Rex v. Kam-nem (1821)

Rex v. Kam-nem (甘南獄) was a 1821 Themiclesian court case in which Kam-nem, a militiaman on patrol in Kien-k'ang, was accused of murder for shooting and killing a man whom he did not know was a criminal. He was convicted at the Supreme Court and executed on Feb. 2, 1822.

On Jun. 10, 1821, a different militiaman S.rjim Pri was patrolling the Tsikw district and walking on the Hjat Avenue. S.rjim was walking east and saw a man, Kju Ba, robbing a woman, Nep Ljan, attempting to pull her purse away from her; they were under the eaves of the wall on the east side of a perpedicular street. Kju later kicked the woman into the ditch running next to the wall. At this point, Kam-nem walked on the same street west, thus noticing that S.rjim aiming his musket at the miscreant, shouting "stop!" S.rjim then noticed Kam-nem and shouted out to him to shoot, which Kam-nem did and thereby killed the robber. The case was reported to the Magistrate of Kien-k'ang, which ordered the arrest of both men to explain the details of the case.

In his initial affidavit, Kam-nem reported that he had shot Kju on the after S.rjim asked him to shoot. However, later he revised his statements to say that he heard S.rjim's request to open fire and saw Kju kicking the woman down and then pulling her purse away from her, before he shot Kju. Subsequently, the prosecutors demonstrated the inconsistency of his second statement: S.rjim had seen Kju taking her purse before he shouted to Kam-nem. With this in mind, the prosecutor argued to the ten-person jury (then used in felony trials at that time) that Kam-nem had opened fire without seeing anything incriminating and therefore could not claim that he had killed Kju under the law that permits a violent criminal to be stopped and arrested with lethal force. Kam-nem's attorney argued that S.rjim was a militiaman on patrol, and the accused had believed that S.rjim implied Kju to be a violent criminal by his statement asking him to shoot. To this the prosecution argued that "no ordinary person" would interpret that statement as "sufficient proof" that Kju was a violent criminal and therefore be motivated to kill.

Kam-nem's attorney thereafter argued that the militiamen in the city had been charged with suppressing disorder and violence, and Kam-nem was only following instructions, which would avail him a defence against liability. The lieutenant in his company had re-iterated a day before that violent crime was on rise in the year, and extra attention should be paid to irregular occurrences. Against this, the prosecutor replied that Kam-nem was not following a specific order that required him to shoot Kju but rather was acting under his own volition and intuition, for which there was no sound basis in empirical evidence and only "happened to be correct"; he then added that Kam-nem was not under duress for his actions, i.e. not forced to do what he did by a threat greater than or equal to the damage he did. The defence then turned to focus on whether Kju had constituted a threat to the peace of the city, which if established would also exonerate Kam-nem. The prosecutor famously reasoned: "According to this logic, all men carrying women's purses are a threat to society."

Next day, the jury was brought into the scene of the homicide and informed where the accused stood as he shot Kju. On this basis, the jury accepted the prosecutor's arguments and ruled that the homicide was criminal in the absence of a valid justification. In the statement given, they said that Kam-nem could not possibly have seen that the purse had been robbed from Nep, as Nep had been in the ditch by the time S.rjim had asked him to shoot. According to laws then in force, death was the mandatory sentence for criminal homicide. The judge on the bench, Ket J., sentenced him to death but recommended mercy, believing that the circumstances were not anticipated in legislation. Kam-nem was strangled on Feb. 2, 1822 after the Council of Peers ratified the sentence.

Legal impact

Kam-nem's case was considered a judicial precedent in self-defence legislation and influenced the later establishment of the Kien-k'ang Metropolitan Police, whose training included explicit references to the factors in the case to ensure that police officers were adequately informed in the use of force.

Places

• The southeast corner of Tsikw commune, where the case occurred, was nicknamed the "Corner of Fate" after a court reporter sympathetic to Kam-nem's article. The reporter had contended that, if Kam-nem had stood on the west side of the street, his actions would have been perfectly legal. However, legal scholars have since said that to use this name is to misunderstand the substance of the case.

See also

• Themiclesia