Responsible for murder or endangerment or just theft?

JumpShivers

Suppose a woman is walking down the street. She has her adrenaline pen in her handbag because she is allergic to wasp stings or peanuts.

After having her bag stolen by a thief, she decides to carefully make her way home or to the nearest GP / Pharmacy to get a new one.

On the way she gets stung by a wasp or touches nut residue and subsequently dies.

Could the robber be held responsible for her death or is all he could legally be charged with is theft?

Losty Dublin

Did the thief steal her bag or did they steal her pen? If the latter, did they steal it to ensure she would come to harm or even to set up her death?

clairek6

Manslaughter id guess

JumpShivers

He just stole her bag for money which have have possibly contained therein.

Does Irish law only punish on intention and not on the outcome?

If that's the case can someone not just push someone on front of a bus and say "I only meant to push him, not kill him".

Icepick

JumpShivers wrote: »

He just stole her bag for money which have have possibly contained therein.

Does Irish law only punish on intention and not on the outcome?

If that's the case can someone not just push someone on front of a bus and say "I only meant to push him, not kill him".

not a good example as generally predictable results of these 2 acts are completely different

Victor

Is this homework.

JumpShivers wrote: »

If that's the case can someone not just push someone on front of a bus and say "I only meant to push him, not kill him".

There is obvious proximity there. http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/homeless-deaf-man-jailed-for-killing-man-by-knocking-him-under-bus-31016537.html

JumpShivers

Victor wrote: »

Is this homework.

There is obvious proximity there. http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/homeless-deaf-man-jailed-for-killing-man-by-knocking-him-under-bus-31016537.html

Not homework. I don't study law. Just law musings.

Peregrinus

You are presumed to intend the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your actions. It's reasonably forseeable that if you push someone under a bus they may suffer death or serious injury, so you are presumed to intend that. And intention to cause death or serious injury is enough to ground a charge of murder.

But theft-of-handbag => death chain depends on two quite unlikely events - the handbag containing a life-saving epipen, and the victim encountering an allergen before she can replace it. These are possible, but the combination of the two is not "reasonably foreseeable" in the way that the likely result of being pushed under a bus is reasonably foreseeable.

So, no, I don't think our thief will be convicted of murder.

I don't think he would be convicted of manslaughter either. That requires recklessness or gross negligence - e.g. firing a gun into the air, and not caring where the bullet comes down, or tossing a brick off a bridge without looking to see if anyone is passing underneath. But taking a handbag isn't normally an act that carries any risk of physical injury to the owner (unless you, e.g.. assault her to get the handbag, in which case it's the assault rather than the theft which carries the risk of injury). So in the absence of special facts - e.g. the thief knew the woman carried a potentially life-saving epipen - I don't think a manslaughter charge would stick either.

seamus

Aside from Peregrinus' perfect explanation above, there's also the chain of causality.

The woman dies because of a reaction to an allergy. The existence of the epipen is something which may have saved her, but the lack of an epipen is not the cause of the death - the cause of death is the allergic reaction.

The thief in this case is many steps removed. If someone is walking down the street with an epipen in their bag, sees someone else having a reaction and fails to administer the dose, they are not in any way legally liable or legally responsible for that death. There is no law which compels an ordinary person to assist someone in distress, and as such no legal penalty for failing to do so.
So the theft of medicine is unlikely to lead to any specific charges (except theft), unless it can be shown that the thief could reasonably foresee that the theft would lead to serious harm or death for the patient.

hullaballoo

*Causation.

Wee spick inglish proper these side of the Atlantis.