Dealing with a real Death Note

[robvalue]

For me, if you can demonstrate motive, intent, repeatable cause and effect the guy/book should be neutralized. Not much legal precedent for that so........ declare him legally insane and apply the chemical strait jacket.

That is exactly the problem, no precedent. Of course the scenario is never going to happen, but I think it's interesting to consider how society would deal with a complete anomaly like this.

I agree, you'd have to do something once you've established those things. The problem, I suppose, is what precedent you could be setting for the future. You can now convict people without establishing how they actually did what they did. You can convict someone sitting in a room for months for things going on around the world, on nothing more than correlation of seemingly unconnected events.

I expect a coverup would be the most likely thing. Maybe it would be said that he's the head of some global terrorist network who have been using chemical weapons that are extremely hard to detect. Or else he'd just get "disappeared". I suppose it would depend on how much the public knew. The thing is, a coverup could easily work since no one would believe the guy's version of events.

---

Imagine the same scenario, no magic, but a book of written momento and a string of missing persons cases /w no bodies.  Guy with the books going to jail.

Yeah, that could prove guilt just based on the fact that the guy would have had to know about the missing people in order to write it in a book. If it could be shown that he wrote about them before the information even became available to the police, I suppose you could infer he must be involved somehow, even if he refuses to say how.

This is different because the "killings" from the book often happen right out in the open. However, if it could again be shown that the names were written before the people died, then that would imply involvement in whatever was actually killing them. At the least, the guy would be covering up where he was getting the information, so maybe he's be an accomplice rather than the murderer.