4 ms·

Serious question, for the occasional lawyer: how likely is it that, based on this behaviour, that Shkreli be accused of murder, with a US judge finding grounds

by bertil 11y ago

Serious question, for the occasional lawyer: how likely is it that, based on this behaviour, that Shkreli be accused of murder, with a US judge finding grounds to that? If that is the case, Switzerland would have to extradite him — and I doubt any accusation of economic misbehaviour would have a similar impact.

anigbrowl 11y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but I know enough to tell you that the probability is zero. You can't be convicted of murder by omission, and you can't even be convicted of criminal negligence unless you have a clear duty to act, which is not the case here. So say we're in the US, and I am walking down the street and discover you in a hole in the ground that is full of water, and you are obviously about to drown. There is a ladder next to the hole, and you ask me to put the ladder in the hole; let's assume that I can do so at absolutely no risk or even significant effort - all I have to do is press a button. If I don't you will surely die. Well in the US, I don't have to do anything. I can stand there and callously ignore your pleas and watch you die and I won't get in legal trouble for it (although I will probably become a social outcast). Unless you are a member of my family or I am some sort of emergency worker or similar person with a responsibility to render assistance (eg if I invited you into my yard and you then fell into a hole), I have absolutely no legal obligation to help you - I can't be charged criminally, and your anguished relatives won't prevail in a civil lawsuit. There is no law against me being selfish or even sadistic (by passively enjoying your suffering). Of course the moral thing for me to do is to help you get out of the hole, and most people would say that I should be even willing to risk some danger to myself in order to save your life. But the law is not a moral system, and the current theory at this point in history is that the limitation on my liberty by being obliged to incur risk on your behalf is worse than the fact that you may lose your life. This isn't entirely arbitrary; you read up on tort law you'll encounter a depressing number of cases where incompetent people made a good-faith effort to help and ended up making things substantially worse. I would also like to point out that I personally prefer the risk of helping out to doing nothing, but have long since given up assuming the same thing about other people :-/

by bertil 11y ago

anigbrowl 11y ago

I'm not a lawyer, but I know enough to tell you that the probability is zero. You can't be convicted of murder by omission, and you can't even be convicted of criminal negligence unless you have a clear duty to act, which is not the case here. So say we're in the US, and I am walking down the street and discover you in a hole in the ground that is full of water, and you are obviously about to drown. There is a ladder next to the hole, and you ask me to put the ladder in the hole; let's assume that I can do so at absolutely no risk or even significant effort - all I have to do is press a button. If I don't you will surely die. Well in the US, I don't have to do anything. I can stand there and callously ignore your pleas and watch you die and I won't get in legal trouble for it (although I will probably become a social outcast). Unless you are a member of my family or I am some sort of emergency worker or similar person with a responsibility to render assistance (eg if I invited you into my yard and you then fell into a hole), I have absolutely no legal obligation to help you - I can't be charged criminally, and your anguished relatives won't prevail in a civil lawsuit. There is no law against me being selfish or even sadistic (by passively enjoying your suffering). Of course the moral thing for me to do is to help you get out of the hole, and most people would say that I should be even willing to risk some danger to myself in order to save your life. But the law is not a moral system, and the current theory at this point in history is that the limitation on my liberty by being obliged to incur risk on your behalf is worse than the fact that you may lose your life. This isn't entirely arbitrary; you read up on tort law you'll encounter a depressing number of cases where incompetent people made a good-faith effort to help and ended up making things substantially worse. I would also like to point out that I personally prefer the risk of helping out to doing nothing, but have long since given up assuming the same thing about other people :-/