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Remember that zany "daredevil" who tried to jump off the Empire State Building last April, after sneaking in a special outfit with camera under a fatsuit (which was chucked in the men's bathroom at the observation level)? Well, Jeb Corliss got lucky, as a judge dismissed the charges against him, noting that his act was not "depraved" enough!
Justice Michael Ambrect found that since Corliss, who has jumped from Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Eiffel Tower, and Golden Gate Bridge, is an experienced, uh, daredevil and had considered things like wind patterns and was going to use a parachute, clearly Corliss didn't want to hurt anyone. Ambrecht wrote, "The circumstances surrounding this admittedly dangerous stunt suggest that rather than indifference to the risk of harm to others, [Corliss] took affirmative steps to ensure the safety of others." Hmm, we guess Ambrecht found Corliss's actions analogous to the judge who tried to commit suicide by gassing himself, even though the gassing caused an explosion in his whole building.
The police are upset, saying that others might try to jump off buildings with parachutes. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said, "Does the court really want the Empire State and other city landmarks to become magnets for BASE [Bridge, Antenna, Span, Earth] jumpers?" Even legal pundits are shocked. NYU law professor Stephen Gillers told the NY Times, "Well, as a New Yorker, I think I won't walk near the Empire State Building for a while." The Times also has an interesting debate about laws and jumping off buildings - Gillers takes Corliss's lawyer to task for saying that it's "shocking" there's no law to prohibit jumping off buildings.
The district attorney's office is considering an appeal or re-prosecution, saying, "We believe that jumping from the Empire State Building remains a reckless act." No word on whether Corliss will try to get his job hosting Discovery's Stunt Junkies back. And here's one of his jumps on iFilm.
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he'll be back. i wanna see the jump!
all those steps was to insure the safety of himself. not others. this judge is a tard
The depraved indifference comes from the deus ex machina. Sure he took steps to parachute but that was for his own safety and not the safety of others. He failed to recognize that the chute might not open or that the security guards might have fell with him trying to prevent him from jumping. to not take this into account is depraved.
that is absurd. pretty typical though. dude can do whatever he wants and it's ok because he's so responsible. but the minute his parachute fucks up and he's looking like a puddle somewhere on 34th street nyc has to shut down 2 blocks and waste a bunch of manpower to clean up after him. and then the empire state building, and probably the city too somehow, will get sued by this guys family
...
IMO, that judge is an i moron. Even with a Parachute, he would either come down on the street or come down on someone else's roof.
I talked to this guy in person last year. He definitely knows his $hit. Anyone who jumps know that equip failure is a possibility. I'm sure there was more planning involved than is publicly known. Besides, if the city shuts down blocks for movie filming, why would this be any more of an inconvenience?
Oh noes! We didn't put someone in jail!!! Whatever will we do with all these empty cells?!!
ajr, i hope you're kidding. it doesn't matter how much he knows when he is trespassing and breaking the law while exposing himself and others to harm and inconvenience. i know a shitload about trains and the system- so even though i would be taking precautions against it, if i get hit by a train while writing graffiti i wouldn't expect people to be ok with it just because i know my shit and unfortunately i got hit cause i slipped on an icy rail or something
and when a film crew takes over a block the city gets money, gets business, and gets a free commercial. if some idiot liquifies himself it's nothing but a pain in the ass. i suppose a small amount of business is generated though- onlooking emergency workers probably stop in to the local deli for a coffee or donut.
Is there something freudian in how you misspell Kuala Lumpur as Kuala JUMPur?
I am partial to the guy who base jumped off the WTC in the early 90's after 18 months of planning and landed on the street, ran to a nearby getaway car and made his escape.
Let the guy jump.
You assholes probably want him splattered and joke about it on Gothamist.
And, if he does hit someone, them be the odds of living in the big city.
You can get killed walking your doggie. As shown by the electrocuted dog owner. (and as per Lt. hanna)
Shouldn't the NYPD be working on Critical Mass?
I can't wait for Mayor Nanny to chime in on this ruling.
If my chute don't open wide I'll be a spot on the country side..I wanna be an Airborne Ranger...
Throw him out of a plane over Baghdad
Push him out of a plane over EyeRack. Mighty good adrenaline there
This post was picked up by The Huffington Post.
I like how the refer to the site as "The Gothamist"!
;)
Let's ban buildings so people can't jump off of them.
Isn't it
Building
Antenna
Span
Earth
Not Bridge
fishtale, how is he breaking the law? There is no law against BASE jumping in New York City apparently. He was charged with reckless endangerment, and by the legal standard, he was not being reckless. He knew what he was doing. Driving a car for the first time down a highway at 100mph is reckless, because you don't know what you are doing. This guy clearly (3000+ jumps) knows what he is doing. Just because you wouldn't do it doesn't make it reckless.
Why does everything that someone disagrees with have to be against the "law". This is supposed to be a free country, but everytime someone does something that most people would not do or are scared of doing or that they dont understand then they call it bad, or reckless, or dangerous and they have to be protected from themselves, and we should have a law against that. Anyone who thinks like this is a coward, and unamerican and should move to Russia or Afganistan where they have laws telling you how to do everything since your arent able to make any decisions for yourself. The judge is a hero and should not be critisized but applauded. What do you think the odds would be of him actually hitting someone on the fall if his chute did not open, and if he does, well i guess his death will be punishment enough. And as for a lawsuit from the guys family, if all judges had the common sense of this judge, they would just giggle and dismiss it on the grounds of stupidity.
Knowing some people in this sport, I would say most of them actually have "better" ethics than most people, in many ways. Also in this case, the precautions that the jumper and his crew probably took, weren't only to protect the jumper himself, but also everyone else. The jumper and his crew go at great at lenghts at this. Of course they don't shout about it, and most outsiders don't even notice what's happening. Of course there was a possibility that someone would be hurt despite the precautions - but every time you drive a car it's the same. This court decision is totally legit, although I do understand the other side's argument.
better luck next time
The argument that my parachute may not have opened and someone might have gotten squashed on the ground is erroneous for two reasons.
Reason number one:
The first base jump ever successfully done was by a man named Sebastien Lenormand in 1783. The empire state building has been base jumped by 4 different people, the world trade center was base jumped by 4 different people, the chrysler building was base jumped by 3 different people the statue of liberty was base jumped by 2 different people. All of these jumps made the news and were done without injury to even one single person. The first time the statue of liberty was base jumped was in 1912. Sense then literally thousands upon thousands of base jumps are done every year in every major city all over the world. Never in the entire history of base jumping has a base jumper jumped from a structure, his parachute not opened and then hurt someone on the ground. The history of base jumping does not support the argument of a base jumpers parachute not opening and hurting someone else.
My own history also states that this is not a very likely scenario. I have over 1000 base jumps, 16 countries, 5 continents and I have never hurt another human being ever. I have never damaged any property and I have never run away from the police. To say, what if your parachute didn't open and you squashed someone on the ground is like me saying, what if the brakes went out in your car on your way to work today and you squashed someone on the sidewalk. It would be pure speculation and not every person driving a car is committing reckless endangerment in the first degree simply because the brakes in their car could have gone out on their drive to work.
There are no laws prohibiting base jumping in any city anywhere in the world. I know this because I have base jumped and have friends that base jump in pretty much all of them. Studying the law is a very big part of my job.
Reason number two:
My number one top priority is always the safety of other human beings. I truly believe and live by the concept that your right to swing your arm ends where another persons nose begins. I am a professional and in all my base jumps I make absolutely sure no one else's life will be placed in harms way. An example of this would be the jump I did off the eiffel tower in france. I hired ground crew to clear the area under where I was jumping to make absolutely sure no one could get injured if something went wrong with my parachute.
It was unnecessary to use ground crew to control crowds at the empire state building, because I was not going to be deploying my parachute over human life. I was going to be opening my parachute over the roof of the building across the street from the empire state building. That roof had no people on it during my jump attempt.
There is a cliff in europe that is an exact match of the empire state building. It is 1000 ft high making it almost exactly the same hight as the empire from where I was going to exit. The cliff has a ledge system that matches almost perfectly the contours of the empire state buildings out cropping. And it has a two lane road at the bottom just like the south face of the empire state building, which was the side I had chosen to jump. The cliff has a small field on the other side of the two lane road and the empire has a small building on the other side of the two lane road.
I have over 40 jumps from this cliff in Europe and on every single jump I did there I would track ( tracking is where a person puts their arms to there side and cups air as they fall. This allows them to slide on the air away from the object they have just jumped from. They can move one foot forward for every foot they drop.) over the ledges, track over the two lane road and open my parachute over the middle of the small field on the other side. If I had jumped the empire state building I would have jumped, tracked over the buildings out cropping, over the two lane road and opened my parachute over the building across the street. If my parachute had not opened I would have impacted the roof of that building hurting no one but my self.
I also had to time the street lights on 5th ave, I watched them for days. I checked them in the morning, afternoon and in the evenings to see when the best time to make a landing would be. I chose rush hour on purpose because it was when grid lock was most likely. The lights on 5th ave all turn red at exactly the same time. They stay red for 45 seconds. During rush hour that time is extended because of all the traffic. Even when cars start to move again they move very slowly. This would give me the most time with cars at a stand still. The time it would have taken me to step off the building track across the street open my parachute and land on 5th ave would have taken under 30 seconds. Giving me 15 second to pull my gear in and get to a sidewalk. I know it doesn't sound like allot of time but for a base jumper that is an eternity.
Also, this building could only be jumped under the most perfect wind conditions. I needed a wind coming from the north between 5 to 10 notts to ensure a pinpoint tiptoe landing. I was at the empire and scheduled to jump it a week earlier then the date of the attempt. But the winds were blowing at 13 notts out of the south. I canceled the jump and pushed it forward till the weather got better because those conditions would have made the jump unsafe. The next week the weather got better and I got a day with perfect 8 nott winds out of the north. The day of the jump was dictated by the wind conditions being perfect to make the jump safe. With an 8 nott wind I can land on a frisbee on my tiptoes while giving you a high five. It's hard for a person that doesn't base jump to understand, but landing on a 5 lane road in between stopped cars is about as easy as a landing can get. I am use to landing in much smaller tighter conditions on every jump I do. The landing under that building was huge and would have been easy for me to do without touching even one person or one car.
Jeb Corliss
P.S. All the above is also a mute point because I was stopped by building security. Sense I didn't get to jump no one was ever in any danger on the ground. To my knowledge there is no such thing as attempted reckless endangerment.
Also the security was never in any danger of falling because they were on the other side of 10 ft high suicide bars. There was no physical way for them to fall from that building in the position they were in. The only person in any danger of falling was me. If i had fallen at that point I would have hit an out cropping about 4 floors down and hung on the side of the building again hurting no one but my self...
The picture in the paper of the security holding on to me as I hung over the edge shows this point very well...
i just watched Jeb Corliss in "Fearless" a documentary on the adventure channel. i had never heard of him but after watching this show I have nothing but absolute respect for this human being who knows how precious life is, and makes sure he lives it to the fullest.
I wasn't sure how old the doco was so i googled him to see if he was dead yet! and found this forum.
Thank God for human beings like this.
How many of you can honestly say you have ever, even once, pushed yourself to the point of being prepared to die doing something you love?
Enjoy your day in the office soldier ants - if it wasn't for free spirits like Jeb you would have nothing to talk about at your water coolers on monday mornings.
My favorite quote from the doco was when Jeb said
"If you die doing something you love it isn't throwing your life away, it's living your life to the fullest! If you stop pushing yourself, you stop evolving"
I'm sure Steve Irwins family know exactly what he means
Please remember this next time you've had a "hard" day at the office.
Jeb if you ever read this - I hope you are still seeking out your fears and facing them so courageously. i would love to have a surf and a beer with you so if you ever head to Australia please drop me a line, I know a good bridge that crosses a nice harbor you could have some fun off. pac2301@hotmail.com
Base=BUILDING, antenna, span, earth. Journalist much?
No observer, spectator, or bystander has ever been killed or injured by a BASE jumper (...while BASE jumping). Jeb knows what he is doing, plenty of others trust him with their lives on these jumps. There is no risk walking by a high rise of a base jumper killing you... other than a geezer dying of a heart attack after seeing a BASE jump. If security fell, it is their fault for trying to stop him, they are the ones that chose to add the unnecessary risk to the equation. Know the sport before you criticize it. Better yet, go out and take years of training through skydiving and mentoring and try it; then comment on the risk to others and how he "ignored it." Everything is factored into a jump. If you're too ignorant or weak to do that and can only yap away with zero knowledge/experience on the issue, I suggest you take a lesson in humility and S.T.F.U.! Let the man do his thang and keep the rest world smiling with envy of his accomplishments, as well as from his videos for our viewing pleasure. I applaud the decision.