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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: captain_midnite who wrote (143313)	10/16/2005 5:30:21 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 794214

This is simply a distinct and separate crime, assault then, it's murder now. I buy your logic. I don't think a jury will convict again if he has a good lawyer. An emotional appeal would work if the accused has been a good boy since.

To: captain_midnite who wrote (143313)	10/16/2005 6:34:36 PM
From: Alan Smithee	Respond to of 794214

I believe the writer referred to the year and a day rule, which used to apply, and still does in some jurisdictions, year and a day rule: The year and a day rule was a principle of English law holding that a death was conclusively presumed not to be murder (or any other homicide) if it occurred more than a year and one day since the act (or omission) that was alleged to have been its cause. The rule also applied to the offence of assisting with a suicide. The application of the rule was a custom of English law that became enshrined in common law. The rule was abolished by a Law Reform Act in 1996. English law is now substantially revised such that if an act can be proved to be cause of death, it can now constitute murder regardless of the intervening time. The abolition of the rule does not relieve the prosecution of its obligation to prove, in cases of murder, that the accused intended to cause either death or serious injury. Principally, the rule was abolished due to the advancement of medicine. Life support technology can extend the interval between the murderous act and the subsequent death. Application of the year and a day rule prevented murder prosecutions, not because of the merits of the case, but because of the successful intervention of doctors in prolonging life. Additionally, advances in forensic medicine may assist the court to determine that an act was a cause of death even though it was carried out fairly far in the past. In England and Wales, the permission of the Attorney General for England and Wales is required for any prosecution in which it is alleged that the death occurred more than three years after the causative act, or when the offender has previously been convicted of an offence in connection with the death. The rule's status in the United States is less clear: many states have abolished it completely, and in 2001 the Supreme Court held that a Tennessee court's retroactive abolition of the rule was constitutional (Rogers v. Tennessee). However, its common law status has been successfully used by defendants to overturn convictions as recently as 2003. answers.com