Pretorian wrote:BigTex wrote:Soon after the blow, Carroll told co-workers, "I feel deathly ill, that man has upset me so." She collapsed and was hospitalized. Hattie Carroll died eight hours after the assault. Her autopsy showed hardened arteries, an enlarged heart, and high blood pressure, and gave brain hemorrhage as the cause of death.
Zantzinger was initially charged with murder.
Beg your pardon? Murder? Hitti ng some body with a toy can that does not leave any trace? So what, you call somebody a name and he/she dies next day of heart attack, thats murder? Manslaughter? wow
I guess i should think twice before honking some one on the road.
There are a few different ways of looking at it.
One would be application of the "felony murder rule", in which a death that occurs during the commission of a felony is considered murder. (
Link)
Since touching someone in any sort of hostile manner with a toy cane could be considered aggravated assault (a felony in some jurisdictions), the fact that she died shortly thereafter could be considered murder by applying the felony murder rule.
In the case of honking your horn, that's not a felony, so no murder charge should result from a resulting heart attack.
Another route might be a theory of criminally reckless or criminally negligent homicide (voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter are what some jurisdictions use), based upon the fact that it might have been foreseeable that death could result from the actions taken by the offender.
I think what probably initially warranted the murder charge was the overall set of facts in which you have a drunk and abusive person verbally and physically abusing many people in his vicinity with a toy cane and his shoe, and one of them winds up dead shortly thereafter.
Any crime that is reported in the newspaper normally results in more severe initial charges, since there is a political dimension to anything covered by the media.
The fact that he was a member of the elite was probably what resulted in the initial murder charge being dramatically reduced and the light sentence.
In general, it's not uncommon for prosecutors to seek the highest possible charge in all criminal cases so that they will have the maximum amount of bargaining room with the defendant's counsel.
In a lot of jurisdictions, criminally reckless homicide (a heavy misdemeanor or light felony depending on where you're at) is what one might expect for a death resulting from things like screaming threats in the face of a frail old person, dropping bricks off an overpass, or hitting a black woman with a cane and screaming "nigger" when receiving poor service in a restaurant.
