They were probably taliking about what is usually called “depraved heart murder”, where the person has behaved extremely negligently so as to create an unjustifiable risk to kill or cause serious bodily injury, and which causes the death of another. For example, if you’re doing 90 mph through a school zone at 2:30 pm andkill a kid, you’re probably guilty of depraved heart murder.
The difference is the act of extreme negligence. Merely being indifferent to the death of others isn’t enough, you have to actually create the extreme risk through your conduct. Doing nothing to prevent a suicide may be depraved and indifferent, but not in the legal sense of depraved heart murder.
And of course, on preview, Cliffy succicntly beat me to it (thanks for backing me up, btw, counselor!).
Thanks Hamlet, do I still get that big wet smooch from you sometime? At least a thank you for encouraging Gundy to do bodyshots with you on the ChiDope scouting expedition?
And to add a further legal question, in legal terms what is the difference between aiding and abetting? There doesn’t seem to be much distinction in the definitions.
I don’t know that there really is a distinction, I just think this is the magic phrase that gets used. Not my area, though, so I’m willing to be corrected.
BTW, props to Papermache Prince for bringing up the Good Samaritan laws, which I should have mentioned in my original post.
“Aid and abet” is a doublet from the middle ages, when it was common to combine a French or Latinate term with its Anglo-Saxon synonym: aid and comfort, free and clear, each and every, null and void, part and parcel, peace and quiet, etc. etc.
Its normal use is as a term of art, meaning the whole phrase has a single meaning: “to assist the perpatrator in a crime while sharing in the requisite intent.” Some legal authorities, however, will attempt to draw a distinction between the two, like: “Aid within aider and abettor statute means to help, to assist, or to strengthen while “abet” means to counsel, to encourage, to incite or to assist in the comission of a criminal act”, but that’s probably more an example of the evolution of the language.
IIAL, but not your lawyer, and not a litigator by any stretch of the imagination.
pravnik and cliffy have very well summed up that there isn’t an affirmative duty to assist someone in need, provided you didn’t put them in that position of need. I understand that many European countries (and I guess other countries) state that you do have an affirmative duty to render aid to someone if you can do so without endangering yourself. This issues was discussed a lot in relation to the death of Lady Di and her boyfriend, and the photographers who didn’t render first aid and other assistance.
Aiding and abetting is different from indifference to someone’s bad act.
Legal: You have an ailing relative who doesn’t want to go on living, and you say you would be in favor of their own decision to take their life. (This assumes that you aren’t exerting pressure on an elderly and possibly incompetent relative)
Illegal: Same ailing relative, but you go farther and “accidentally” leave a bottle of powerful tranquilizers on their bedside table.
True. A similar issue like the current one has come up a couple of times and I, riding my hobby-horse (is that the correct expression?), have posted there eachtime. Most continental systems have private and criminal law statutes for just such a case. The conditions are roughly that the other person must be in a life-threatening circumstance (or closely), and you must be able to provide help with no (or little) risk for yourself. There are, however, few cases where this is actually applied. This may be because most people are already prone to help, even without knowing about these statutes.
I should add that to my knowledge these statutes have never been applied for not rescuing someone who is trying to commit suicide. They may exist, I just haven’t (AFAIK) read about them. The thing is that you will practically never know about someone totally unrelated who is trying to commit suicde. Cases where people were involved, they did more than just look.
