Courtesy TV Tropes Wiki
The recent court case that determined Dungeons & Dragons was a potentially dangerous activity for prisoners cited several other cases supposedly supporting the view that "there are valid reasons to fear" a negative relationship with Dungeons & Dragons. The prison officials pointed to a few published circuit court cases to give traction to their views and the court viewed these cases as "persuasive evidence that for some individuals, games like D&D can impede rehabilitation, lead to escapist tendencies, or result in more dire consequences."
The document then helpfully cites each case as evidence. I will devote one article to each of these cases. Let's see if these judgments really do make the case that games like D&D are indeed harmful, shall we?
The second case cited is Thompson v. Dixon, 987 F.2d 1038, 1039 (4th Cir. 1993), "affirming the conviction of one of two men who brought a D&D adventure to life by entering the home of an elderly couple and assassinating them." If this sounds familiar, it's because Thompson was the compatriot of Jeffrey Karl Meyer. In other words, we have two citings of the same crime.
In 1986, 17-year-old enlisted Army soldier Thompson met Jeffrey Karl Meyer. The two played Dungeons & Dragons in November 1986. They were presumably playing Oriental Adventures, because Thompson claims that the game "called for several Ninja assassins to enter the house of an elderly couple and assassinate them." It's also possible they were just role-playing assassins. Thompson claims they picked the Kutz's home because it had "what resembled a moat around their house."
Thompson confessed to being present at the murders, stealing the Kutz's property, witnessing Meyer kill them, and confessed to a psychologist that he stabbed Mrs. Kutz. He claimed he was not guilty by reason of insanity, which was rejected by the court. Thompson was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon, and one count of first-degree burglary. He was convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life terms of imprisonment plus two forty-year terms which were combined to run subsequent to the expiration of the life sentences.
At the heart of these kinds of defenses is a kind of twisty dichotomy: either the defendant is insane and thus Dungeons & Dragons isn't responsible for his actions, or he's sane enough to plan the murder and thus Dungeons & Dragons wasn't part of his planning. None of the cases so far have claimed Dungeons & Dragons MADE them kill someone, only that they were obviously insane in using Dungeons & Dragons as a template to kill someone. And in the two cases we have reviewed so far, the courts rejected the insanity defense.
Can psychotic individuals be prompted to commit murderous acts by external forces? Probably. Does Dungeons & Dragons overtly encourage anyone to do this? I don't think so.
Comments
Well, I really can't compete with a shoe ad, but ...
I was briefly involved in one of these cases years ago, when several of us from TSR were asked by a D.A.'s office to review notebooks taken from the home of a teenager accused of murder. They were being offered by the defense as evidence that the boy was dissociated from reality. The prosecutors were particularly interested in a notebook filled with character stats and drawings of heroes and monsters, but it was exactly the sort of thing that every teenage boy playing D&D has. It's easy to understand how someone unfamiliar with the game would be mystified by it. Once we explained the game's whys and wherefores, the prosecutors were ready to rip that defense apart, and it's my understanding that the defendant in that case dropped it and never brought it up again. That was one of the few cases where prosecuting or defense attorneys approached us directly rather than going to some "expert" unrelated to the RPG industry.
Mr. Winter,
Can you let me know which case that was, with citation if possible? Over here at the Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGa) we keep a long list of all such cases that we know about and how they were resolved; it helps us attack such cases to be able to show that such a defense has never worked in the past. My e-mail address is "region-2" at (@) our domain name, "car-pga.org".
In service,
M. Alan Thomas II
Regional Director, CAR-PGa
I don't know if D&D is adverse to the rehabilitation of a criminal or not (I'm not a psychologist)...and putting aside the fact that adverse aspersions are being levied at D&D yet again :I ...I still don't want some guy in prison being able to play more D&D than I do. :P I'm fine with ruling that they're bad guys, and they're in prison for punishment, therefore they don't get to indulge in a recreational hobby. Why can't they just leave it at that?
I think food is to blame. I bet every one of these people have eaten food in prison. If they stopped feeding prisoners, I bet they would eliminate the prison crime and the escapist tendencies in a matter of days!
The point I am making is that just because some people who have played D&D and then, later in life have committed crimes does not automatically mean that D&D was the cause. Where is their evidence that D&D was the cause rather than something they have in common.
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