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43 Suffolk Transnat'l L. Rev. 291 (2020)
Detecting Covert Legal Killing to Stop: A New Approach to Terrorist Intention

handle is hein.journals/sujtnlr43 and id is 307 raw text is: DETECTING COVERT LEGAL KILLING TO STOP: A NEW APPROACH TO TERRORIST INTENTION Joshua M. Pearce* ABSTRACT This study argues that the definition of terrorism should be ex- panded to include covert legal killings (CLK). CLK refers to the fourth terrorist intention (mass killing in the targeted group or nation by any means) where the law does not provide guidance as those with this intention currently use legal means. Statistics on individuals with this intention are limited because our legal system provides no way to identify or track them at the national or international level. To pro- vide a rudimentary method to begin to detect such individuals, this paper develops new methods for quantifying the effectiveness of CLK using the concept of target national deaths per million dollars (DPM). In a case study of high death rate advertising the DPM was found to be only 3.4 because of the existing saturation of the United States market. This data coupled with previous studies indicate an opportu- nity to disrupt both legal and illegal terrorist intent. These new meth- ods of evaluating the effectiveness of CLK can be useful for identifying and protecting target populations and the analysis presented in this study indicate that considerable future work is needed in evaluating the DPM of other CLK methods to provide gui- dance for an evolution in the law. Keywords: counter terrorism, terrorism, killing, Terrorist Screening Database I. INTRODUCTION AND THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF INTENTION Intention is often subjective and challenging to assign. Yet, intention is what determines if an act of killing is terrorist in nature or not. Intention is also critical for assigning legal culpa- bility as well as punishment in our legal system.1 To illustrate the importance of intention, consider the following thought ex- * Professor, Michigan Technological University, 601 M&M Building, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931-1295, pearce@mtu.edu. 1. See Alice Ristroph, State Intentions and the Law of Punishment, 98 J. OF CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 1353, 1375 (2008). See also LARRY ALEXANDER & KIMBERLY KESSLER FERZAN, CRIME AND CULPABILITY: A THEORY OF CRIMINAL LAW 200, 200- 01 (2009).

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