Abortion?

You don't have to.

All you have to do is pull down a diagram of Chewie and say:

"This is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!

If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests."

While that sentence is awesome, having a confession read off the suspect's mind feels like a violation of his fifth amendment right, but having a telepath tell the jury that no, he really did not have malice aforethought seems more probable. So I think telepaths would be more likely introduced by the defense while trying to plead down to manslaughter or 2nd degree murder.

Course, then, the prosecutor would bring in their telepath...

The fact that Alex Luthor actually was posing as Luthor, particularly during a time in which Luthor was lying low, should help his case.

I think the danger in the clone defense, at least for the prosecution, is that while it may not absolve the accused of his or her crimes, it introduces clear reasonable doubt as to their guilt.

As far as telepaths, I agree that they ought to have status as expert witnesses, but the courts really ought to have a couple on retainer, and not rely on superhero telepaths, who could be unreliable. And, of course, a judge would have to issue a warrant for the contents of the accused's mind.

Someone really ought to draw up guidelines for superhero law.

Even in the Marvel and DC Universes, clones and such forth may exist, but they aren't exactly common. The difference between our world and theirs is that these lines of defence have gone from "totally impossible" to "very unlikely." That puts it in the same category as plenty of defences that would work in the real world - the evil twin, for example, or "I was sleepwalking."

The criminal law already has ways of coping with this sort of thing. The prosecution only has to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. So it doesn't have to prove the case to a standard of mathematical certainty, and it doesn't have to rule out every conceivable line of defence. Some explanations are just so unlikely that they don't amount to a reasonable doubt, unless there are particular circumstances applying to the case in question.

For example, insanity is a defence. But that doesn't mean the prosecution have to lead evidence from a psychiatrist in every single case in order to prove that the accused was sane when he committed the crime. It's not an issue unless the defence raise the point.

This is known (in some circles) as an "evidential burden of proof." The defence have to lead some cogent evidence if they want to raise the issue as a possibility. They don't need to PROVE it, but they need to show that it's a reasonable doubt IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE PARTICULAR CASE.

In the typical Marvel Universe trial, there will be absolutely no reason to think that an evil doppelganger might be in play, and the courts will just proceed on the basis that it doesn't amount to a reasonable doubt.

I don't think you would get anywhere by trying to argue that a clone *might* have done this. In a criminal case, before you can get evidence admitted that another person committed a crime, you need to show a strong link between that person and the crime. Simply "could have done it" is nowhere near strong enough to get the evidence related to the clone admitted.

My sense is that an evil clone defense would theoretically work, but it would be terribly hard to prove to a jury, and very easy for a prosecutor to counter, so effectively it'd be a hard defense to pull off. I wouldn't rely on it as my best hope.

If you were going to raise it in a habeas attack (basically, how you appeal convictions after you've exhausted the regular appeals process -- this is how those DNA cases get heard), well, you'd have to meet the standard for showing actual innocence, which is a very high standard.

Also, how would you go about proving it? Short of testimony by the evil clone him/herself? Proving that a clone exists doesn't establish that the clone committed the crime -- you need to have strong proof linking the clone to the crime.

LOL! Treat them as enemy combatants and stick them in Guantanamo? =P

Your proposed situation might work if the issue was raised only at trial (except for the prejudice to the defendant of having Mr. Mind be his expert), but I was addressing the problem throughout the whole system.

See, time travel is where it starts to really suck. And I don't just mean paradoxes and Time Variance Authority stuff - I mean immigration. Think about the vast quantity of dystopian futures, and then think of the number of time travelers going back to the past, breathing our non-poisoned air, eating our non-radioactive food, stealing our non-conquered-by-Kang jobs! How do you regulate all of that?

Also, you'd have to prove you weren't a clairvoyant or from the future in order to play the lottery.

Except neither of those comics have even tried to make it appear as if they actually follow the American Constitution. Granted, because of the nature of the Universes, law will be different, but there's little that rings true legally in either (for more info check out Loren's suspension of disbelief blog - it's one of the blogs linked along the side).

J'onn can mindlink and bring everyone in. However, does J'onn really want to spend all his time as an "interpreter" in court when his other powers could bring in bad guys?

To use Star Trek as another example, Troi can sense feelings (empathic), but cannot get actual thoughts. Lwaxana can enter people's minds and get information and can speak mentally. However, have you noticed anytime they do a mindlink on the show, the subject's life is in danger? Notice how traumatic Spock's mind-melds are?

Or Professor X who can do (and has according to recent retcons) anything, but because he can, what information he gets would be more unreliable because of his inherent ability to change the information himself.

Um, technically, hearsay is "an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted."

My analysis is correct. We only disagree on what telepathy is. Of course, that definition defines whether or not telepathy is reliable. Is a memory false (whether altered by the subconcsious or a telepath) or if not, how reliable is it? We'd have to have a corollary rule for this situation like is used to ensure the "reliability (note this is in quotes, as it is the purpose though not actually the result in all cases)" of eyewitness identification.

Omar got to that point, in that the JLA is known for altering memories (thanks to DiDio, et al. - although it's not full his fault as it's been around the DCU for ages - see Silver Age Superman - not to mention the Marvel U, where Iron Man mindwipes the entire planet to protect his ID).

An 'evil clone" argument or a min-control defense would be much closer to the real-world realm of affirmative defenses -- defenses that concede part or all of the prosecutor's evidence and then try to introduce other circumstances or interpretations to mitigate the evidence conceded.

As you might expect, they're very hard to pull off, since the defense is basically spotting the prosecution points. The defense can't just introduce an alternative explanation, they have to show that said explanation is reasonably plausible or likely, in order to make the doubt itself reasonable.

In the real world, after all, it's certainly possible that a murder defendant is the victim of a huge frame-up, with the "real" killer or the police planting DNA evidence at the scene or leaving the murder weapon in his/her garage, or digitally faking the securi-cam footage of his/her crime; but such a defense virtually NEVER works. It's possible that a real defendant has a heretofore unknown identical twin who committed the crimes and left the evidence. It is not, however, plausible or reasonable to doubt the evidence soimpl;y because such claims are being made.

Even in the OJ case, the defense got very lucky in that Mark Furman, the cop at the scene, was on record as havinjg made racist remarks in the past. They had to build a genuine motive for the proposed frame-up to get it over with the jury, and that was an absurdly expensive "dream team" of defense attorneys.

Luthor can probably afford the DCU equivalent, and he has enough enemies to make it work, but your average schmoe defendant simply can't. The Astro City resolution mentioned is the way such things work in real court cases.

And then the defense points out that J'onn's power is more than capable of altering memories, and that the JLA have a history of doing just that.

"How do we know that Mister J'onzz's 'link' is not in fact a telepathic illusion or a filter? Did he plant these memories in my client's mind, like a corrupt cop planting evidence at a scene?"