The Rule and Homicide
In English common law, it was held that a death was conclusively presumed not to be murder (or any other homicide) if it occurred more than a year and one day since the act (or omission) that was alleged to have been its cause. The rule also applied to the offence of assisting with a suicide.
The problems with the rule have to do the advancement of medicine. Life support technology can extend the interval between the murderous act and the subsequent death. Application of the year and a day rule prevented murder prosecutions, not because of the merits of the case, but because of the successful intervention of doctors in prolonging life. Additionally, advances in forensic medicine may assist the court to determine that an act was a cause of death even though it was carried out fairly far in the past.
Read more about this topic: Year And A Day Rule
Famous quotes containing the words rule and/or homicide:
“There were some schools, so called [in my youth]; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond “readin, writin, and cipherin,” to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)