Murder, Manslaughter, or Self-Defense?

Here's an interesting theoretical scenario.


A man is climbing out of a car to a small, dimly lit parking lot outside of a train station. It is nighttime, the man has got his train tickets all set and about $500 in cash secretly stashed away in his inside pocket. He's about to catch the train for a short but well deserved vacation, and is recklessly hasty about it. The parking lot looks to be empty save for a beggar with a cup in front of the station doors. But it is not empty, for no sooner that he starts heading to the doors a hooded stranger comes out of the shadows with a gun pointed at him.

The stranger quietly and almost calmly (as though he's done this several times before) says that if the man gives him his wallet, no one would get hurt. The man is nervous as hell but tries to remain calm, reaching into his front pocket for his wallet. He slowly hands it over to the stranger, but fearful that the stranger would try to take the extra $500 in his inside pocket, the man suddenly lunges forward at the stranger and pushes the gun away. A violent struggle breaks out as they both try to wrestle for the gun, both sets fingers dangerous pressing against the trigger. The beggar sees the commotion and quickly calls out to a police officer inside the station. The officer rushes over with a gun drawn and shouts "FREEZE! PUT THE GUN DOWN!". Just then, however, the gun being fought over goes off and kills the policeman instantly. More police immediately show up and arrest both of them.

The stranger is charged and given a death sentence for the killing of the police officer during a felony crime.


My question for you is, what should happen to the first man? One could argue that he acted out of self-defense when he attacked the stranger, and that no blame can be pinned on him on him at all. He was being held at gunpoint and tried to protect himself and his possessions when the accident occurred. Another could say that he had not intended for the gun to go off when he attacked the stranger in an attempt to subdue him, and thus classify it as involuntary manslaughter. Yet another could go as far as to call it murder in a lesser sense, because had he given the stranger his wallet instead of grabbing the gun, it would not have gone off at all, or that the man had intended to shoot the stranger when wrestling for the gun and had been the cause of it going off to accidentally kill the officer instead.

What would you classify this killing as, in respect to the first man?

I wouldn't really classify it as any of those, since the necessary fault elements aren't there. Whatever fault there is belongs to the other guy, given that it is while committing an indictable offense.

Culpable homicide, whether murder or manslaughter, requires either knowledge and intent, or else recklessness with knowledge, or else in the commission of an offense. So he wouldn't fall under that category in any case I don't think.

Self-defense would only apply where he killed the person assaulting him; you can't kill a third party and call it self-defense as far as I know.

It may seem weird that even though the death would not have occurred without his actions, he bears no responsibility, but causation has to end somewhere. Obviously an extreme example, but should the mugger's mother be held liable for the murder because if she hadn't given birth to him, that police officer wouldn't have been killed? Even though the mugging victim's actions materially contributed to the event, he was never acting wrongly in defending himself - I don't think there would be any grounds to proceed against him.

It seems to me that the only way to make the man culpable would be if we were to assert that he had a duty in law to submit to the unlawful authority of the mugger, in which case the omission to do so could make him culpable. Such a duty to refrain from self-protection does not exist, for obvious reasons, and perhaps unfortunately, being stupid isn't always a crime.


I suppose you might be able to make a case that it is manslaughter (not murder ever, since unlawful provocation would reduce a charge to manslaughter no matter what and I would think it easy to establish that a mugging is an unlawful provocation) that it was reckless of him to defend himself against the mugger and a reasonable person would know that struggling over a gun would be likely to go off and kill another person. But I think it would be tough, as he was ultimately acting lawfully in attempting to wrestle a dangerous weapon away from someone who was clearly willing to use it for unlawful purposes. I can't get past the fact that the fault elements aren't satisfied.

I'm no lawyer, but I don't think you can pin that first man with anything.

He was defending himself, and we all have the right to citizen's arrest, no matter what a lawyer would bring up I can't see any jury pin the first guy with anything.  In the grand scheme of things he was the victim acting for his own safety.

I think we should give the poor guy therapy. To be a normal dude suddenly involved in the death of another person- a cop, at that- is probably gonna give him nightmares for some time.

I'm no lawyer either, but I'd think that if a prosecutor really wanted to do so, he could charge the guy with reckless endangerment. I do not, however, think that it would be the correct course of action from a philosophical standpoint.  If I was on that jury, I'd vote not guilty. Very thought-provoking...

The prosecution could, Moo, but the defense has sympathy, and all the prosecution can do is attack the man that just got mugged.

I think the jury would side with the victim.

People die accidentally all the time.  Are you going to sue the farmer's son for not putting the pitchfork away properly when the farmer tripped and fell on the pitchfork?
Accidents happen.

It's America, you probably could sue the son in negligence damage was caused. Check. owes duty to other people on the farm. Check. did not exercise reasonable care of reasonable person. Check. Factually caused the father's death. Check. Negligent action proximately connected to damage caused. Check.

Also, I think juries can only be responsible for factual determinations - they couldn't acquit a person by saying he shouldn't be responsible in such a case. That is a determination of law, and the judge would have to answer that. The jury could only answer whether there was a reasonable doubt that he did the action.

sue the rock for tripping the farmer

I'll just say that you'd be surprised what people can sue you for in the US. <.<

I say the first man isn't obligated to give his possessions to a thief. It's more the robber's fault that the policeman died. If he hadn't pointed his gun at the man, the man wouldn't have had to try and subdue him and the gun would have never gone off at the policeman. The man wasn't acting, only reacting to the stranger's actions.

And I personally think the stranger shouldn't have got the death penalty for the policeman's death either. He didn't fire the gun at him, he didn't intend to hurt the cop. The stranger should have gotten manslaughter and the first guy should just walk.

I think that in the US, when someone is killed in the course of a felony crime, the criminal charge is automatically upgraded from manslaughter to murder, at least that's what I've been told by an actual law professor. Whether he deserved the death penalty or not is another debate for the Elitist Debate board. In here, I'm just asking what you would charge the man with if you were the prosecutor, and believe me that there are prosecutors who would go after him to the full extent, even if but for the bias of a policeman being killed.