[net.legal] Murder by AIDS?

45223wc@mtuxo.UUCP (w.cambre) (10/22/85)

If person A injects some AIDS virus into person B with the
intent of giving them AIDS so they will die,  what crime can
person A be convicted of? Attempted murder? Murder (if B dies)?
Assualt?

How about if person A, who knows he has AIDS, rapes person B
with the admitted intent to give them AIDS so they will die?
Attempted murder?

This is purely a legal question.  AIDS virus can be substituted
with any fatal disease in the above discussions.

doc@cxsea.UUCP (Documentation ) (10/22/85)

> If person A injects some AIDS virus into person B with the
> intent of giving them AIDS so they will die,  what crime can
> person A be convicted of? Attempted murder? Murder (if B dies)?
> Assualt?
> 
> How about if person A, who knows he has AIDS, rapes person B
> with the admitted intent to give them AIDS so they will die?
> Attempted murder?
> 
> This is purely a legal question.  AIDS virus can be substituted
> with any fatal disease in the above discussions.

The rule in most states is that the victim has to die within a year of the
cause occuring, so murder or attempted murder probably wouldn't work if the
victim lived longer than a year (although some states have changed this rule
in some situations; I'm not sure AIDS would be covered by the exceptions -
you'd have to start looking through a given state's criminal statutes under
the definitions of "murder", etc.) The fact that AIDS is normally fatal,
however (unlike a gunshot), might make a difference: being infected with
AIDS is the same as being put to death, only slowly.

I suppose the Libertarian approach would be a civil suit for wrongful death,
in order to cast the problem in purely monetary terms (no need to have the
gol' dang gummint involved).

ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (10/24/85)

> If person A injects some AIDS virus into person B with the
> intent of giving them AIDS so they will die,  what crime can
> person A be convicted of? Attempted murder? Murder (if B dies)?
> Assualt?
> 
It is murder if you do anything to somebody in order to kill them
and then they die as a result

> How about if person A, who knows he has AIDS, rapes person B
> with the admitted intent to give them AIDS so they will die?
> Attempted murder?
> 
If they die, you might get them on the Felony-Murder rule, which states
that if a person dies, even indirectly, as a result of the commission of
a felony, the crime is murder.

It wouldn't be attempted murder becuase the question isn't whether it was
attempted or completed, but whether it the charge was murder or not.

-Ron