Law Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for legal professionals, students, and others with experience or interest in law. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
If someone would legally be considered DEAD for a period of time¹ and during that period of time they would commit an illegal act, in the UK, could they, during a lawsuit, claim to be innocent because they were dead and thus couldn't have done anything, let alone something illegal?
¹A doctor declared them dead after an injury but they recovered without anyone knowing. (living people can be legally dead)
The word 'alibi' is Latin, meaning "somewhere else".
So the basic premise is that by proving you were somewhere else at the exact time of the crime, you inequivocally prove that you could not have committed the criminal act.
This does not imply you are innocent. You could, for example, have hired someone else to commit the actual act.
It also implies that merely stating you were legally dead at the time, is not an alibi, as 'legally dead' refers to a state of existence, not of location.
Now, being legally dead might make it impossible for you to legally perform certain actions, like signing a contract, which might lead to the justice system being unable to pronounce you guilty of some crime. But that would not be an 'alibi'.
An alibi in itself isn't necessarily a trump card. A legal declaration that you were dead despite being self-evidently alive doesn't seem a persuasive alibi.
