On a recent episode of Elementary (the modern Sherlock Holmes show) a person was murdered by two people. The victim was a BASE jumper, and his 'chute was altered so it wouldn’t work. But, he was also shot in his last, soon-to-be-fatal flight by a sniper.
Each method would have proved fatal. But, how can you prosecute each of the two killers for murder? Couldn’t each one point to the other as the “real” killer?
I assume you have a slam-dunk on each one for attempted murder. But can either one be convicted of the actual murder? How would that go in real life?
Sounds like a law school hypothetical. But then, I never went to law school.
If you are going to give any weight to only one, then it would seem to be the one that killed the guy first. In the case mentioned above, the sniper was likely an immediately fatal shot.
But I would think that since both were clearly going to be fatal, that both could be prosecuted for his death. If you took each to trial and tried the defendant solely on what they did, both would have been found guilty of murder.
That reminds me of the old puzzle-book setup where the victim was preparing to cross the desert by himself. One killer poisoned the water, the other drilled a tiny hole so the water would drain away…
Defendant 1: “Well, he never drank any of the poisoned water. He died of thirst, so clearly I didn’t murder him.”
Defendant 2: “All I did was prevent him from drinking poisoned water, which would have killed him quicker. Yes, he died of thirst so what I did didn’t save his life, but since the water was already poisoned I didn’t murder him.”
Actually, I think that if we use “who killed him first”, I think that the parachute saboteur would be the guilty one, since the sabotage occurred before the shooting.
This is not too much different to the person trying to murder a dead person who happened to have either been killed or was dead in their sleep in bed.
I believe the answer has previously been on this message board as both are charged with murder and attempted murder, and in the US both would be premeditated, so its murder one.
The question is, very simply, who killed him? If he was dead before he hit the ground, the parachute saboteur is guilty of attempted murder, the sniper of actual murder. If the splat did him in, the charges would be reversed. I guess it all depends on the coroner’s testimony. If he landed on a wrought iron fence with lots of spikes, or a burning house, the question would be very interesting - was it the shot, the jump, or the bad landing?
Murder includes causing a death. Attempted murder, sure.
Now, if the facts do not conclusively show which act killed him, then both could be charged with murder. In the first case, the government’s evidence allows the inference that the fall was instantly fatal, even as he was dying from the bullet; in the second, the evidence allows the inference that the bullet was instantly fatal and what hit the ground was a corpse.
In the episode, they made it clear that the shot killed him and he was dead before he hit the ground. Sherlock later said and that they were searching for both a murderer, the shooter, and an attempted murderer, the parachute saboteur.
Either of the two can be prosecuted for murder, and all that is needed for a conviction is for the jury to be satisfied that the accused did in fact substantially contribute to the death with intent.
The contentious issue is whether an aggressive prosecutor can then try the other perp, on the same grounds, and persuade a jury that that accused did, too.
If two people are knowing accomplices to a murder, they both hang. If each of them had the intent to cause the death, it would not matter if they participated in concert or known to each other, or not.
A more realistic scenario which might very well have happened, would be a guy is poisoned by his business parther. While in the ICU in critical condition, a nephew of the patient, who knows about his will, smothers him with a pillow on visiting day, or disconnects an IV tube.
It takes a little while to bleed out and have the loss of blood cause heart failure. And it doesn’t take much time to fall from a BASE jumper height with no parachute.
The shooter might have a defense that the interval between the shot and hitting the ground was simply too short to have death occur from a bullet wound. Sure, the jumper would have died from the bullet wound, if he hadn’t hit the ground, but that’s the difference between murder and attempted murder. Particularly since there’s no way to prove whether the jumper was legally alive when he hit the ground.
It seems to me, if a number of people act together with the same intent, even if it’s multiple attempts by different members and one finally succeeds - they are all part of the same act and so are accomplices, guilty together, no matter who committed the act.
If two people do two independent things (I assume the wacky scenario of the TV show) then one is guilty of murder, since they killed the person. The other is guilty of attempted murder, for planning and trying.
I can imagine scenarios where a gunshot would be instantly fatal - i.e. head explodes from high-power bullet, no brain function left to measure. But yes, in most scenarios a person takes an appreciable time to die. Certainly moe than the few seconds before he hits the ground.
Ok, I’ve got to retract my original post. Originally the detective thought the shot killed him, since his chute wasn’t deployed. Sherlock determined that he did in fact try to deploy the chute, but it didn’t work because it had been sabotaged. So the sabotage probably turned out to be the killing action, if he was alive long enough after the shot to deploy the chute. And there was no coroner scene (as Elementary usually has) with the exact cause of death.
Good point. In real life, we’d have (as noted above) the ME’s testimony. I bet there was enough left after the sudden stop to do an autopsy.
Where’s Rodgers when you need her? (It still is NYC, and Gregson is the head of Major Case. (If that’s so, though, why does his office look so much grungier than Deakins/Ross/Callas/Hannah’s? ))
A similar issue being examined in this thread. According to the eminent legal authority Jack McCoy two different people can be charged, tried, and convicted of the same murder, even if it’s impossible for both of them to have done it.
))