#nick posts

First, let us define treason.

There are two ways to define it: federally and on a state level.

Federally, treason is defined within Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution. It specifically states that reason is specifically limited to essentially war-related crimes, such as starting a war against the US or helping their enemies, such as giving them aid. Starting a war basically boils down to a group of armed people that are attempting to overthrow the government or resist their laws, and this also applies to conspiracy to those crimes (or you're actively making plans to commit those crimes.

This definition was expanded in 2001 with the Patriot Act. The relevant information here is that it mostly just gave more freedoms to prevent terrorism from happening, such as mentioning more modern technology and methods and increasing punishments for terrorism. The general gist of the definition is the same.

By state, I'm going to go by Illinois, because I personally believe that's the state Amity Park is in. However, as a general rule, most states just follow the same rules as the federal definition, they just have different punishment lengths (like how long you’d spend in prison and the amount in fines you’d pay). This is the case in Illinois, it's basically the same only they added that people who do all these war crimes “knowingly” which is semi-important in this case since Danny does a lot of things unknowingly.

As a general rule, think of treason as: Somebody who wants to overthrow their government to the point of making serious plans or actively doing it, or by helping government enemies by providing them aid and protection.

So what crimes has Danny committed? I'm only really going to go over three major things honestly.

Breaking and Entering, Robbery, Theft, etc:

In Control Freaks, Danny breaks into multiple jewelry stores under the control of Freakshow. However, since this was against Danny's will, this would likely fall under a situation of a crime under duress. This essentially means that you did a crime against your will because you were in danger. This is something that Danny would have to prove in a court of law, which is semi-debatable. Either way, even if Danny is found guilty of this: this is not treason.

Assault with a deadly weapon/Attempted Murder, especially towards a political figure:

I'm going to classify Danny's ghost powers as a deadly weapon, because I think that's a very fair assessment to make. The incident I'm specifically going to talk about is the Mayor, because that's what I see a lot of people bringing up when they talk about how Danny's committed treason. And I can see how people think that. But is it treason? Short answer is no.

Basically, I think where a lot of people get confused on this point is that in England and many previous British-controlled areas, the assassination of a political figure would be treason, but that’s not the case in America. While after JFK's assassination, it did become a federal offense to basically assassinate anybody who was acting as President or Vice President, as well as members of Congress. However, this does not mean that this is treason. It just means that it's a federal level crime as opposed to a state level crime (which is typically what murder falls under), and it does not fall under treason. It’s just a federal level of murder.

“But isn't treason somebody who wants to overthrow the government or planning on it? How does assassinating a political figure not count?” you may be wondering, and that's a very good question. The distinction here falls under the fact that while the motives are often political, it doesn't really directly lead to an attempted overthrowing of the government. It's not the best example, but a much better example of treason would be bombing the White House while multiple members of Congress, or while the President + Vice President are both in there AS WELL AS having intentions and plans to kind of storm the building and take over. The key part of treason is that they want to overthrow the government; not just hurt people.

But also on this note: based on all of this that I’ve said, Vlad has arguably committed treason against the Ghost King if we apply these same definitions. This is because Vlad purposefully took steps to overthrow the GZ government; he’s implied to that he had plans to step in and take over due to his search to get the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire, seems to have recruited others for his cause (specifically the Fright Knight, Valerie and Danny as these are all people he got involved, even though Danny and Valerie weren’t really fully in the know), and Vlad specifically took steps to make sure Pariah Dark was locked away.

Everything within the Ultimate Enemy: