Questions tagged [suicide]
Questions relating to the act of intentionally causing one's own death, or encouraging another to do so. Considered adding a location tag if the question is specific to a particular jurisdiction.
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'Homicide by words' hypothetical - First Amendment and jurisdictional questions
This hypothetical is based on the ongoing prosecution of Mandie Reusch.
Mr Y lives in Nevada, and Ms X lives in Wyoming. Ms X also suffers from depression and PTSD. They still speak to each other, and ...
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What does the law say about a person who orders a hit on themselves?
Imagine this hypothetical situation.
Anonymously, e.g. via the Internet, you find a hitman and pay him to murder yourself.
Imagine the hitman failed, you survived and the police somehow learned about ...
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Is calling emergency service for someone ever mandatory?
Is it ever mandatory to call the police or other emergency service for people? For example, say a friend has suicidal thoughts. Could you ever be breaking the law by not calling the police in such a ...
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Is it criminal to threaten suicide, or to have thoughts of suicide?
Psychiatric doctrine asserts entitlement to incarcerate someone on grounds of the bogeymen of suicidal and homicidal ideations. This is arguably a bit rich, because suicide and homicide are both ...
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Germany - spousal liability for suicide
Trigger warning - suicide. This is a throwaway account, because.
I have a long term illness that is going to kill me in a nasty way - not in the next 5 to 10 years, but eventually.
I live in Germany ...
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Can suicidal behaviour be a crime if others call the emergency services?
The Suicide Act 1961 decriminalised the act of suicide in England and Wales.
There is an image going around social media that purports to be of a letter, on police headed notepaper, written by a ...
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Could these facts lead to a conviction for manslaughter or other crimes?
Here are the facts:
A person (A), an adolescent, posts a poll on his Instagram story. It asks ‘Should I kill myself?’ The options are ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
Forty people vote on the poll. Only four people ...
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Validity of Sec 309 of IPC (criminalization of suicide)
Section 309 of IPC (Indian Penal Code) criminalizes suicide as following —
Whoever attempts to commit suicide and does any act towards the
commission of such offence, shall be punished with simple ...
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Penalty for inciting mass suicide
I was researching the mass suicides that occurred in cults like Jim Jones' Peoples Temple and Marshall Applewhite's Heaven Gates. In these cases, both Jones and Applewhite committed suicide as well.
I ...
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Is the cost of recovering a suicidal person's body deducted from their estate?
If a person committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in a remote rural area in New Mexico and it cost the authorities a lot of money to recover their dead body would those costs be deducted from ...
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What crime is hiring someone to kill you and then killing the hitman?
Suppose that yesterday I was suicidal and decided to hire a hitman on the internet to kill me.
Today, when they turn up, I have changed my mind and defend myself by killing the hitman.
What crime(s) ...
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Intentionally assisting a suicidal person
Bob posts on an anonymous online board that he wants to kill himself.
Alice reads his post. She visits Bob's home and hands him a gun. However, Alice warns Bob not to use the gun to kill himself. He ...
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Unintentionally assisting someone's suicide
Let's say I drop my gun on the street (accidentally or not). A man walks by, picks up my gun, and shoots himself in the head.
Should I be convicted?
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Is it legal to guide someone to suicide?
The context here is a video game, which I won't name as it'd be a bit of a spoiler, but the relevant part of the plot is: The deuteragonist's boyfriend was guided and goaded to suicide by one of the ...
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What form of privacy do doctors and call centers follow around suicide?
Purely out of curiosity, what practices do doctors and call centers have to follow for patients considering or with intent of ending their own lives?
Does it remain confidential? Or do they have to ...
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Illegal to threaten suicide in California?
I live in California and today I was at a store where they overcharged me for a product (the product was literally marked a different price than what they keyed in). I didn't catch it until it had ...
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Can ignoring a person on the Internet make me responsible somehow?
A few days ago I got to know a person on a social network. We had a few days of innocuous conversations on WhatsApp, but then they started becoming intrusive and imposing and didn't respect my time. ...
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Is it legal to intentionally manipulate a person towards suicide?
I think this should count as murder (attempted murder if the victim does not fall prey that is), since there is an intention to kill and the process is plotted and carried out ruthless with ...
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Will I have to appear in court or another proceeding about a suicide I discovered?
I was riding my bike to work, and found someone lying in the grass on public land (the road verge) not private property. He appears to have died of his own intentional actions.
The police were called,...
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Are social network companies legally permitted to tell police about users at risk of suicide?
In the United States, do social network companies have the legal right to provide user information directly to police, without order or subpoena, when such users post content about depression and self-...
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What can person A not authorize person B to do which A can do on their own?
In the US, there are many things a person has the right to do. Regarding these things, what actions are legal for person A to do but which would be illegal for person B to do even if formally ...
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Police and failure to enter home of suicidal person
An individual with a known mental health/substance abuse history was held in protective custody on a given night due to heavy drinking and unsafe behavior. That individual was released from custody ...
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Criminal liability for neglecting to stop a suicide in the Netherlands
In The Netherlands, suppose adult person A knows that adult person B is actively planning to commit suicide. Person A does not attempt to either assist in the suicide or block it.
Person B commits ...
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Who within the United States would have a legal obligation to report (or stop) a suicide attempt?
Since suicide is not a crime in many states is there any requirement for anyone to do something about an individual who is attempting suicide? That is to say does anyone, other then perhaps a ...
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Is fulfilling the duties of a "second" in seppuku a crime in modern Japan?
Seppuku is a Japanese suicide ritual by disembowelment that was often used by Samurai to attenuate shame or avoid being captured.
The ritual traditionally involves a "second" who would perform a ...
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Is attempting (committing) suicide a crime? [duplicate]
This post: https://law.stackexchange.com/a/7700/1272
Actually made me curious about attempting suicide is a crime in the USA?
Since in germany it isn't a crime.
Actually as far as I know, anyone ...
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Legal implications of this prank going horribly wrong?
I remembered coming across this comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
In this comic, Tommy replaces his boss' gun with a fake that just shoots out a "Bang!" flag. Later, he breaks into his ...
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Who has authority to determine whether death was natural, accidental, suicidal, or homicidal?
My understanding is that generally (and in broad strokes) it is the responsibility and authority of a jurisdiction's Coroner (a.k.a. Medical Examiner) to determine the cause and manner of any death ...
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Can police enter a dwelling to intervene in a suicide attempt in a state where suicide is not a crime?
I have often heard claims that the reason suicide (and attempted suicide) is criminalized (at common law, if not statutorily) in some states is that it allows law enforcement personnel to enter a ...
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To what extent is suicide legal in the U.S. and in individual states?
At one point, legal scholars referred to suicide as a form of self-murder (for example, see Coke or Hale).
Are those who take their own lives guilty of some crime, or have some forms of the act been ...
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What statutes constrain an insurance provider's treatment of suicide?
Many insurance companies have explicit suicide clauses: exclusions that allow the company to deny benefits to the policy holder's estate. Essentially, suicide voids the benefits policy.
What ...
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