It’s rather unlikely that anyone would arise from the dead (though it was rumored to have happened twice a couple thousand years ago) but if they did, how would the legal system in the US handle the following? Theoretically, of course.
Scenario #1
Manny, a boy who takes the religious edict to go forth and spread the good news to heart, crosses paths with some folks who really don’t like his kind. One thing leads to another and local punk Pontzi ends up stabbing him. He is soon arrested after being caught with the bloody knife still in hand, and arraigned for the murder.
But a short time later, Manny is back like nothing happened! Everyone is stunned. What happens to Pontzi’s murder trial now? Charges can be amended to murder if a assault victim dies, but what if one came back to life?
Scenario #2
Laz has been trouble with the law since middle school, and now that he’s an adult he’s a real lowlife. After he kills two cops, three kids, and a nun, he’s sentenced to death by lethal injection. The execution goes off without a hitch…except a few hours after being declared dead, Laz recovers.
Is he now free to get on with his newly restored life, or does the state get another crack at killing him for good?
The first scenario is essentially a case of genuine resurrection if I read correctly, the second scenario is just an example of a "botched’ execution. I believe there have been similar threads on those, and the answer is that in some botched executions the person was later executed for reals, and in others the person wasn’t.
You can’t change the laws of physics without changing society, and you can’t change society without changing the legal system. Therefore, if it were possible for someone to come back from the dead, society would accept the notion into its structure and would make for itself a legal system capable of dealing with it. Conversely, since it’s impossible here in the real world, our legal system can’t deal with it, so there is no really good answer.
The best you’ll get is stories from a time before modern medicine, when a deep coma could be mistaken for death and we didn’t routinely either embalm or cremate the dead. This is also the era when the fear of being buried alive was current, for the same reasons. So… anyone here know about that aspect of Victorian-era (and, possibly, before) law?
Derleth, if miracles are sufficiently infrequent and the government is not sympathetic to the sort of people who experience them, society is not going to adapt its laws to them. E.g. if a few Christian missionaries get killed and then resurrected in Saudi Arabia, you don’t suppose they will start writing laws about the resurrection issue, do you? More like establishing rules how to handle such claims with an eye towards rumor suppression.
It would be easier to conclude that death certificates were issued in error and to change the conviction to some form of assault. After all, it’s provable fact that the victim was lying there in a pool of blood.
If witnesses saw him lying there without a head, maybe start doubting testimony of witnesses
Well if the victim came back then it was clinical death. Actual death being reserved when the heart stops and doesn’t start again. IANAD&IANAL I think that would be attempted murder.
The second one, well the sign that said “trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again” about sums it up. Either they kill them for real or not. It probably varies by state and case.
I’m sure situations like the first have come up before (e.g. Potzi convicted of the murder of Manny, but Manny later turns up alive). With not-in-mainstream-society types, it’s not that hard to imagine someone being alive without the knowledge of the authorities.
Anyway Potzi gets his conviction overturned, and prosecutors try to figure out what happened. Most likely, they decide it wasn’t Manny’s body at the scene of the crime, but in fact Seigfreid’s body, and they arrest/try Potzi for the murder of Seigfreid. If there’s no question that it was Manny that was stabbed but turns out Manny is alive (let’s assume the court thought Manny was dead due to mistaken communications), then the prosecutors can charge Potzi with attempted murder.
If you’re asking what would happen if Manny was chopped into pieces, burned, dropped in acid, and chopped up and cremated again, in full view of multiple witnesses, video recording and in the presence of a DNA testing lab that was continously confirming it was in fact Manny’s body, but then Manny miraculously reappears, then it’s really hard to say what the courts would do because there’s no precedent for dealing with miracles in the courts.
Well, it’s possible for a person to be convicted of murder without a body being found. For example, long-time enemies Holmes and Moriarty are seen by several witnesses arguing at the top of a waterfall. Moriarty is seen to push Holmes over the waterfall, and Holmes apparently dies, but no body is found. Moriarty pleads self-defence, but the jury does not believe him, and he’s convicted of murder. Several years later, Holmes turns up, alive and well. Since Moriarty could not have killed Holmes, presumably the murder conviction is overturned.
Right. A while back, I asked a question on the SD on likely legal ramifications of time travel (such as a time traveller’s Legal Age or whether or not a person born in a future Canada that is a part of the US when he is born in the future would be recognized as either a Canadian Citizen, US Citizen, or stateless today.
The answer seemed to be that there is no answer, since this has never happened to our knowledge and the legal system hasn’t been set up to handle it.
This has some relevance, and it’s probably as close to the issue as we’re going to get if we restrict ourselves to modern, non-fictional scenarios, but it isn’t entirely on-point, as it deals with people who disappear and reappear, as opposed to people who have been adjudged dead by competent medical authorities and then magically came back to life.
code_grey: Doubting the testimony of witnesses is always a good idea. Eyewitnesses are lousy at accurately reporting what happened, especially in emotionally-charged circumstances. As for the rest, well, see robert_columbia’s post: We can’t know what the courts would do with ‘miracles’ until some actually occur. I highly doubt that the courts would be able to suppress the existence of miracles if a verifiable one actually came to trial: Look at what happened with the Karla Homolka case, after all. On the other hand, your idea of mooting the death certificate and convicting the accused of some other crime sounds reasonable.
Which miracle are you referring to? The first, where she got almost nothing for being a major player in 3 murders, or the second, where she escaped having her deal revoked after she conveniently “forgot” to mention the other rape she participated in?
I agree with Tao’s Revenge. Pontzi’s intent was to kill Manny so he committed a crime of attempted murder. The fact that Manny then rose from the dead was not anticipated by Pontzi so it has no effect on his intent.
I don’t know how you got that out of my post, so I’ll clarify: The Canadian courts imposed severe limitations on the information released about that case. The Americans living nearby were under no such restrictions. Therefore, information about the case restricted by the Canadian courts is common knowledge and was even during the trial. It was, in fact, an important demonstration of the power of the Internet to distribute information despite official condemnation: Look up the newsgroup alt.fan.karla-homolka for an example of that.
As for Laz, he was sentenced to death. That’s still going to be his sentence even if it takes more than one attempt to kill him. Although I suppose at some point, repeated attempted executions after it’s established he won’t stay dead would be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
