Should the medical personnel involved in the 'euthanasia' of patients that couldn't be transported safely during Katrina be convicted of murder?

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given the circumstances, murder may be too harsh a conviction. perhaps mansluaghter would be more appropriate in this situation. -M

I say murder 1. The crime was certainly voluntary on their part. It also involved a conscious decision by the medical personnel to end the lives of others. I'm not sure that we have a hard time arriving at the murder 1 charge even for one victim. When we start talking about multiple victims, I think the charge becomes a lot more warranted.

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i don't know... it was my understanding that these people were dying and many would have died anyway. extenuating circumstances and all. i'm not defending their behavior.

as for murder 1, doesn't that require malice afore-thought? while the actions of the personnel were no doubt questionable, i'm not sure that anybody would say they acted with malicious intent. therefore murder 2 at best... -M

m, not sure about murder. I'll tell you at the end of the semester as I don't feel like looking it up at the moment

-- that's only if you ask though.

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at the very least, they should permanently lose their medical licenses...

I agree that murder 1 is a bit steep given the circumstances. But if the patient didn't ask to but put down, then it's some form of manslaughter, in my layman's opinion.

since it's a slow day in the office for me, how about i look it up for a change. here's what oscn says about first degree murder. seems to me that unless a child is involved or if the death results during the commission of another felony, then malicious intent is one of the qualifiers. that's oklahoma law, though.

of course, laws vary by state. louisiana law is a bit different in it's definitions, i'm finding. here's the link. notable to me is 14:30A (3) where one of the qualifications is 'when the offender has a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon more than one person.' it seems that malicious intent is not a factor in first-degree murder in la.

still, since the health of those killed was deteriorating (i haven't verified this, yet) murder 1 may be too steep at least politically. however, assisted suicide is likely illegal in louisiana, so consent is not an issue. in any event, losing their licenses is a foregone conclusion... that should happen without question. -M

Did the patients want to die given the circumstances?
If so, I don't think the doctors should be punished at all.
I hope my doctor puts me to sleep if I asked for it. Its better than having a torturous death.

I completely agree with rxis.

Rxis, oki, euthenasia is still illegal. There is no difference between euthenasia and murder/manslaughter at law except that some states impose additional penalties for euthenasia.

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Put me on the Jury, and we will see how it comes out.

I know this is different in some ways but sort of similar. My best friend's mom died of cancer last week.. I can tell you that she is tortured.. can't sleep, can't eat.. not because her mom died but because all she can think of is how could she have alleviated the suffering, she questions the dosage of the morphine.. she tells me repeatedly, ' I should have been insistent with the doctors and made them help her and give her more morphine.. what was the point of her being in so much pain? You should have seen her eyes, begging me to help her and I couldn't do anything. "

I don't have the answers.. all I know is that I'll bet she wishes she could have asked the doctors to help her mom go.. it was horrible.

The memorial in on Thursday.. I sent her the Lyrics of I can Only Imagine.. hoping to alleviate some of the grief.. she wrote back.. 'at least she is out of pain' ... she honestly is so sad that her mom had to be in such misery and suffering towards the end of her life ..

I think the doctors of Katrina shouldn't be punished for trying to end the suffering of the eldery .. I know of the ethical ramifications but when it all comes down to it.. why? Why the pain and agony when it can be ended simply and painlessly?

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Karried, I lived through what you describe when my mother had Breast Cancer.

Mid, yeah we have laws, but some of them are so ill conceived that sometimes I secretly hope that the people who put them together have to suffer under them.

Then we have people who administer the law whom I think deserves the same wrath or worse since when administering it, they have time to really see what pain they are inflicting.

I take comfort in the fact that there would be 11 other people on that jury.

But it takes all 12 for a criminal conviction; yes! The prosecutor can set it for a retrial after the hung jury, but there is likelihood that he would not.

How does that support the point you were trying to make?

i can certainly understand the desire to alleviate the pain of our loved ones. that's a situation i hope that i'll never have to face. that doesn't change the law, however. if the law is unfair in certain circumstances, then perhaps it needs to be changed. as long as it exists, though, it should be obeyed and enforced. here's a quote that i read a long time ago that i've often felt appropriate:

if an honest man takes it upon himself in good conscience to break a bad law then he invites all of the dishonest men to break all of the good ones.

-M

Unless Oki's a liar, he couldn't get on that jury. There's a process called voire dire in which the prosecution & defendant get to ask questions to potential jurors. Unless Oki lied in order to get on that jury, he would have answered that he could not possibly convict the medical worker. Therefore, he'd get to go home early.

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But when I was on jury duty three different times, I was never asked that question.

One time, when a girl had taken a pack of lawyers for some money, I was asked by the prosecutor if she proved all the points, would I convict the girl. I said it would depend---that was the truth as I never ever lie---we, the prosecutor and I, had a long discussion, and I was adamant that I would vote my conscience.

I thought she would surely reject me from the jury, but when it was all said and done, I was on the jury.

When in the jury room, as I was protesting that I would not send that girl to prison for what she had done even though I felt she had done it, but I also felt the pack of lawyers were just as guilty as she was, the other jurors told me that I had sworn that I would. I reread the oath, and it does not say that one will convict just because the person is guilty. They said I had told the prosecutor that I would convict if I felt she was guilty, but when I reminded them that I took exception to that question, and I was adamant that I would consider the entire happening and vote accordingly, they remembered that I was not a rubber stamp.

In the jury room, the jurors are the King or Queen as the case may be.

But to be clear here, I would not lie under any circumstances, but too, most likely, neither would I volunteer any info. The prosecutor should have taken me off the jury---I gave her every reason to.

22 O.S. Sec. 601

The jury consists of twelve persons except that in misdemeanors it shall consist of six persons, chosen as prescribed by law, and sworn or affirmed well and truly to try and true deliverance to make between the State of Oklahoma and the defendant whom they shall have in charge, and a true verdict to give according to the evidence. Criminal cases wherein the punishment for the offense charged is by a fine only not exceeding Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00) shall be tried to the court without a jury.

Brad, on #16, I am not sure what you mean.

If you mean about the other 11 jurors, it does not matter if the 12th goes the other way, and they cannot come together, it is a hung jury, and the trial stops.

The prosecutor has the option to retry the case, maybe he will, but I would guess there would be one of the 12 each time who feels the same way; just look at the responses here.

Without doing a lot of research, three of us say they should not be punished, and what is it, you and Mid think they should?

I am not trying to be smart alecky, but I just think the prosecutor would weigh his desires for re-election before he tried the case especially if there were a hung jury the first time.

ok, if voir dire (yes, that bugged me) isn't gonna stop him, then i call for... peremptory challenge!

besides that, if i'm not mistaken, a judge can overturn a jury's verdict if he thinks they're a bunch of screw-ups and didn't properly apply the law in rendering their decision... though that's not exactly the most common outcome. -M

Actually, the infinitive of the french verb "to see" is voire (and that's how it's spelled). I just realized today that it was Latin, and we use the Latin spelling. That's what I get for taking so much French in HS and undergrad I haven't had a class yet where the subject was discussed, so the only time I've heard of it was when it came up in discussion with a real attorney. So thanks, I learned something new today.

And yes, attorneys on each side get 3 peremptory challenges. That means they can disqualify a potential juror if, for example, they don't like the cut of their jib.

Also, whoever mentioned that murder charges require "malice aforethought" didn't really correctly explain what that phrase means. All it means is that you are doing what you are doing with the intent to cause the bad thing. Therefore, if the doctor did what they did in order to put the patients out of their misery, then that's malice.

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i'm not so sure... i've never seen it spelled like that... but it's no biggy. i just saw it and it reminded me of our quip yesterday. 'to see'... surely you're pulling my leg.

as for malice aforethought, i have long been under the incorrect interpretation that the word 'malice' meant the same thing in legal context as in common usage. cool stuff. so i guess i learned something today, too. -M

m:

I was wrong -- it was Latin, not French even though the infinitives of each verb sound and mean the same thing (except voire in french has an 'e' at the end).

Google it "voire."

You'll come up with a lot of .fr sites

French is derived from Latin. In the days of the Roman Empire when Rome had conquered Gaul (Gallica), the Roman soldiers spoke a different dialect than the Roman people back in Rome who spoke proper Latin.

Gradually, the dialect became a whole new language.

Somewhere in there, I swear to God, they stuck an 'e' on the end of voir.

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