Inspired by this thread, I was wondering what the legal responsibilities are of lacing some kind of food with something such as Ex Lax.
If it’s stolen and someone takes it, can you be charged?
If it was a more serious ‘poison’ or some kind of other thing that someone could be allergic to, are you responsible?
Manhattan said that you could OD on Ex Lax, but you could also die if you were allergic to peanuts if they were something such as peanut butter cookies. How is having ex lax in your own property any different?
This is many questions in one thread so sorry if its confusing.
It is illegal to protect your property with lethal force. Therefore, lacing food with poison on the theory that it would punish the person who stole it would cause you to be guilty of murder. Using due force to protect your property, but I can’t really see a way that any force would be allowed in the protection of food items.
Ex-lax (at least a non-lethal dose) would be pretty funny, but might technically be actionable as assalt.
If you specifically put peanuts in food in order to kill a would-be theif, then you would, again technically, be guilty of murder. On the other hand, if someone stole your peanut-butter sandwich which you made for the purpose of eating, you would not have had the malice aforethough (or mens rea) to be guilty of murder. You only wanted to eat your sandwich.
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*Originally posted by db4530 *
Using due force to protect your property, but I can’t really see a way that any force would be allowed in the protection of food items.
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Sorry, should have said:
Using due force to protect your property is allowed under the law, but I can’t really see a way that any force would be allowed in the protection of food items.
If a 400lb guy makes cookies that help him get to sleep, and a 100lbs guy steals them and overdoses on the pills laced in. Would the 400lb still be guilty of murder, regardless of intent?
Or does intent mean everything such as the case of the peanuts?
Yeah-but-what-if is a pointless game. In the referenced thread, a poster-who-will-not-be-named suggested that some chocolates be treated with Ex-Lax so that, when (not if) they were stolen, the perpetrators would get what’s coming to them. He vigorously resented being chastised for advocating poisoning, and claimed that there’s no law against it because the victims stole it, y’see.
The law is this: a person is assumed to intend the ordinary consequences of his actions. If you point a gun at someone and fire it, it is assumed you intended to kill him. If you put poison into food, knowing that it will be stolen and eaten, then it may be assumed (depending on the judge’s instructions to the jury) that you intended to poison the thief. Since the action does not in any way constitute protection of the property (indeed, the scheme requires the theft), the action is indefensible.
And to answer Ryle Dup’s question, yes, intent is everything in most criminal law. Without intent, all you might have is negligence, which is almost never a crime.
As I see it, the whole thing is rather simple once you accept intent as the primary factor.
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[li]I concoct a dangerous toxin and place it in a sandwich, hoping to kill the person who has stolen my sandwiches in the past. I intend to kill someone, even though I have no idea who I will end up killing. If my plan works, it is homicide because I acted on my intent to kill.[/li][li]I make for myself a peanut butter sandwich with the intent to eat it myself, come lunchtime. A person who is allergic to peanuts somehow consumes enough of my sandwich, which he stole, to kill himself (magically not tasting or smelling any of it, I suppose). I did not intend to kill anyone, despite my meal’s deadly results, and therefore I am not guilty of any crime I can think of. (I don’t think it’s reckless endangerment because I didn’t make food for the other person, just for myself, nor did I encourage the theft of my food. I may be wrong, but I would be surprised.)[/li][/ul]As for civil law, you still have to prove responsibility. The burden is lighter, but it hasn’t disappeared. I can’t think of a reasonable way to interpret the second scenario to make me responsible.
How exactly do you prove intent anyway? Hook someone’s brain up to a Intentometer? Way to go legal system.
Why assume knowledge of the future theft? You can’t KNOW someone’s going to be a complete ass and steal your food, eat it and then throw the inside of their stomach up when they realise there’s monkey crap in it. It involves too much stuff between “put down sandwich” and “sandwich dissappears my god where did it go”, whereas “pull trigger” and “person’s intestines go flying out their spinal cord” are pretty inextricably linked.
Imagine that you have prepared some food with rat poision, to kill some rats. It is in, eg, a cereal box in your locked kitchen cupboard, in your locked house. Only you live in that house and hold the keys.
A drug-crazed person breaks in, steals what they can, breaks the cupboard door down, eats the cereal, dies.
I have a horrible feeling you would be liable. (Not that you should be, IMO). Even if you had marked the rat-bait, they might argue that an illiterate person could not have read the label.
Isn’t it the case that if a child BREAKS IN to your property and injures themselves, you as the householder are to blame?
Several years ago, in Chicago, a thief broke into a home and stole what he thought was whiskey, drank some and died. Turned out to be photographic chemicals stored in whiskey bottles. No charges were filed against the homeowner.
How does it change things as regards intent if you believe that the thief is an animal? E.g. your cookies are going missing and you think it’s a rat, so you put out some poisoned cookies?
I dunno. I spent a very long time in a crowded airport one heavy travel day listening to some woman bitch for 27 mintues (I timed it) to the gate agents that they can’t open any peanuts or peanut containing products on the plane or she’d go into shock.
Say I hadn’t overheard her (difficult) and opened the peanuts I was carrying (I always carry my own food when travelling)? Or it simply … couldn’t be proved that I had known of her food allergy?
(she’s the only time I’d wished I had a habit of carrying a sharpie and a teeshirt “Don’t open peanuts on my flights. I will die and you will be held responsible”) Gads she was annoying. I can understand requesting it and speaking to the head steward(ess) but bitching to the gate agents for 27 min?
As a would-be mystery writer, I think this has distinct possibilities. Gift your intended victim an allergy to peanuts and a million possibilities open themselves…
I mean, apparently ground peanuts are found in many foods where it isn’t obvious. Could you possibly be convicted if you just ‘happened’ to serve your victim the ‘wrong’ salad dressing? Sure, you knew Darling Rich Old Aunt Emily was allergic to peanuts, but you had No Idea that the fourteen item in that long list of ingredients in the teentiny print was ‘peanut oil’…
I think the point is that the reasonable person wouldn’t make sandwiches with monkey crap in them and bring them to work, nor ones with Ex-Lax, etc. It’s pretty obvious that the intent was to hurt someone else with the stuff.
Intent is of enormous importance in civil liability. The intentional torts (assault, battery, rape, arson, etc.) require intent, obviously, and intentional torts open the gate to punitive damages. Without intent, all you’ve got is negligence, which requires that you actually owe some duty to the injured party. Classmates aren’t in it. Even if there is found some general duty not to leave ExLax lying around, the damages paid for negligence are small compared to the punitive damages for intentional torts (or so they said in torts class).