Legal question on Peterson case: killing a fetus is murder?

Factual Questions
1

This is a legal question. Please don’t turn it into an abortion debate.

Scott Peterson is being charged with a double homicide, or so I understand. How, legally, is a late-term abortion differentiated from a murder as in the Peterson case? Is it because Peterson is not an MD? If he had been an MD, would he be charged with only one murder? Does it involve the mother’s consent? Is it murder if the mother hasn’t consented? In any case, how is killing the fetus differentiated legally from, say, destroying a kidney?

2

I think it’s a case of the mother not consenting. The mother, as far as we know, had no desire to abort her fetus, and essentially, the abortion was FORCED on her.

3

This whole thing varies by state. I think that in CA, if the fetus is viable, it can be murder. Laci and Scott’s fetus was close to 8 months. Very viable. Someone else can chime in with the circumstances in which an 8 month fetus could be legally aborted in CA if the life of the mother was not at risk.

4

Again, why is it murder if the fetus is merely an organ?

5

Libertarian: Because the State of California’s legislature defined it that way. The laws go on legal definitions, not popular definitions.

6

As Monty said, it’s murder because the Ca. legislature defined it as murder. More particularly, that a mother can have a legal abortion does not mean that someone else can make that decision for her.

7

I also think it’s a crime to remove someone’s organs without their consent, lib. I don’t want someone taking my kidney or lungs without my say so. But probably because this particular “organ” is a viable human being with organs of its own, the law classifies the particular crime of fetal destruction without the mother’s consent as murder.

8

That’s what I was looking for. Thanks.

Sure. But I was asking about the specific crime of murder.

9

The Supreme Court of Canada considered a similar case in R. v. Prince, [1986] 2 S.C.R. 480. The accused stabbed a pregnant woman. She gave birth and the child died shortly thereafter. The police charged the accused with assualt causing bodily harm in relation to the mother, and manslaughter in relation to the child. The accused was convicted of the assault charge, and then argued a variant of double jeopardy, saying that the conviction on assault was all that was available.

The Crown’s case appeared to be that the blow to the fetus in utero was the cause of death, post-birth (and may even have triggered the premature birth). The Supreme Court held that there were two offences against two different victims, and the manslaughter charge could proceed. The key point though, was likely that the child was born alive and thus became a “human being” for the purposes of the Criminal Code.