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?
