Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Originally posted by: Mwilding
If a guy with terminal cancer takes 100 sleeping pills and jumps off a high-rise tower and you shoot him in the head just before he lands you will still get convicted of murder and face the prescribed penalities of your state - especially if you are black and live in Texas...
Intriguing theory, buuut... isn't a criminal conviction, "beyond a shadow of a doubt"? Wouldn't the examination of death have to happen after the person landed? How would the state be able to prove that it was *you* who did the deed, when the body is in pieces over a 100m radius from the fall? Here's another one - what if the person, died of a heart-attack, just after jumping, and was dead a split-second before you decided to use the rapidly-decending corpse for target-practice? Is target practice with freshly-dead humans against the law in the state of texas?
Ok, how about another scenario - you're on the ground, and you whip out your concealed sawed-off shotgun out of your waistband, and blast the rapidly-approaching corpse falling from above you, in order to save your own life. Now what would the verdict be?