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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