Murder by dropping 3-million bouncy balls? What If... #52: Bouncy Balls stipulates: If you wanted to be sure of killing someone, you'd need a lot more balls. 3,000,000 of them—enough to fill a large room—would be be enough to guarantee that the target would either be crushed to death by the impact or buried too deep to dig themselves out. To your last question, if someone just happened to walk underneath when you dropped the bouncy balls, and they were killed by the impact, you'd most likely be guilty of some form of manslaughter. However, by asking this question, you've shown your intent to cause harm to the victim, demonstrating clear malice aforethought. By writing in to this blog, you've probably upgraded your charge to murder. Assume we are in Utah and repeat their Geekweek experiment with the calculated 3-million bouncy balls, set up to fall in a way that it could do what Randall calculated and lead to the death of a passerby. Did we satisfy murder by having read his calculation? What if we had sent in the question in the first place?
Murder is definined in Utah as: Murder is causing the death of another person under any of the following circumstances: ... Knowingly engaging in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person and under circumstances which evidence a depraved indifference to human life. It's not unreasonable to consider dropping 3,000,000 bouncy balls over a populated area as &quot;depraved indifference&quot;, particularly if someone had asked/read the question and would therefore know the potential consequences. Whether the killer would be charged with murder or manslaughter depends on the exact circumstances.
Yes. The principle caselaw is R v Hayward (1908) 21 Cox 692 A husband and wife had an argument that led to the husband chasing his wife out into the street. The wife collapsed during this altercation and died. Whist the husband did not physically touch her, he did shout threats at her. The wife was found to have been suffering from an abnormality of the thyroid gland that neither was aware of that meant that fright or shock could cause death if combined with physical exertion. The husband was charged with manslaughter. [...] The husband was found guilty of manslaughter. No actual proof of violence was necessary as long as the defendant’s unlawful act, which was the threat of violence, caused her fright leading to her death. The criminal law acknowledges that an assailant must take their victim as they find them... Source And... The defendant chased his wife out of the house shouting threats at her. She collapsed and died. He did not physically touch her. She was suffering from a rare thyroid condition which could lead to death where physical exertion was accompanied by fright and panic. Both the defendant and his wife were unaware she had this condition. Held: The defendant was liable for constructive manslaughter as his unlawful act (assault) caused death. The egg shell (thin) skull rule applied. He was therefore fully liable despite the fact an ordinary person of reasonable fortitude would not have died in such circumstances... Source
You have asked about "United Kingdom", but I can only answer about England and Wales; the law in Scotland is very different (rather more different in some respects than the difference between E&amp;W and the State of New York). There is no time limit per se on manslaughter charges; if the police find evidence for a manslaughter charge after 80 years, there is no difficulty (in principle) in bringing a charge against the now-centenarian (provided they are competent to stand trial, and they can get a fair trial, and so on). However, in the case you mentioned I would have thought the major problem would be a defence of autrefois convict - in other words, the defendant can (usually) only be charged once with charges arising from a particular set of facts. It is just possible that the subsequent death constitutes a new fact which allows a new prosecution. On the other hand, the rule for murder used to be that if the victim survived a year and a day then it wasn't murder (even if they then died of their injuries). Finally, the case certainly would not be reopened with a charge of manslaughter. It would be "causing death by dangerous driving", which is a very different offence. Edit My thanks to ohwilleke whose comment about the "year and a day" rule prompted me to do a little research, and discover the Law Reform (Year and a Day Rule) Act 1996. Section 2(2) clearly covers the present case (in both legs), and says that the perpetrator can be re-prosecuted, but only with the permission of the Attorney General. The act is very brief, and I encourage you to read it all. (And incidentally, does not apply to Scotland.)
This is going to vary based on jurisdiction. In Wisconsin, the attempt statute covers all felonies, but it doesn't cover all misdemeanors. The statute says: Whoever attempts to commit a felony or a crime specified in s. 940.19, 940.195, 943.20, or 943.74 may be fined or imprisoned or both as provided under sub. (1g), 943.20 is in that list, and it just so happens to be the theft statute, which includes theft via fraud. So Eve is out of luck - her attempted theft is a crime, even if she doesn't try to steal the $2500.01 needed to trigger a felony. The penalty listed for attempts is half the sentence you'd get for the completed crime. But even if this wasn't covered by the attempt statute, once the police start investigating Eve, they'll likely find a victim, or some other crime to charge her with. People who do this sort of thing tend to have a pattern of doing this sort of thing. And I notice she's using the Internet to commit the crime; that means she's involved in systems affecting interstate commerce, and she may be breaking all manner of federal laws in addition to state laws.
Unless there is enough evidence to convict one or more of the suspects, none will be convicted. In general the argument: We know it must be one of you, but we don't know whch, so we find you all guilty. is not allowed in any non-dictatorial jurisdiction. Just how much evidence is needed for a conviction varies by jurisdiction in theory, and by judge or jury in practice. Also, it would be possible to charge several of the residents with having acted jointly in the crime, but there would still need to be sufficient evidence against each defendant to obtain a conviction.
It is the job of the judge to instruct the jury about the law. If Texas had pattern instructions I'd look up what the instruction is for this matter, but you don't, so I don't know what the judge would say. But it is the judge's sole prerogative to instruct the jury in the law. If the question is a "commitment question", then it is an improper question and should be disallowed, see Stendefer v. State. The question "Would you presume someone guilty if he or she refused a breath test on their refusal alone?" is such a commitment question, and is disallowed. Similarly, "If the evidence, in a hypothetical case, showed that a person was arrested and they had a crack pipe in their pocket, and they had a residue amount in it, and it could be measured, and it could be seen, is there anyone who could not convict a person, based on that" (Atkins v. State, 951 S.W.2d 787). An improper commitment question could be of the type "could you refrain...": Let us assume that you are considering in the penalty phase of any capital murder case, okay? And some of the evidence that has come in shows that the victim's family was greatly impacted and terribly grieved and greatly harmed by the facts․Can you assure us that the knowledge of those facts would not prevent you or substantially impair you in considering a life sentence in such a case (Penry v. State, 903 S.W.2d 715). One way in which a commitment question can be legal is if it asks basically "can you uphold the law?", for example "can you consider probation in a murder case?", or "are you willing to consider mitigating circumstances". The wrong answer to those questions will lead to a for-cause dismissal. The third question is flagrantly improper, the first is rather improper, and the second probably is. If the question can be framed in terms of a candidate's willingness to follow the law, then it should be legal.
Even before the police have any idea who did it, Bob is guilty of whatever wrong he did. However, if you want this to be a legal question and not a moral one, we should assume that you really want to know "Can Bob be convicted of murder, if the evidence proves that he did do it?". Yes, he can. See Morris v. State, 214 S.W.3d 159. The critical question was whether the defendant understood the charges (he did) and whether he could assist in his defense (he could). The desideratum of being able to assist in your own defense only goes so far. On the other hand, maybe no, per Wilson v. US. A government expert witness "testified that appellant had permanent retrograde amnesia and would not be able to aid in his own defense in terms of remembering any of the acts alleged in the indictment". The crucial difference seems to be whether one just has loss of memory, vs. loss of memory connected with some other mental disorder. [Addendum] Per Dusky v. United States 362 U.S. 402, competence to stand trial depends on whether the accused has sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding -- and whether he has a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him. I am not aware of any exceptions e.g. whether this is not the case with strict liability crimes like statutory rape, and since it is generally held that "competency" is a requirement mandated by the due process clause, I don't think there could be an exception.
Most likely, they chose enough victims to ensure a long prison term while having plenty of additional victims to charge if something went wrong at trial. Plus limiting the number of victims limits the amount of repetitive testimony and evidence the prosecutors had to introduce proving the death of each victim. If you charge with 19 counts when there are 492 victims and something goes wrong at trial, whether you think but can’t prove that the mob paid off a juror or whether you just get an oddball juror that votes to acquit, you can always pick some of the remaining 473 victims to bring charges. The prosecutors could have failed in 24 straight trials for 19 charges of manslaughter and still been able to bring charges a 25th time (though that would have been highly unusual). If you charge a defendant with manslaughter, you have to prove the death of a particular person. So there has to be evidence that Bob Smith went to the club, Bob Smith’s body was recovered and identified, Bob Smith was autopsied and the cause of death was smoke inhalation, etc. That gets repetitive after a time and jurors start thinking of the victims as numbers rather than people. Limiting the number of charges makes it much easier to make the victims seem like distinct humans to the jury. You can show pictures of the victims at trial and jurors can recognize particular individuals not just “1 of 492 dead people”.