Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is a classic episode from
Speaker 1: the podcast's archives. Space exploration is a complicated venture. Space
Speaker 1: is trying to kill you, So we're a little further
Speaker 1: off from true space tourism than some private entities would
Speaker 1: have us believe, But eventually we're probably going to have
Speaker 1: to deal with other humans trying to kill you in space.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we get into what would happen if
Speaker 1: there were to be a murder in space. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogel Bomb here. Maybe it will be a jealous
Speaker 1: astronaut who decides to eliminate a rival in an orbital
Speaker 1: love triangle, or maybe being cooped up in a spacecraft
Speaker 1: on an interplanetary flight will cause one crew member to
Speaker 1: finally lose it at a colleague's annoying throat clearing. Or
Speaker 1: maybe it will be a killing made to look like
Speaker 1: an accident for some kind of nefarious space plot. But
Speaker 1: sooner or later, it seems likely to happen. Given humans
Speaker 1: propensity for committing homicidal violence against one another all over
Speaker 1: the world, somebody is going to commit a murder in
Speaker 1: space or on another planet or moon, and when it happens,
Speaker 1: authorities will have to figure out how to catch the
Speaker 1: perpetrator and restore justice. But it's not going to be easy.
Speaker 1: Investigating a murder in space would be vastly more complicated
Speaker 1: and difficult than probing a crime on Earth, and law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies and courts may have to deal with tricky
Speaker 1: jurisdictional issues that end up requiring negotiations among spacefaring companies,
Speaker 1: and until the laws are ready written, judges will have
Speaker 1: to take statutes and legal standards that were developed to
Speaker 1: deal with murder allegations on Earth and figure out how
Speaker 1: to apply them to accusations of lethal violence in space.
Speaker 1: You might be surprised to learn that nations already have
Speaker 1: legal jurisdiction that stretches outside the confines of this planet.
Speaker 1: That's covered an Article eight of the nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the
Speaker 1: exploration and Use of outer Space, including the Moon and
Speaker 1: other celestial bodies. It specifies that whenever one of the
Speaker 1: nations that's a party to the treaty launches an object
Speaker 1: the spacecraft, satellite, or space station into space or builds
Speaker 1: one on a celestial body, that nation retains jurisdiction and
Speaker 1: control over it. Thus, according to legal experts, if a
Speaker 1: US astronaut is accused of killing another American while traveling
Speaker 1: in a NASA spacecraft or on a commercial space vehicle
Speaker 1: launched from the United States, the FBI and federal prosecutors
Speaker 1: would be within their authority to arrest the alleged killer
Speaker 1: and bring them back to Earth for trial in federal court.
Speaker 1: Things might get a little more complicated if the murder
Speaker 1: occurs on the International Space Station and the alleged killer
Speaker 1: and victim are citizens of different countries.
Speaker 2: But yes, there are experts in this. We spoke via
Speaker 2: email with Franz G. Vanderdunk, the outmal professor of space
Speaker 2: law at the University of Nebraska Lincoln's College of Law.
Speaker 2: They said, Article twenty two of the nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 2: intergovernmental Agreement concluded between the parties deviates from the aforementioned
Speaker 2: international treaty clauses and by contract concedes jurisdiction to the
Speaker 2: state of nationality of the offender. But there is a
Speaker 2: caveat quote if the life or safety of persons with
Speaker 2: other nationalities and or the safety of the space station
Speaker 2: is at stake. Consultation should take place with these other
Speaker 2: countries concerned on which country should actually initiate prosecution, which
Speaker 2: may result in the country of nationality of the victim
Speaker 2: doing that. But this only covers the International Space Station
Speaker 2: or ISS. Things could get even more complicated jurisdictionally if
Speaker 2: there's a killing on a future private sector orbital hotel,
Speaker 2: the sort of place where this is probably more likely
Speaker 2: to occur. We also spoke via email with Michelle Hanlin,
Speaker 2: Associate director of the Air and Space Law Program at
Speaker 2: the University of Mississippi School of Law. She said, if
Speaker 2: you have four hundred civilians in space, you know crime
Speaker 2: inevitably is going to happen. We send the most disciplined
Speaker 2: and fit people, the best of humanity to the iss
Speaker 2: With a hotel, you're not going to be able to
Speaker 2: impose the same standards you'd need to make money. You're
Speaker 2: going to get a lot greater variety of people, and
Speaker 2: you know there is going to be crime, possibly from
Speaker 2: stealing a watch all the way to murder. Who actually
Speaker 2: qualifies as the hotel's launching state with jurisdiction under the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven treaty could be murky too. It could
Speaker 2: be Nation A, which is home to the company that
Speaker 2: operates the hotel, or it could be Nation B, where
Speaker 2: the installations components were manufactured, or Nation C, where the
Speaker 2: launch pad for the rocket that transported the parts into
Speaker 2: space was located, or Nation D, home to the company
Speaker 2: that rented the launch pad. Hanland said, arguably any of
Speaker 2: these states could have jurisdiction as wes built. Crimes in space,
Speaker 2: particularly incidents involving nationals from different countries, most likely would
Speaker 2: lead to diplomatic negotiations to see who gets to take
Speaker 2: charge and what If an astronaut on a space walk
Speaker 2: decides to, say, cut another astronaut's tether, who would have
Speaker 2: jurisdiction then, since the act would have occurred outside of
Speaker 2: an object controlled by a nation. We also spoke via
Speaker 2: email Henry R. Hertzfeld, a research professor and director of
Speaker 2: the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University's Elliott School
Speaker 2: of International Affairs. He said, although there is no sovereignty
Speaker 2: outside spacecraft, there are analogies to the law on ships
Speaker 2: in international waters and also to issues that might occur
Speaker 2: in Antarctica, both places with no national sovereignty. Any person
Speaker 2: in space has a national citizenship is the responsibility of
Speaker 2: the launching state or the person state of citizenship for
Speaker 2: their activities in space, and would be tried for a
Speaker 2: violation of the law in the appropriate state. Let's assume
Speaker 2: that the US takes jurisdiction over a space market. Investigating
Speaker 2: the crime and building a case is going to be
Speaker 2: tricky considering that the crime scene and potential witnesses are
Speaker 2: outside the Earth. Hamlin said, you might have to add
Speaker 2: a whole new profession space cup. There's going to be
Speaker 2: a tremendous cost to send someone into space just to
Speaker 2: investigate a murder, and gathering evidence in space or on
Speaker 2: another planet or moon might be especially difficult. DNA, which
Speaker 2: is increasingly a key means of identifying perpetrators, would age
Speaker 2: differently on Mars than on Earth because of the increased
Speaker 2: exposure to solar radiation due to the red planets in
Speaker 2: our atmosphere. Additionally, lower gravity would lead to such things
Speaker 2: as different splatter patterns from stab wounds. On the plus side,
Speaker 2: the ubiquitous Martian dust clinging to the exteriors of spacesuits
Speaker 2: and other surfaces might provide a valuable new sort of evidence.
Speaker 2: Hamlin figures that investigators and prosecutors will find a way
Speaker 2: to deal with it. She said, our law developed for
Speaker 2: fingerprints in DNA. When you prosecute a criminal case, you
Speaker 2: do what you can with what you're given. Space murder
Speaker 2: may also require the courts to grapple with Fourth Amendment issues,
Speaker 2: since astronauts are continually being monitored in myriad ways, including
Speaker 2: on video. Hanlon said, there's a value to having cameras
Speaker 2: in every room of a spacecraft, but do you have
Speaker 2: an expectation of privacy? She expects that many of these
Speaker 2: questions will be resolved by wise judges and lawyers, but
Speaker 2: she had also like to see spacefaring communities come together
Speaker 2: and work out a new international agreement on how to
Speaker 2: collaborate on handling future crimes in space. She said, what
Speaker 2: we don't want is an international space regime that has
Speaker 2: very different concepts from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Hopefully we can
Speaker 2: explore space together as a species and have common understandings.
Speaker 2: Today's episode is based on the article what Happens if
Speaker 2: someone is murdered in Space on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written
Speaker 2: by Patrick J. Kiger.
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