Loopholes of Murder

Loopholes of Murder

             According to the United States Census Bureau 15, 241 murders have taken place throughout the U.S. in 2009. The truly depressing notion is that this is just a statistic for the amount of murders where the victims were found. Worldwide there were 490,000 murders recorded in 2008 as claimed by the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development. Take into account the number of people that have been affected directly by these statistics, and there you would begin to see how many definitions of murder there truly are.  For example, human fingerprints are taken because they differ in every person, thusly it can be used to define us. This being said how could you classify the felony of murder with just three degrees, when the people who commit it are as different as fingerprints. These days in every case a new definition must be applied in order to fully serve as a guideline for what is to be considered the most taboo crime of all.  The definition of murder is not so black and white, It’s etymology suggests that the word has traveled a long way through time, and the present statistics concur that it’s definition will continue to evolve.  Murder is the taking of another human beings life by people over the age of 16, regardless of psychological state, unless committed by means of protection of oneself or another.

            One of the most controversial topics within murder is that of abortion. Can that action truly be considered murder? Yes, women have rights over their own bodies, but do they have rights over another’s.  Those in favor of Pro-life may argue that each cell is life, thus an embryo is a human being, and to end its existence would be murder. While Pro- Choice may argue that since the embryo cannot dream, aspire, choose, love, or communicate, the embryo therefore has no human characteristics and killing it would be permissible. This being said take into consideration how abortion plays a role in future

            Take George Tiller, a lifelong women's rights champion and late-term abortion provider, was murdered on May 31, 2009.  At church of all places, the only location to which he ever went without a bulletproof vest. He was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range while serving as an usher at the beginning of the Sunday service. Tiller specialized in late-term abortion care for women and was one of only three physicians in the country who provided abortion services for women who were beyond twenty-six weeks pregnant. Tiller saw clients from all over the world, and the walls of his Wichita, Kansas, and clinic were filled with notes from patients thanking him for the service he provided them. Tiller provided services for women from all walks of life: young and old, rich and poor, rape and incest survivors, women with fetal anomalies. When a nine-year-old girl who became pregnant when her father raped her was denied service by all the doctors in her southern hometown, Tiller not only provided her a late-term abortion, but he did it for free. As a physician, Tiller empathized with his patients' experiences and respected the need for women to have access to doctors who can provide that service safely. In Tiller's own words, "abortion is a matter of survival for women."

            Over and over we find loopholes to the definition of murder as to why it is so troublesome to place one solid meaning to the word. Take the story of a Holley and his wife fighting. The man, a chronic alcoholic, killed his girl friend with an axe. The man stated that his girl friend mocked, “You don’t have the guts.” After this statement Holley killed his girlfriend. While in court Holley protested that his chronic alcoholism was in fact a disease, which skews his ability for self-control. The Court of Appeals of New Jersey substituted a verdict of murder for manslaughter. The jury came to the consensus that alcoholism was indeed a viable factor to effect self-control. However, the problem now arises as to how you describe a probable cause for murder. Holley states that alcoholism is one, where another case states that fear, anger, grief, or terror may result in murder as well. For example, say A woman is repeatedly abused by her Husband. For the sake of her safety and out of shear terror she murders her husband in his sleep. The problem at hand now is that the definition of manslaughter does not have various degrees within the limitations of provocation, as does the term murder.  The Judicial system must come to terms upon a solid foundation as to what personal problems justify a loss of self-control.

            Moreover, Twenty-one people died after being given the vaccine The medical staff from the northern town of Grudziadz are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year. Prosecutors say it involved an untried vaccine to the highly contagious virus. Authorities claim that the alleged victims received £1-2 (type of flu vaccine) to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug. Here we have a case of medical malpractice, yet the only viable jurisdictions with the definition that can prosecute these people are located in the Criminal Code of Canada. Which states, “A person, for an unlawful object, does anything that he knows or ought to know is likely to cause death, and thereby causes death to a human being, notwithstanding that he desires to effect his object without causing death or bodily harm to any human being.”  Since we do not have a sufficient definition for murder the courts could not hold these people to conviction, and were only released from their jobs. An unyielding definition would have held these doctors accountable for their dishonesty, yet they continue to walk free.

            On a very opinionated note we have the circumstance where countries must in turn go to war with one another. This being said humanity doesn’t just fight each other with propaganda. The taking of lives comes hand in hand with war. Now are those soldiers we send out on the battlefield murderers. They are trained to kill and do just that. Arguments have stemmed from many cases involving prisoners of war (POWs) and accidental civilian deaths. Soldiers are not policemen or judges. They cannot discriminate among enemies, especially during battle and for a while after it. Good soldiers kill well. The U.S. demoralizes its army by such show trials to convict them of murder. Once there is a line that soldiers ostensibly should not cross, it thickens. For example, if a soldier kills the enemy tank driver who is not the one firing upon him, is that murder? When a child soldier is ordered to kill parents in another village a murderer, when they are threatened with the death of their family? When POWs are killed when demands for their release are not met, is that murder? The problem in wartime arises in the method of killing. Whether that soldier is a murderer depends on the intentions of that person. In war soldiers kill, and get charged for murder, when their intentions are protection, and self-preservation. All of which are natural things that the government has paid them to do. How can they place guns in the hands of young men, send them to fight overseas, kill the “enemy”, and still prosecute them for being murderers.

            Where do we look for an exact definition of murder? The answer is simple we look to the places where murder and assassination was very common. We look to the past. Robert Garland asks what murder meant to the apparently bloodthirsty Greeks and Romans. What was considered murder in the ancient world? How was it defined by what may be known as the greatest civilization of all time.  Do we even have any evidence that says that murder was problem enough to be defined then? Our evidence from the Greek world is random and largely restricted to Athens. It comes mainly from the orators, whose services as speech-writers were engaged by plaintiffs and defendants who happened to be wealthy enough to pay them. Very rarely, however, do we know the verdict. Our evidence from the Roman world is mainly limited to a handful of high-profile murders of politically prominent individuals. Murder apart, we know next-to-nothing about the general level of violence in ancient society, which makes it virtually impossible to identify continuity or change. And yet such evidence as we have sheds light on a subject of perennial fascination for our understanding of the tensions and conflicts latent in human society. (Garland 4) If a slave murdered his master the entire household was executed. On one occasion in the first century AD no fewer titan 400 slaves suffered this fate. Although the prospect of indiscriminate slaughter on such a scale provoked a riot among the citizens of Rome, the Emperor Claudius intervened to ensure that the executions went ahead peacefully. In Athens, by contrast, the evidence suggests that slave owners, though free to inflict bodily injury, could not put their slaves to death. In both Athens and Rome it was the victim's next-of-kin who was required to bring a murderer to justice. If, therefore, the killer was unknown to the victim, there was a good chance that the crime would go unpunished. In the absence of any police force, a large number of murders must also have been undetected.  According to Robert Garland, the only recorded autopsy for forensic purposes was performed on Julius Caesar's corpse by a physician named Antistius, who pronounced that the victim had been knifed twenty-three times. Many homicides were settled privately, either by the payment of blood money or by vendetta, a practice that might evolve into an endless series of revenge-killings. What we do not know is which method was more prevalent, nor how the ratio between the two might have varied over time. The distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable homicide was not identical to our own. Athenian law permitted the killing of an assailant who struck first; a burglar who broke into one's home at night; and of an adulterer found in the wrong. An interesting instance involves a certain Euphiletus, who killed his wife's lover after discovering the pair in bed together. Instead of killing him instantly, however, he first rounded up his neighbors as witnesses and then slew him, in their presence. Tantalizingly the verdict is not recorded, so we do not know whether Euphiletus was acquitted for having acted in flagrante condemned for having acted in cool calculation (Joyce 6). If convicted, however, he would have faced the death penalty since the homicide was intended. Athenian law did not for the most part identify manslaughter, which is defined in British law as criminal homicide without malice aforethought, as distinct from other types of murder, nor did it acknowledge the culpability either of an 'accessory after the fact' or of one who 'conspired to commit murder'. In conclusion, murder is what anthropologists call a cultural construct, one whose impulse is traceable in part to the dynamics of the family, whose definition is dependent upon legal, political and religious imperatives, whose justification may be sought in an individual or collective devaluation of human identity, and whose explanation still largely eludes us.

            An abused wife murders her husband. A raped, pregnant pre-teen saunters into a doctor’s office in need of the fatal operation. A teenage drunk driver runs a stop sign colliding with the broad side of a wife and kids who inevitably die. A scientist hands out what he believes is a cure for cancer, but instead the drug hastens the disease and the death. What is counted, as murder all through history has been a debatable topic. Evidence of this is the fact that we have trials, the truth that its definition has changed well over 12 times in just U.S. history alone. From “thou shall not kill” listed in the second book of the Hebrew bible to "Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought" as stated in the U.S. Codes. Both of which relish the thought that murder can be defined. These scenarios opt otherwise, be it that many things are taken into consideration such as mental state, circumstance, reason, location, and the one victimized. The first murder recorded is believed to date back to Cain and Abel, which led to such a simple definition. Yet as human transgressions grow more complex so must the definition of murder.

Works Cited

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Papanikitas, Andrew. "Splitting hairs over the definition of murder: Thomas Aquinas and the doctrine of double effect." Clinical Ethics 4.4 (2009): 211-212. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 22 Oct. 2011.

Young, Angie. "Abortion, Ideology, and the Murder of George Tiller." Feminist Studies 35.2 (2009): 416-420. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 22 Oct. 2011.