Brady death ruled homicide
The other day, when someone emailed to us that James Brady had died, I responded that I was surprised that Sarah Brady hadn’t stood his lifeless corpse against the wall and fired a gun at it to make it look like he’d been shot to death. Well, it appears that she doesn’t have to do that, according to CNN;
[A] Virginia medical examiner has ruled the case a homicide, prompting a new investigation, Metropolitan Police spokeswoman Gwen Crump said.
Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Washington, said his office is reviewing the medical examiner’s findings. He had no further comment.
John Hinckley, the lone gunman who fired the shots that wounded Reagan, Brady, a police officer and a Secret Service agent outside a Washington hotel, was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
He has spent the ensuing years in a psychiatric hospital.
Hinckley was charged at the time with assault with intent to kill and assault with a dangerous weapon, and it’s unclear if he will face any new counts.
I’m sorry, but I’m going to need more details. He was shot 34 years ago and lived almost half his life since he was shot. I can’t help but think that this is some sort of political stunt.
Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists
“…this is some sort of political stunt.”
I concur.
Ee-yup.
I don’t doubt his injuries shortened his life a bit, and they certainly limited the quality of what he had. But when you live 33 years after a shooting, you aren’t a homicide victim. You are a shooting victim who is also a survivor.
This is what happens when unelected bureaucrats attempt to make policy statements they are neither qualified nor empowered by their job descriptions to do.
Stunt. People need to realize just how dangerous this is. Say I shoot a home invader and he lives. What if he lives another 20 yrs then croaks. Can his family now come back and sue me for homicide if they find a gun hating coroner and a vengeful cop that is also anti-gun and was angry I “got off” the first time?
Using a similar illogical argument, John Hinckley could also be prosecuted for President Reagan’s death.
No he couldn’t. The libs don’t like Reagan.
Wasn’t one of the counts of attempted murder Hinckley was acquitted of (by reason of insanity) his shooting of Brady? He’s already been on trial for this. Double Jeopardy?
It’s not double jeopardy. He was tried for assault with intent, he can now be tried for murder. The threshold for a murder finding must connect his death directly to the shooting injury. As such, if someone is shot and they end up dying of sepsis from the injury and the shooter was in the commission of a crime at the time of the injury that led to the death, then murder is the appropriate finding. Yes, even several decades later. Because Hinckley was found guilty by reason of insanity for the assault then it is likely that prosecuting murder charges will result in the same verdict. The only way to come to a finding of murder of Reagan, is that you would have to prove that the shooting injury was related his death.
***not guilty by reason of insanity
I think the reasoning is ‘death-related injuries’. Unless I’m mistaken, there’s no statute of limitations on murder chargers, and Hinkley’s case could possibly be re-opened.
However he’s been petitiong to get out of jail for a while now. I see this as an effort to keep him in jail for good. Fine by me.
#1. You may recall that Hinckley was obsessed with the actress Jodie Foster and regarded the shooting as an act of love of some twisted sort. He wrote her poems and letters but, alas, the love went unrequited. No shit. Foster was a lesbian. She married her girlfriend a few months ago.
#2. Sure, Hinckley can be charged with causing Brady’s death but there’s a problem, a BIG problem. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and that was for the act of his shooting that day and all of the crimes arising from it. The gov’t has no chance of any other outcome with a new murder charge. Also, the old law applies here–not the law that changed as a result of the Hinckley insanity defense. So, yeah, it may be a PR stunt or there may be double jeopardy (great movie!) life insurance money involved here.
there may be double jeopardy (great movie!) life insurance money involved here.
I’m guessing you mean Double Indemnity…in which case I concur, it was great.
Yeah. I screwed that up. I had DJ on my mind…
This is not a stunt. I am a forensic pathologist, and do these evaluations professionally. This is technically called a “delayed homicide.” The principle is that if the assault played any role in the death, then it becomes part of the chain of causation, and if it is in the chain of causation then that makes it a homicide.
The classic example is that of a person who is shot in the spine, becomes paraplegic, and then dies years later because of infection of a bed sore. The decedent would not have died had he or she not had the bed sore, would not have had the bed sore unless he or she had been paraplegic, and would not have been paraplegic unless he or she had been shot. Thus, the shooting caused the death, even though it was years later. The chain of causation is independent of the time frame.
The other thing to remember is that the determination of “homicide” is not a determination of “murder.” Homicide is a “medicolegal” determination that is independent of any legal action. It is used primarily for vital statistics (“how many homicides were there in 2014?”), to aid in investigation, is used by insurance companies for compensation, etc.
As an aside, if you are interested in learning about determination of manner of death, there is a very good guide written by Randy Hanzlick (the Chief ME in Atlanta, GA), called “A Guide for Manner of Death Classification.” It’s free and can be found at the National Association of Medical Examiners website “www.thename.org.” Click on “Public Documents” and then “Death Classification.”
Homicide is the taking of a human life by another human being. It is a purely neutral term. A homicide can be intentional or unintentional. An intentional homicide can be justified or unjustified. Homicide is often—and for good reason—confused with murder.
billo: I did visit that site and I found, within the Manner of Death section, this statement: “Homicide occurs when death results from a volitional act committed by another person to cause fear, harm, or death.” And therein lies the rub and the source of much confusion. That definition (“to cause fear [or] harm”) clearly marks the term homicide with all of the trappings of a criminal act when, in the legal realm, one may commit homicide and be justified in doing so, of course. That one person’s death occurred as a result of an act of another is, alone, homicide, regardless of the legal categorization of the killing. Put another way, what the manner of death entry goes to seems to me to be a question of fact, to be determined by a judge or jury, not a medical determination. I’d like to hear from you on this.
Sure. As you might expect, this comes up a lot. For some reason, people have a difficult time getting their heads around the idea that we make manner determinations that are simply *not* an issue of law in terms of finding legal culpability. Instead, the purpose is to classify the death according to a very specific set of five possibilities: suicide, accident, natural, homicide, or undetermined. Historically, some jurisdictions have also had “misadventure” for risky acts that had a recognized high risk of death and “therapeutic misadventure,” but they tended not to be helpful on reflection. I think the issue of medical determination is one that non-practitioners don’t appreciate. Let’s put it in a slightly different context. Let’s say you are a clincian with a pain clinic, and you have a patient come in and seek lots of opiate drugs for ill-defined pain. Whether or not you prescribe that patient more fentanyl or methadone or whatever depends upon your determination of whether or not he’s a drug abuser. Note that your determination of whether or not the person is likely a drug abuser is not a “legal” determination, even though drug seeking in that manner is illegal. It is a medical determination that may have legal consequences. However, the question of whether to prosecute and the determination of legal culpability are completely separate from the *medical* determination that this person is likely a drug abuser and it would be wrong to prescribe more drugs. The same things is true for us. Our determination of whether or not something is likely a homicide, accident, suicide, etc. has implications on how we investigate the case, how we do an autopsy, what ancillary tests we do, how we consult with the police, how we talk to the family, etc. Not all autopsies are the same, and not all investigations are the same. We don’t do rape kits on every woman who dies at home, for instance, since most deaths are clearly natural. I think the better way to think of it is not as some sort of final legal determination, but as a… Read more »
One other point. Your assertion that the determination of “homicide” is a finding of fact for judge and jury runs into a problem when it comes to the other manners. Suicides, accidents, and natural deaths are not litigated, for the most part. If only a judge and jury can determine manner of death, then how can these be classified?
Thanks for the response but your one other point indicated that we weren’t in synch. More specifically, this line gave me pause: Your assertion that the determination of “homicide” is a finding of fact for judge and jury runs into a problem when it comes to the other manners. I need to clarify that such was not my assertion. What I was saying, or trying to, was that whether a particular homicide was murder or some other flavor of homicide (e.g., manslaughter) is a question to ber answered by the fact finder, judge or jury. But when a coroner, for instance, concludes that a homicide was intentional and its threat or the act itself caused the decedent fear, that is no longer a medical opinion and is beyond where the coroner ought to be going. An autopsy provides the cause of death, I presume, and whether the autopsy result indicates that the decedent died at the hands of another is sufficient to prompt an investigation. I suppose that my points are twofold: First, that all murders are homicides but not all homicides are murders, and; second, that science is an invaluable investigative tool but that scientists ought to stick to science. reasomed
God Dammit. The cause of death has been announced as complications due to a gunshot wound sustained 33 years ago. POLITICAL. STUNT.
Anything to pad those gun related deaths to infringe on constitutional rights.
Purely political.
Dr. Oliver is correct. The concept of a “delayed homicide” is something that is handled in essentially every busy medical examiners office in the country on a frequent and regular basis. There is a difference between someone who got shot and died later of something entirely unrelated, compared with someone who dies weeks, months, or years from a complication that arose directly from the shooting. These decisions are well thought out, and not politically driven. Many, many forensic pathologists are recreational shooters, and are completely disassociated from the “guns are evil” movements. A fundamental task for forensic pathologists is to establish (or refute) any connection that may exist between an event and a death.
Not to defend their stance, but when Gen. Chamberlain finally died in 1914 they said it was complications from his wounds from the Civil War 50ish years before.