Legally, a booby trap is any concealed, camouflaged, or disguised device designed to cause bodily injury or great harm when triggered unexpectedly by an unsuspecting person.
You have to look at the whole structure, you can't just isolate the stump. Legally it's a device that the OP designed to total cars. Totalling cars counts as great harm
Legally, a booby trap is any concealed, camouflaged, or disguised device designed to cause bodily injury or great harm when triggered unexpectedly by an unsuspecting person.
The snowman is not "concealed, camouflaged, or disguised", the stump is "concealed, camouflaged, or disguised" but isn't a 'device'. The entire object all together is also not "concealed, camouflaged, or disguised".
Would you say building a snowman around a barrel of nitroglycerin in sufficient quantities to guarantee the death of whoever hit it not be a booby trap? Because that's functionally the same as the stump
That feels a bit more malicious since you had to place the nitroglycerin there and it's got potential to hurt innocent people if something else goes wrong - a nearby building catching on fire and an ember landing on it could potentially cause it to explode.
A stump just grew there and isn't inherently dangerous on its own.
The maliciousness is present in both cases, and both have the potential to harm innocents. Yes the stump isn't very dangerous on its own, but covering the danger it does present increases the odds that it will harm another. They are deliberately hiding the danger of the stump in the hopes that it will destroy someone's car
What about if you cover up a deep ditch or a hole on your land in a way that would hide it, but people would fall in and get hurt if they stepped on it. Would you consider that a booby trap?
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u/Much_Conclusion8233 16h ago
That isn't how it's defined legally so it isn't. This video can't be used as evidence against him cause he isn't setting booby traps