Talked to an old friend of mine the other day and we were remembering another friend who sadly lost his life in a car accident. Tragically the car hit a tree and caught fire with him trapped inside. Bystanders were unable to get close enough to help
Anyways, one of us made the comment that we’d hope someone would shoot us rather than let us burn to death. And that got me thinking. I’m trapped alive in a burning vehicle, with no chance of escaping. If a bystander were to “put me out of my misery”, would that be murder? Surely I was dead anyways and faced a slow painful end. Just curious, murder of compassion?
I don’t see how the law could really overlook or excuse it - I mean what if the fire truck arrives and douses the Hitler chemical with fireproof acid glue just after you pull the trigger?
Mercy killing is considered murder. Juries may nullify in such cases and sometimes an extreme emotional distress defense or insanity defense is possible. The law doesn’t like the ‘I think he was better off dead’ defense.
As horrible as it sounds, you can’t really do anything other than try to help the accident victim. Even if the victim is yelling kill me, kill me. Shooting a person to “put them out of their misery” likely won’t fly in court, even though you might think it’s the morally correct thing to do.
I don’t think situations where someone is going to suffer for a long time but help is actually impossible are all that common, and killing someone quickly through a solid object like a car while visibility is obscured by smoke and flames is not actually that easy in real life. If someone spends a hot minute dying in a fire instead of getting shot and dying quickly, I don’t see that it makes much difference in the world, and there’s a high chance that the shot won’t cause them to lose consciousness any faster than the fire does.
Making a legal exception to allow murder in a weird situation that doesn’t actually happen very often and where the murder likely doesn’t make anything better seems like a lot of work for something that can be easily abused outside of that situation and that doesn’t actually provide any real benefit to anybody.
Oh, that brings up another problem - how do you determine that the person is a sane individual who can legally consent to anything, and not just a crazy person shouting ‘kill me’ or someone suffering from temporary insanity from the stress of the fire who would not actually want to be killed? Assisted suicide laws generally require that there is some examination to make sure the ‘victim’ is actually making a clear-headed, rational decision. Note that a number of religions believe that suicide is a sin, and that if you request that someone kill you you’re committing suicide. Someone who believed in one of those religions might call out something in the heat (heh) of the moment that they wouldn’t actually want done, for example.
In war movies of a certain period, when someone is horribly wounded and cannot reasonably be saved, one frequently sees the medic administer a massive dose of morphine “for the pain” even in the knowledge that the patient is not likely to survive that much morphine.
Is that realistic? Is there a “look the other way in the fog of war” policy?
It seems like something those of us who have never been there should be loathe to second-guess.
I don’t know how well resolved this is legally but the practice of medicating to the point of death is common. When people are terminally ill and suffering it’s very difficult to determine the point between relieving pain and hastening death. Even the Catholic Church at one point said doctors should not hesitate to relieve suffering out of fear of hastening death, but I don’t recall any particular guidelines. Doctors will prescribe something called a Brompton’s Cocktail to people suffering terminal illnesses knowing full well it may kill them. The inclusion of pain suppressants and stimulants makes it a medical Speed Ball when just plain morphine would work as well to ease suffering.
