Harming a nearly dead person Bob is walking down the street when he slips on a banana peel. He bumps his head on the pavement and starts convulsing. Given the seriousness of his concussion, it seems that he's about to die. Bob's ex girlfriend Alice happens to be walking nearby. She comes to his aid and gives him water. However, she secretly spikes the water with arsenic. Bob drinks the poisoned water and dies. Is Alice guilty for Bob's death? Edit: A similar question was asked here. My question is a bit different since I'm asking whether it is legal to harm, and not kill, a person who is dying.
Does he die from the poison or from the head injury? If it's from the poison, yes, Alice is guilty of murder. If it's from the head injury, Alice is guilty of attempted murder. If Bob dies from a combination of the head injury and the poison, Alice is likely guilty of murder. The general common law rule is that when there are two causes of death, liability attaches when the defendant's actions were a &quot;substantial factor&quot; in causing the death.
In general, the perpetrator can be sued by anyone who suffered harm as a result of his actions. The fact that he's also being prosecuted criminally doesn't change that, nor does it matter whether or not the victim is a "celebrity". The perpetrator could, for instance, be sued by any or all of: the victim himself, for his pain and suffering and loss of earnings the victim's club, for the financial loss due to the player not playing the victim's medical insurer, for the cost of his care. However, even if any of these plaintiffs win their case and are awarded some huge sum of money, it doesn't help them if the perpetrator doesn't have the money. They can only actually collect what the perpetrator has, and possibly some fraction of his future earnings (which are not likely to be very much if he is in prison). So unless the perpetrator is quite wealthy, it's unlikely they would go to the trouble and expense of a lawsuit.
Through the legal doctrine of &quot;transferred intent&quot;, wherein if one intends to murder A, and undertake actions to kill A, but one's actions kill B, one has murdered B. Whatever crimes one would have committed, had one performed them on one's intended target, are considered committed against the individual one actually performed them on. Many crimes require one to have mens rea to be guilty; they do not require one to have mens rea towards a given individual. So, so long as one had the proper intent to murder someone, the actual victim of their actions is irrelevant.
Barring any specific statute the relevant law is the tort of negligence. To succeed Alice must prove Bob: had a duty to Alice, breached that duty by failing to conform to the required standard of conduct (generally the standard of a reasonable person), the negligent conduct was, in law, the cause of the harm to Alice, and Alice was, in fact, harmed or damaged. She will probably succeed on 1, 3 and 4 where she will struggle is with 2. It seems that Bob did everything a reasonable person could do to avoid the accident. The only possible hope is that not knowing that bridges freeze first might be something a qualified NZ driver should know and that he breached his duty by not knowing if that is something the judge considers reasonable. The traffic warning is irrelevant and untested (and untestable) hearsay and should be excluded from evidence.
The official clause in question is here: Pecandu Narkotika yang telah cukup umur sebagaimana dimaksud dalam Pasal 55 ayat (2) yang sedang menjalani rehabilitasi medis 2 (dua) kali masa perawatan dokter di rumah sakit dan/atau lembaga rehabilitasi medis yang ditunjuk oleh pemerintah tidak dituntut pidana which unofficially says Narcotics addicts who are old enough as referred to in Article 55 paragraph (2) who are undergoing medical rehabilitation with at least two treatments by doctors in hospitals and / or medical rehabilitation institutions designated by the government shall not be not criminally prosecuted where the italicized part involves some interpolation – a professional legal translator could have a better English rendition. The point is that you have to actually be getting treatment, and it has to be at a facility that is approved (ditunjuk) by the government. Such addicts are not criminally "dituntut", which could cover being charged, indicted, prosecuted or sued, a minor ambiguity resolved by the fact that the prosecutor is the "penuntut umum" (same root word). Under the law, it is not sufficient to just register (report yourself), you have to actually be receiving treatment. The part about "was not sentenced" is just a mistake.
It depends... It could be an offence under section 5 Public Order Act 1986: (1) A person is guilty of an offence if he— (a) uses [...] disorderly behaviour ... [...] within the hearing or sight of a person1 likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby. Then there's Causation to consider, which is: whether the defendant's conduct (or omission) caused ... harm or damage. And also recklessness, which can be described as: unjustified risk-taking. In R v G [2004] 1 A.C. 1034 two boys set a fire which caused significant damage. They were charged, and convicted, for reckless arson contrary to section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971: (1) A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence. ... (3) An offence committed under this section by destroying or damaging property by fire shall be charged as arson. This conviction was quashed by the House of Lords who determined that test of recklessness for criminal damage is subjective and should take account of, for example the defendant's age (in R v G they were 11 and 12). The court determination was: A person acts recklessly within the meaning of section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 with respect to - (i) a circumstance when he is aware of a risk that it exists or will exist; (ii) a result when he is aware of a risk that it will occur; and it is, in the circumstances known to him, unreasonable to take the risk. But compare this with DPP v Newbury and Jones [1976] AC 500 if someone were to die as a result of being hit by a brick: The defendants, both teenage boys, had thrown a piece of paving stone from a railway bridge onto a train which had been passing beneath them. The object struck and killed the guard who had been sitting in the driver’s compartment. The defendants were convicted of manslaughter, and unsuccessfully appealed, on the ground that they had not foreseen that their actions might cause harm to any other person. Lord Salmon explained that a defendant was guilty of manslaughter if it was proved that he intentionally did an act which was unlawful and dangerous and that act caused death, and that it was unnecessary that the defendant had known that the act in question was unlawful or dangerous. 1Note that there has to be such a person, not a hypothetical one, to be guilty of this offence.
It is an unquestioned pre-American axiom, expressed in Latin as actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea (&quot;the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty&quot;) which has been part of the Anglo-American legal system since at least the 17th century. It is thus presupposed in all criminal proceedings. It's not that a person only commits a crime with free will, it's that it is not deemed to be a crime if there is no free will. A person can be held at gunpoint and required to commit a criminal act: the person does indeed have free will to choose to be killed rather than commit the act, but the act is legally excused since dying is never held to be the only acceptable alternative to committing an otherwise-criminal act.
This is manslaughter of the vehicular variety Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice. It is of three kinds:... (c) Vehicular— (1) ... driving a vehicle in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, and with gross negligence. This is what they call a wobbler, and could be charged as a felony or a misdemeanor. In the latter case, the maximum penalty is a year in county jail and in the former it is six years in state prison. If the cause was ordinary negligence, it is just a misdemeanor. The details of gross negligence are set forth in the jury instruction CALCRIM 592 A person acts with gross negligence when: He or she acts in a reckless way that creates a high risk of death or great bodily injury; AND A reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk. In other words, a person acts with gross negligence when the way he or she acts is so different from how an ordinarily careful person would act in the same situation that his or her act amounts to disregard for human life or indifference to the consequences of that act. The "absent-mindedness" defense seems a bit far fetched, but still not everybody who drives inattentively is prosecuted for a felony, or even a misdemeanor. However, it is really hard to imagine not being acutely aware of the fact that people drive on the right side of the road here. Without a more-detailed story, I don't see a basis for deciding what level of negligence a prosecutor is likely to argue for, and what the prosecutor's agenda is: somewhere between no prosecution, and (most likely) misdemeanor manslaughter.