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newbie
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newbie
Joined: Apr 2001
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Warning: even more boring legal synopsis followsSparteye's leagleyed analysis is not necessarily applicable outside Michigan. The common law position (which prevails, generally speaking, in the English speaking world except where modified by statute) is that if a victim of an assault expires more than a year and a day after the injury was inflicted, the perpetrator is not liable to be convicted of murder. An element of the crime is that the offender causes the death, and if the consequence is too remote (in time or other circumstance) from the act, the chain of causation is broken. Sparteye's right: there isn't a statute of limitations for murder. But that, with respect, doesn't dispose of the issue. A statute of limitations would prohibit the prosecution from commencing legal proceedings after a certain date. The further question of whether the act and the consequence are so remote in time or circumstance as to sever the causal chain between them is a separate issue. My bailiwick, the Northern Territory of Australia, has modified the common law by enacting a Criminal Code, but our Code doesn't adopt the common law year and a day provision with respect to murder. It is in fact sphinxically silent on the issue. Nevertheless, the old rule still seems to survive in practice, and is probably still good law here. Although the Code generally displaces the common law, where it doesn't cover the field, the common law continues to poke through: the Code, to use an oft-cited legal image, is written on a common law palimpsest rather than a tabula rasa. Now is 'palimpsest' a beautiful word, or what? 
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
<<the chain of causation is broken.>>
If the murder's no murder, then perp's no perp and the sentence "..if a victim of an assault expires more than a year and a day after the injury was inflicted, the perpetrator is not liable to be convicted of murder" has not even the palimpsest of a subject. ;)
Thanks to both our friends at the bar. Keep 'em coming.
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
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if the consequence is too remote (in time or other circumstance) from the act, the chain of causation is broken
I seem to remember there was a quite recent case in the UK that hit the legal headlines over this issue. Initially someone was convicted of grievous bodily harm when their victim was hospitalised; this conviction was successfully changed some years later to murder due to the victim having died after spending several years in a persistent vegetative state. Presumably, despite the extraordinary lapse in time, the prosecution was able to demonstrate an unbroken causal link. (‘Fraid I don’t have the case reference, though.)
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Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
Michigan used to have the old common law year-and-a-day rule, Rusty, but it wasn't altered by statute. The Michigan Supreme Court looked at current medical technology and overruled the common law rule with the new common law rule. I guess I'm a little surprised that the year-and-a-day rule still lives (but on life support, only for more than a year, so when it dies, it is not murder ...) anywhere. OK guys: let's hear from other jurisdictions now.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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" Now is 'palimpsest' a beautiful word, or what? "
Not to the antiquarians painfully puzzling out the more important images that were all but distroyed by sometimes trivial images that were superimposed.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
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<<overruled the common law rule with the new common law rule>>
Sparteye,
Would you mind spelling this one out a little (old/new -- if there can be a new common law, what need for the code)? Thanks.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
if there can be a new common law, what need for the code
In the US -- except for Louisiana, which has law based on the Code Napoleon -- the "LAW" consists of a quilt of standards, each piece coming from the federal or state constitution, statutes passed by the Legislature, and the common law, which was derived from the English system. The constitutional provisions supersede all other sources of law. The Legislature has primary authority for passing new laws through statutes, and if a statute does not conflict with a constitutional provision, it controls. All the rest is law created by judicial decision, and that body of judicial decision is the "common law." Despite 150+ years of the Michigan Legislature passing statutes, statutory law only addresses a portion of what is required to govern everyday affairs and to resolve controversies. Unless and until the legislature passes a statute which addresses an issue - like, say, the year-and-a-day rule, which was created in England many a year ago - the common law governs the issue, and the judiciary continues to have the power to alter the common law. So, since the Legislature never changed the year-and-a-day rule, and the Supreme Court thought that the rule was obsolete, the Court changed it. If the Legislature wants to, it can overrule the Supreme Court by enacting a statute which reinstitutes the year-and-a-day rule.
As a matter of fact, a problem will arise in Michigan which the Legislature purposely avoids because of political considerations, and the Legislature will leave it to the Court to resolve. Or, sometimes the legislative scheme is so sloppy no one can make sense of it, and the Court must engraft provisions in its role as interpreter. Often, the Legislature later specifically enacts the provisions as interpreted by the Court. Michigan's governmental immunity act is a good example of that.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Early this year in Maryland, a police officer who had been shot by a perpetrator in the course of committing a crime and who had been badly injured to the extent that he was retired on disability and was, in fact greatly disabled, died. Doctors determined that his death was the direct result of his injury, which had occurred 28 years previously. The criminal who was responsible had died in the meantime, so there was no question of charging him with felony murder, but a determination of murder was made and one additional murder was added to the statistics for the year, which the Commissioner of Police was not happy with, since the stats are bad enough already.
On a related subject: Heretofore, the law in Maryland has been that if a pregnant woman is shot or otherwise assaulted and her baby dies as a result of such act, the perpetrator is liable to be charged with murder. This is now undergoing review (possibly to be changed to extreme child abuse or some such nonsense?). How does this stand in other areas?
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Joined: Jul 2000
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old hand
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old hand
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How does this stand in other areas?
Well, not quite the same thing, but in one episode of The Practice (and who knows how accurate that is) a pregnant woman who was a heavy drug user was going to be charged with administering drugs to a minor. The judge dismissed the case because she thought the charge was outrageous, though, so it most likely wouldn't have stood.
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
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How does this stand in other areas?Here's an interesting link (if somewhat outdated) that breaks down laws in specific states: http://www.nrlc.org/Whatsnew/sthomicidelaws.htmit should be noted that the definition of homicide, though, does not at this time include the actions of a mother in exercising her 'right to choose'. clearly, as demonstrated by the pro footballer (i can't think of his name offhand) who was recently charged with a double murder, this privilege does not extend to the fathers. BTW, what exactly is an "unborn quick child"? anyone?
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