See subject. Or, simply, the question is “huh?”
There are laws applicable to competent judgements of medical examiners, I presume. Is this case normal?
As well as laws regarding crimes which certainly interest a guy who ‘homocided’ another guy and didn’t even know it until now, who now is in a new shitload of trial, judgement, and sentencing?
ETA: in this case, it is clear that a sentenced would-be Presidential assassin is about as neck-deep in shit as he can get already. It’s the principle I’m interested in.
I mean, if I slipped in a store, broke my arm, sued and won, you can bet I’m going to die.
“Homicide” doesn’t necessarily involve trials- as used by a medical examiner , it’s simply one of the manners of death. If memory serves, every death is either suicide, homicide, accidental, natural, or undetermined. If I kill someone in legally justified self-defense, that death is classified as a homicide even though it’s not a crime.
IANAL but I believe that the DA who theoretically prosecutes this case will have to show that being shot was directly linked to Brady’s eventual death. I don’t know what the standard is for how direct the linkage must be. (But I don’t recall anyone suggesting new charges when Ronald Reagan died ten years ago. The other two people who Hinckley shot are both still alive.)
I also believe that in some jurisdictions there’s a time limit - I recall reading about some case where the victim had to die within a year of the crime in order for them to be legally linked.
The question is, what actually caused Mr. Brady’s death? Even though he lived for 30+ years after being shot, if his death was caused by problems related to the buller John Hinckley put in his head, the death could still be ruled a homicide, couldn’t it?
What did the medical examiner determine?
I am neither a doctor nor a lawyer, but IF Mr. Brady’s death was due to, oh, a brain hemorrhage that never completely healed (and that had troubled him on and off since the day of the shooting), that might make his death a homicide. On the other hand, if he had a heart attack or pancreatic cancer, there’d be no connection between the gunshot and his death.
I don’t know the answer to your question, but some background information…
Traditionally, under common law, if the victim died more than a year and a day after the crime was committed, the perpetrator could not be held criminally responsible for the death. Year and a day rule - Wikipedia That rule may still apply in some states if it hasn’t been superseded by statute.
However, felonies committed in DC are federal crimes, and the common law of crimes has never really applied at the federal level. http://www.constitution.org/ussc/007-032.htm
If you deliberately commit an action that results in the death of another, you are guilty of a homicide. It doesn’t matter if the length of time between your action and the death of your victim is thirty seconds or thirty years.
For example, let’s say you shot someone several times in the chest. Surgeons remove the bullets and the patient lives, but some fragments are missed.
Ten or fifteen years later, the fragments cause massive heart failure, and your victim dies. You are now guilty of homicide because your action was a direct and critical cause of his death, even though there may have been other factors such as pneumonia or arterial blockage. So far as the law is concerned, the ten or fifteen intervening years have no relevance as long as the lead fragments are a critical factor in the heart failure.
I recall reading about a bizarre case of a convicted felon suing to have a woman he shot during a convenience store robbery kept on mechanical life support, even though she was in a chronic vegetative state and the family wanted the life support machinery shut down. He and his attorney objected because the felon would have been open to a charge of homicide if the woman was allowed to die (despite having practically no brain function at all). I don’t remember how the case turned out.
Never mind. I misread the post to which I was replying.
There is no statute of limitations for 1st degree murder, but there are for other forms of homicide, like most manslaughter charges. So this will have to be 1st degree murder as well, probably, for Hinckley to face charges-- although there is a pretty good argument for felony murder.
Apparently, the year and a day rule of common law is either entirely obsolete or nearly so.
I have to add that proving an injury inflicted years or decades ago is the proximate cause of death could get awfully tricky in a courtroom. In the vast majority of cases, it would probably take a damn good prosecutor to pull it off. The whole point we’re discussing here may be moot.
I posted a while back about a juvenile that had tied another kid to a tree and set him on fire. The kid suffered 3rd degree burns on 90% of his body. Fast forward a decade or so, and the burn victim dies from skin cancer that was connected to his burns. Prosecutor has now charged the attacker with 1st degree murder and has charged him as an adult, even though I think he was 10 at the time of the attack. Whole lot of legal issues to be sorted out on that one.
What has happened here is the medical examiner’s determination of the cause of Brady’s death, not the determination of a crime- that would be the job of a prosecutor (and ultimately a jury). As I pointed out in this thread, one of Charles Whitman’s victims from his rampage in 1966 died in 2001. His death was also determined to be a homicide. Obviously, no prosecution arose there because Whitman is dead, himself the result of a homicide (quite justifiably so).
I think that case got dismissed largely because there was almost no evidence whatsoever tying the juvenile to the burning at all, let alone the questionable argument about whether it lead to his death. In that case, the kid died of skin cancer which he may have had a “greater chance” of having due to his skin being burned so badly, and it was going to be a really hard case to prove even if the kid was clearly guilty of the burning, which it was never clear he was.
I remember reading a lot about these delayed homicides, a few things to keep in mind:
There may be some areas that follow the “year and a day” common law rule, but the medical examiner is just required to come up with a cause of death and can indicate something is a homicide even if legally no charges are possible.
There was a case of a police officer who was shot and paralyzed in the 1960s I believe, as a young man. He died in his late 60s, and the criminal (then in his) 70s, who had been out of prison for a few years (he had long since served his sentence for shooting the officer, but had been in prison repeatedly after that on other charges) was charged with and I’m pretty sure convicted of murder. In that case I remember a key element being his injuries from the shooting, and how they were clearly linked to his death some 30-40 years later. In that case there was pretty clear and convincing evidence that while the guy had lived on for decades, it was legitimately his injuries that killed him.
You may be able to say the same for James Brady, I don’t know nearly enough about his health. To be honest I always tried to research just how much speech/movement etc Brady had ever regained, I know he rode horses for awhile as therapy. But I never was able to find that information, I suspect it was heavily protected and the family didn’t want it known extensively.
Good cite.
Since the kidney failure that resulted in his death was directly attributable to the shootings it was deemed a homicide.
Which seems more of a gray area because the person died after refusing medical treatment.
I’m curious what the coroner found as the linking cause with Brady.
IANAL a lawyer, but isn’t it true that in Anglo-American common law the usual rule was that the death had to occur within “a year and a day” after the assault in order for the crime to qualify as murder? However, it would surprise me if that principle has been abolished by statute everywhere.