and not officers of the law, would it have been exemplary of Guy to forfeit his life and not defend himself? Could one not argue that the Killeen Police were reckless and unnecessarily put Officer Dinwiddie in a position where he might be harmed? Could it not also be argued that the Killeen Police Department is just as responsible for Officer Dinwiddie’s death as Marvin Louis Guy was?

Human beings have natural unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. These natural rights entail that human beings have the right to self-defense, and this includes the right to bear arms. Marvin Louis Guy had the right to defend his life, the life of his significant other, his liberty, and his home. Given that the apparent home invaders were well-armed with guns, Guy had a prima facie right to employ deadly force in self-defense.

Officer Chuck Dinwiddie and his companions were officers of the law executing their official duties. Of course, one cannot be permitted by law to engage in gun fights with officers of the law just because these officers are armed and could potentially pose a significant danger to a suspected criminal. However, the Killeen Police were not acting as officers of the law. In not identifying themselves, they were essentially going rogue. In the case of a building controlled by known members of a violent drug cartel, perhaps a no-knock warrant is appropriate. Perhaps. But in the case of someone like Marvin Louis Guy, a no-knock warrant is totally inappropriate. No-knock warrants in almost all—and perhaps in all—instances are nothing but totalitarian heavy-handed tactics more appropriate to the Gestapo than American police.

Marvin Louis Guy does not deserve to die for killing Officer Chuck Dinwiddie. In fact, he should not even be charged with a crime. He killed in self-defense, exercising his natural right. Even if he had been using cocaine, human beings also possess the natural right to liberty which includes the right to ingest any substance that does not directly harm anyone else—e.g. any substance other than highly radioactive material, explosive devices, contagions, etc. The true murderer here is the unjust and unconstitutional War on Drugs that causes police to act like soldiers storming American homes like they are GIs storming German bunkers on Normandy Beach. It is the War on Drugs and drug prohibition in general which should face the death penalty. Not a man exercising his right to self-defense.   

(For a much more detailed discussion of natural right to self-defense as well as the immorality of the War on Drugs, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong. Available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle.)

Typhoid Mary, Tyranny, and Defense

by Gerard Emershaw

Canada recently had an Ebola scare. A man who had returned to the country from West Africa, which was experiencing a terrifying Ebola outbreak—fell ill in a Canadian hospital while exhibiting potential symptoms of Ebola. While it turned out to be a false alarm, this raises an interesting issue. With Ebola, 1,500 of the 2,200 recorded cases have been deadly. If individuals were thought to be infected with such a deadly and communicable disease, the CDC would no doubt act by quarantining those thought to be infected—taking away the liberty of these individuals despite the fact that no crime was committed.

Fear of such deadly outbreaks has long been a part of the American pop culture zeitgeist. Films such as Outbreak, Twelve Monkeys, and Contagion have tapped into this primal fear. The current “zombie apocalypse” craze represented by films such as 28 Days Later and World War Z as well as the popular AMC television series “The Walking Dead” often involves plots which are set in motion by contagious diseases.

The most famous case of an American being forcibly quarantined is that of Mary Mallon—a.k.a. “Typhoid Mary.” Mallon was an Irish immigrant who was born in Northern Ireland in 1869. She moved to the United States and eventually worked as a cook. Mallon was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid. It is estimated that she infected as many as 49, three of whom died. In fairness, not only was Mallon not big on the hygiene, but she stubbornly refused to do even the most basic things that a cook ought to do—such as washing her hands. Mallon refused to give up her profession as cook or have her gall bladder—which was badly infected with typhoid salmonella—removed. As a result, in 1907, Mallon was arrested and detained against her will for three years in a clinic on North Brother Island on New York’s East River. Upon her release, she was given work as a laundress. However, under an assumed name, Mallon soon began working jobs as a cook, again infecting people. She was again arrested and detained on North Brother Island until she died in 1938,

Mallon was obviously a willful and spiteful woman with no regard for the safety of others. However, it is not difficult to imagine a case where a sympathetic person becomes the carrier of a contagious illness. Does the government have a right to take away such a disease carrier’s natural right to liberty? One could imagine a die hard libertarian like the fictional Ron Swanson of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” saying: “A man is responsible for his own immune system. A lady is, too. We don’t need big government wiping our noses.”

The United States federal government claims the power to forcibly quarantine individuals with communicable diseases under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The specific law granting the President the power to allow the Center for Disease Control (CDC) powers of quarantine is 42 U.S.C. § 264—Regulations to control communicable diseases. According to this law, the President may specify in an Executive Order a communicable disease for which the government may apprehend, examine, and detain an individual. An individual may be detained if he or she has a communicable disease specified by the President and is either moving from state to state or in the process of doing so or is a probable source of infection for other individuals who are likely to move from state to state. Given how mobile Americans are in the modern age and given the various forms of transit, this essentially gives the President the power to have any person with a communicable disease detained “for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary.”

Using the Commerce Clause as justification for this executive federal quarantine power is dubious. Having typhoid, Ebola, influenza, the zombie plague, or the monkey pox has nothing to do with regulated commerce. However, the federal government may have such a power based merely on its national defense function. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the President has the duty to protect the nation and its citizens. While Congress has the power to declare war, the idea of declaring war against typhoid, Ebola, influenza, the zombie plague, or the monkey pox is absurd. In the Prize Cases during the Civil War grants the President the power to resist an attack by a foreign power without consulting with Congress. In the modern technological age where an attack can be launched in minutes rather than months, this is essential in defending the Republic. In many ways a serious communicable illness can be seen as a threat akin to a military attack.

Even if there is enough of a parallel between a military attack and a communicable disease, this still does not necessarily give the government the right to detain an individual who has committed no crime. It seems odd to claim that a person’s Fifth Amendment right to due process can be satisfied by a physical examination by a doctor instead of an impartial court hearing or the like.

Another issue is that this may be giving the President too much power. History has shown what Presidents are willing to do in the name of national security. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order to place Japanese Americans into internment camps without due process will forever be a scar on the nation and the office. There seems to be no mechanism that limits the President’s authority here. Where should the line be drawn? Ebola? A bad case of the flu? A mild cold? If an illness is in a “precommunicable stage,” then the President can only have an infected individual detained “if the disease would be likely to cause a public health emergency if transmitted to other individuals.” This is a bit vague, but it at least provides a coherent criterion. However, if the disease is at a “communicable stage,” then there is no limit. There is also no specific criterion for what “for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary” precisely means. Determined to be “reasonably necessary” by whom? By the Surgeon General? By the physician involved with the individual’s case? By the President? By someone else? In principle it is possible that nearly any individual may have some virus or the like which is communicable at any given time. What would prevent a President from simply using this fact as an excuse to detain an individual for arbitrary and capricious reasons?

There does seem to be some justifiable point at which an infectious individual can be quarantined against his or her will when the infectious disease is serious enough. Even though the person is innocent, he or she can be detained in the way that a person who is acting violently and who has become a danger to others as a result of some force beyond his or her control—mental illness, brain tumor, brainwashing, hypnotism, etc.—can be detained. The last thing a nation with a $17 trillion debt needs is herds of zombies roaming the countryside in search of brains to eat. However, how can a line be drawn? There are some people with very compromised immune systems? Should the President base his or her decisions in this regard on the case of some “Bubble Boy” or on someone with an iron constitution and supercharged immune system? While perhaps this all seems like an absurd problem that is not genuine and that has no place outside some hypothetical discussion in a philosophy class or in a bong smoke filled room, given how recent Presidents have trampled on the Constitution, is there any reason to rule out abuse in this particular area?