Question

You are a federal prosecutor in Washington, DC, assigned to the following case:

Robert is a political commentator who actively criticizes the current administration on Twitter. Robert also publicly has discussed that he suffers from epilepsy, a condition that may cause seizures under certain conditions, for example exposure to flashing lights.

In late 2017, Robert received a gif file which he opened. The file contained a blinking image of a strobe light, which cause Robert to have an epileptic seizure. Robert was taken to the hospital by ambulance, however, upon arrival at the hospital, Robert’s condition was misdiagnosed as less serious than it was. After waiting for treatment for several hours, Robert passed away.

The FBI discovered that the strobe light gif was set by George, a political activist rival of Robert’s. George admits that he knew Robert had epilepsy, but says he was just “fooling around.”

Your boss, the US Attorney, would like to charge George with first degree murder, defined as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.” She has asked you to prepare a memo listing and all possible arguments that the defense is likely to make regarding the elements of this charge.

Prepare a memo describing to your boss the likelihood of success of convicting George for first degree murder in this case, including an in-depth discussion of actus reus, mens rea, causation, and concurrence. A thorough assignment will explain and define each element, and then apply that element to analyze the facts at hand.

Answer 1

Crime has certain elements that need to privesin court to determine if its a criminal offence or not.

Crime has the following 4 General Elements :

1 Actus rea : the unlawful act itself eg murdering someone with a shotgun.

2 Mens rea : the intent for the crime eg murdering due to revenge. Even negligence/not helping when needed can be termed as crime if there is an intent so intent is more important than the act itself i.e actus rea.

3 concurrence : the above two elements ie unlawful act and intent to do wrong must be in tune for the crime to be committed.

4 causation : the act must have caused the harm mentioned in the crime.

Applying these elements to the case :

In the case mentioned above an intent to harm robert by george is present as he is a political rival and even aware that robert has epilepsy so Mens rea is present, and because the intent is more important than the act itself , his sending the image to robert can be termed as negligence since he was aware that george has epilepsy.

It would have been a different scenario if he weren't aware of robert having epilepsy.

Also, concurrence is present in the case where the guilty act is negligence and guilty mind is also present .

The point of debate is causation as the defendeing lawyer will argue that roberts death was due to misdiagnosis/delayed treatment and not murder.