Star Trek: 10 Characters Who Got Away With Murder

There's been a murder! Fetch the psycho-tricorder, find the psycho-killer! Clue: It's not Scotty, in the alley, with the bloody knife. That was solved, and 'Jack the Ripper' and other aliases were dispersed out into space in billions of pieces. Later, it was Lon Suder, with the coil spanner, in engineering, and the distressed Vulcan, with the TR-116, all over the station. Suder spent time with Tuvok, and Chu'lak was probably just confused as to why Ezri was talking to herself before the medical team arrived.

There are murder cases in Star Trek that aren't quite so cut (and slash and shoot and blow-up) and dry, however. And they did get away with it, too, you meddling shapeshifter! You'd think, with all that technology, no one could dodge a murder charge by about the mid-22nd century onwards. It turns out that you've just got to be a bit more clever about it. Moreover, the vast number of inhabited worlds and realms in the galaxy also means a great deal of jurisdictions, or for some of the seedier planets, the lack thereof. In places, the criteria for murder and its penalties are, by definition, completely alien and/or completely inexistent.

Here, we will be focusing on characters who have killed (unlawfully… ish) with intent and never faced the consequences. This must not have been in self-defence or in the defence of another (half of Starfleet would be on this list otherwise), nor must there be diminished responsibility, so no Agnes Jurati/Bruce Maddox. Mass murder counts, though… is a sentence I never thought I'd write. Oh, and our sincere non-apologies to Kevin Uxbridge. You just missed out again!

Here comes the bloodlust! Beam, beam, beam, beam, beam, beam, beam awaaaay.

One of the highest-regarded episodes in all of Star Trek sets up its main character as an accessory to murder or, rather, to an assassination. That's not a criticism: it is murder and morality that makes In the Pale Moonlight one of the best. We all knew Garak would be involved — just another 26-hour day in and out of the tailor's shop for him — but the Captain? That came as more of a shock. In doing whatever it took to get the Romulans into the war, Sisko surprised himself.

Neither Garak nor Sisko were ever going to face any (legal) repercussions for their actions. Part of their plan, at least, was already Starfleet-approved, and if the Romulans had ever found out, the consequences would have been galactically catastrophic. Think: the entire Romulan senate shouting 'It's a faaake!' in unison.

From the start, that road to hell Joseph Sisko liked to remind his son about was paved with latinum bribes, right next to a river of biomimetic gel. Only at the end did Vreenak meet the murderous magician. Pay no attention to that Cardassian behind the curtain! To move metaphors, and movies, if you're going to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight, you probably shouldn't worry about scuffing your shoes. For the magician's assistant, the most damning thing, as Sisko himself stated, is not that he was party to murder and got away with it, but that he'd do it all again. Learning to live with that fact was the price he'd have to pay for the security of the Alpha Quadrant. As for Garak, well, if he only had a heart… 

The real victim in all this? Quark's shirt.

Computer… Erase that entire entry.