Hacker News Reader

Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, this is horrific. From a medical standpoint:

"AED readings are important. Shock versus no shock" - this is basically allowing them to go one of two ways "Shockable", then they weren't 'fatally' injured by the Taser, and external circumstances caused the death. "No Shock Advised", well, they must have had a heart defect. Never mind that there are multiple rhythms beyond VF (Ventricular fibrillation), VT (Ventricular tachycardia) that can be recovered.

The next three are basically trying to imply typically drug use interfered with cardiac activity and that, not the Taser, caused the cardiac event.

It's basically "here's a laundry list of things that can exonerate Taser. Collect them."

View on HN

Whereas law enforcement also sees that, say I use a blank shotgun shell to make a retort to scare someone. And then that causes them to die of a heart attack due to a weak heart. I am to blame for manslaughter. That's because it doesn't matter the health status of a person - if I caused it, im to blame.

Unless you're law enforcement. They're... uh, special.

Edit: downtopic, user:revelation said it best. It's called the Eggshell Skull Rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull

That rule seems to depend on the precipitating action being a tort.

This is a really interesting question. what are the legal repercussions for killing someone that's about to die? Is imminent death an extenuating circumstance?

Could one argue that law enforcement would have used force that on average is much more lethal (gunshot), but instead used a Taser, and unfortunately they died because of the Taser? I'm a lot more comfortable with this defense than some sort of hot-potato "maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the taser" excuse.

Well, that's also a good question, but it's more nuanced than that. There may be cardiac stresses in play that are -exacerbated-, perhaps fatally, by the Taser. Certainly people die from cardiac complications from drugs alone, but the thought here is that Taser is trying to say 'underlying condition' killed the person, not the Taser deployment.

> what are the legal repercussions for killing someone that's about to die?

The example I have heard around this is that if you shoot, and kill, someone who is currently falling off a building you are still guilty of murder.

The reasoning, I believe, is that anything grayer than "if you killed them, you killed them" very quickly devolves into an argument over what "imminent" is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com