… then would Person A be charged with murder or with manslaughter? Or would Person A be charged with something else?
Also, to elaborate on this, Person B survives getting shot but dies from an infection which results from this bullet afterwards.
Anyway, any thoughts on this?
If you try to murder someone and your attempt at murdering them directly results in their death, that’s pretty clearly murder even if the precise mechanism (infection as opposed to blood loss) is different.
If he dies as a result of an infection from a bullet wound, then he did not survive getting shot. It just took him longer to die.
The decision about murder vs. manslaughter wouldn’t turn on whether the victim died immediately from the gunshot or later from the infection, but would instead depend on the circumstances of the killing. Here’s a case where this exact scenario occurred.
The perpetrator walked in on the victim having sex with the perpetrator’s estranged wife. Losing control of himself, he shot the victim in the hip. Victim was taken to the hospital, where he died 16 days later as a result of a massive infection. The perpetrator was initially convicted of first-degree murder, but that conviction was later reduced to voluntary manslaughter - not because the victim died 16 days later, but because the circumstances of the killing (fit of emotion, lack of familiarity with the victim, lack of pre-meditation) better fit with manslaughter than they did murder.
This is really more of a GQ question; it’s a scenario that happens quite frequently, and there is a factual answer.
The assassins of Presidents Garfield and McKinley were both charged with murder.
McKinley took a week to die, and Garfield over two months after the shooting, with infection being the proximate cause of death.
Some jurisdictions have/had a rule saying that a death cannot be attributed to an act that took place more than a year before. So if you shoot someone and they die two years later, you would not be guilty of murder even if their death was clearly caused by complications resulting from the wounds you gave them.
However, in most places this rule has been abolished (or never existed) and there have been cases where people have been prosecuted for “delayed deaths” which they had set into motion years or even decades earlier.
The first issue is intention - what did the shooter intend the consequences to be.
If those intended consequences did not immediately result, can a direct causal link be proven to show the act led to the death:
Agreed. Off we go to GQ.
Famously, James Brady’s death in 2014 at the age of 73 was ruled a homicide due to his being shot in 1981 during the Reagan assassination attempt. The assassin would have faced more charges had he not been acquitted due to insanity.
In the UK the old year and a day rule was abolished in 1996. There is now no time limit per se, but after three years, permission for a prosecution has to be sought from the Attorney General. This would not apply to civil proceedings though.
I suppose the answer is out there somewhere, but this has troubled me. Brady was shot in the head and his mental faculties were impaired (somewhat - mostly his expressive language, as I understand it). What about this injury contributed to his death 30 years later? A physical injury - say to the spine or heart - that created a continuing and deteriorating bodily condition, or toxicity from bullet fragments, yes.
But to all appearances, Brady healed completely from his wound in physical terms. Did the coroner decided that his mental impairments contributed to his death?
They didn’t end up charging Hinckley, but there were many more issues to deal with to do that besides the link to his death. The coroner’s decision was controversial, it doesn’t seem scientific. I couldn’t find anything explaining the alleged direct link to his gunshot injuries. One could argue that he would have lived longer if he had never been shot but after 30 years that would be difficult to prove in a 73 year old man. I think the coroner must have been injecting some politics into his decision.
Many historians do report that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828-1914), a hero at Gettisburg, was almost mortally wounded in another battle in 1864 and died later for that reason. The bullet passed through the right hip and groin, exiting his left hip.
For the rest of his life he fought severe pain and infections and the doctors then did agree that he died as a result of his war wounds.
how much time has passed? 9 months ? 18 years?
Since the OP is asking for opinions, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
And on the other hand, if there is an intervening act that is the more proximate cause of death then the shooter may not be held liable for murder/manslaughter.
Suppose Person A shoots Person B. Person B is stabilized in the hospital and is scheduled for a surgery as a part of his treatment. During the surgery the doctor cuts an artery resulting in severe blood loss, an act of serious malpractice, resulting in Person B having insufficient oxygen flow to his brain. Person B dies as a result. Person A would not be help liable for the death even though Person B would not have been in the hospital save for the shooting.
So, I’m pretty sure a post-GSW infection would definitely be considered as part of the actual gunshot wound. But even if not, many states have a felony murder rule, so even if the paramedics got in a fatal car crash on the way to help Person B, Person A would still be charged with murder even if Person B survived.
There’s a difference between a coroner ruling that a death was caused by homicide and a court finding it to be murder. The former is a medical opinion, and the latter is a legal decision. A court can use the coroner’s ruling as evidence, but the fact that a death was caused by homicide isn’t sufficient to prove that a crime was committed. Some homicides aren’t crimes at all - for example, in some circumstances one is allowed to kill in self-defense.
As for whether the shooter would be charged with murder or manslaughter: the difference between these crimes varies by jurisdiction, but generally it doesn’t have to do with whether the death was caused directly or indirectly. In California (where I live), the main difference between murder and manslaughter is malice: murder is an illegal killing with malice, and manslaughter is an illegal killing without malice. So, for instance, if someone shot and killed his neighbor in an argument over money, it would be murder, but if someone negligently shot and killed his neighbor while shooting at targets in his backyard, it would be manslaughter. This distinction holds regardless of whether the immediate cause of death was the bullet or an infected wound.
Another minor point: someone can be charged with a crime even when the facts don’t support the charge. That’s what trials are for.
In my job as an Medical Examiner I certify deaths from the delayed effects of injuries quite often. The general principles followed are: (1) can a reasonable argument be made that the injury and what followed from it, including chronic effects like infections or significant debility, “hastened” the death, that is, did it make it more likely that the person died when and how he did; and (2) was there an intervening cause that is both wholly unrelated to the prior injury and of sufficient magnitude so as to trump any effect of it. If the answers are yes and no, respectively, then the injury contributed and the death should be certified accordingly.
The OP would clearly be a homicide. James Brady a little less clearly. I don’t know the details of the case, and that would be essential before rendering an adequately informed opinion. But, just for starters, one could argue that he died short of the average life expectancy for his broadly defined demographic, so without something for (2) above, (1) is off to a good start.
(As a side bar it is worth pointing out here, since some people upthread referred to the certifier as a “coroner”, that there is a big difference between a coroner and a medical examiner, even though they serve similar societal functions. A given jurisdiction, usually defined at the county or state level, will be served by EITHER a coroner OR an ME, not both. Brady died in Virginia, which is an ME state, so his death should have been certified by an ME.)
The point about certification being different from criminal charges cannot be over stated. The two are entirely different processes. Certification by itself has no legal consequence, and it is constrained to one of 5 options: Homicide, suicide, accident, natural, or undetermined.
Moderator ping-pong?
The rule of law is correct, but the example is not. Medical malpractice is a forseeable consequence of physical injury. The gunshot is still the actual and proximate cause of death, and the shooter is culpable for homicide. If the doctor deliberately cut the artery intending to kill the patient, you’ll be okay. If he just fucked up, you’re not.
Generally, only unforseeable intervening causes (and by unforseeable, lawyers mean really truly impossible to foresee, like an asteroid impact) break the causal chain.