Murder defendant slips restraints in court, stabs his lawyer with pen. All good, attorney says

ylai@lemmy.ml to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 374 points –
Murder defendant slips restraints in court, stabs his lawyer with pen. All good, attorney says
latimes.com
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Dude broke through restraints, clearly a pen is a deadly weapon in his hands.

I guess. But you can also smother someone with a fluffy pillow. So that's a deadly weapon, too? Like where is the line between "deadly weapon" and "any random object".

There is no such line. The pillow counts as a weapon and all weapons count as deadly.

I think it might just be a line of how they used the random object could have reasonably resulted in death. So if you smack someone in the face with a fluffy pillow, it's not a deadly weapon. If you try to smother them with it, it is.

I'll be honest, if I roll 99 on a crit roll with a pillow I damn well expect an instant kill.

Why are you using a d100 for attack rolls?

It's a homebrew weapon from their last campaign in Pathfinder that they ported over, but the stats are legit and it's balanced trust them

Seems quite simple to me. Things like guns, swords, daggers and the like are designed to be weapons. So they're generally going to be assumed to be a weapon any time they're used/brandished.

But literally anything can be used as a weapon. So, in normal use they're not a weapon but if used as a weapon, they become one in that instance.

Yeah, but then the term "deadly weapon" is kind of meaningless as it basically just means "assualt with a thing".

Yeah, I'd agree there. It should be whatever the US equivalent of aggravated assault is. But the charges you could levy bearing in mind he aimed for the head could go as far as attempted murder I guess.

I think on a legal level it means it was an object that was being wielded as a weapon, and from the attack in the specific instance it was meant to kill and the object was capable of achieving that. Hence a deadly weapon.

If you used it as a weapon and it had the potential to kill the victim, then yes, it would be a deadly weapon.