Don't have time now, but even so....
In the Superman comics in the very late eighties, there was a story arc where Superman killed. He didn't kill in a fit of fury, blinded by emotion, but he killed deliberately, methodically. He killed the three Kryptonian criminals that we saw in "Superman II": Zod, Ursa and that ape-like goon whose name I have forgotten. Superman believed that these three were dead set to destroy the Earth, and since they were three and he was only one, he didn't trust himself to be able to stop them. So he lured them into a trap and exposed them to gold kryptonite, which robbed them of their superpowers. After that, he exposed them to green kryptonite and killed them.
(Personally, I strongly objected to the fact that he killed the three Kryptonians after he had robbed them of their powers and supposedly rendered them harmless. But Superman believed that they might find a way to regain their powers, and I have to admit - in the world of the comics, it seems impossible to keep a good criminal down. We need them as churners-out of more A-plots and super-brawls.)
Anyway. Some time after Superman had killed the three Kryptonians, a strange vigilante turned up in Metropolis. I believed he was called Gangbuster. He showed himself only at night, he seemed to have little or no respect for the law when it came to protecting the rights of suspects, and he was generally scary. He broke up a lot of gangs and scared the pants of many criminals. No one knew who he was.
Then it turned out that this Gangbuster was in fact Superman. But Superman had not been aware of these extra-curricular activities of his. He had been more or less "sleep-walking" when he was being Gangbuster, somehow giving vent to his frustration at killing his Kryptonian enemies and his general, growing hatred of criminals, or else he was just generally going slowly crazy.
After finding out that he had been Gangbuster without being aware of it, Superman deemed himself a menace to society. He sentenced himself to exile from the Earth, and he spent many long months in space, before he had finally managed to come to terms with what he had done, so that he was ready to return home and be Superman again. Interestingly, very soon after he had returned, he began dating Lois Lane for real, setting up the long arc that eventually led to Clark and Lois's comic book wedding.
It should be noted that comic book Superman was not tried at any court for killing the three Kryptonians. However, he sentenced himself to an exile in space which probably lasted, comic book time, at least a year. For comic book Superman, what he had done had everything to do with morality and little or nothing to do with legal matters.
Anyway, comic book Superman promised never to kill again. I noticed that Terry's Superman made the same promise to the court. However, comic book Superman made that promise to himself, which might make it more compelling and perhaps honest. After all, isn't there a difference between saying "If you don't punish me I'll never do that again" and saying "I'll never do that again"?
In my opinion, if Superman has killed, the real questions will have to be about morality, not about legality.
Ann
