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If a person were committing suicide by jumping off a building and you shot them on the way down, killing them, are you culpable for their death?

Legally, you may or may not be, depending on the jurisdiction. But what would the philosophical underpinnings of such a law be? It could be viewed as a mercy killing, in a way; but is it distinct from assisted suicide (and how so)? What else is there to consider?

(Assume the person would die on impact. "Well, he might live" gets too far away from the intended discussion.)

Julius Hamilton
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    How is this a philosophical question? This is a legal question for the blame and also if you killed him, you killed him. – Oscar Godson Jun 07 '11 at 20:59
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    it's not only a legal question, it's a matter of ethics too, which is not the same with law – Rad'Val Jun 07 '11 at 21:02
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    @Oscar Culpability is a philosophical concept. It's not a question about legality just because the law makes extensive use of said concept. "If you killed him you killed him" is an over-simplification, otherwise this question and questions about assisted suicide would never arise. –  Jun 07 '11 at 21:03
  • He asked about the law, so I said, if you shot him and killed him you, by law in most jurisdictions would be the reason he died therefore murder. He added the part about he would die for sure on impact, but how would they know that? Legally they wouldnt, and its a hypothetical question which I've been bashed on here before for bringing up. This entire question hinges on if he dies from hitting the ground or not and you'd never know that, and even if you did in fact know that (falling into a vat of acid) he still died FROM a gunshot wound which YOU inflicted so you're culpable. – Oscar Godson Jun 07 '11 at 21:27
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    @Oscar I asked about the underpinnings of the law. "Well YOU shot him!" is not a philosophy. And as I noted on Lennart's answer, you can construct a situation where survival is truly impossible (think supernova or something). And a question can contain a hypothetical situation without being a hypothetical question. –  Jun 07 '11 at 21:31
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    As other point out culpability is a legal question, not a philosophical question. If you are asking if it is wrong then that is an ethical question but still not a valid question for this forum since it is asking to "do" philosophy not about philosophy. A valid question here would be if there are any ethical systems that would justify killing someone who is committing suicide. – chuckj Jan 12 '12 at 05:55

8 Answers8

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He was not dead. You intentionally killed him. You are therefore culpable for his death.

Saying that he would have died anyway means that you can be excused of any murder, since everybody will die anyway, sooner or later. That is therefore an unreasonable standpoint.

Saying that it was a mercy killing doesn't change the culpability. You are still culpable no matter if it was a morally correct action or not.

Lennart Regebro
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  • What of the argument that you're culpable for shooting him, but his death was already determined and thus you can't be culpable for it? (This assumes he would not survive the fall; we could construct a situation in which survival is impossible, I'm sure.) –  Jun 07 '11 at 20:29
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    You are still ending his life earlier then it would have otherwise. If we say that ending it 5 seconds earlier does not count then what about 10 seconds? a minute? a day? a year? – lathomas64 Jun 07 '11 at 20:31
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    @Matthew Read: Already answered: That argument assumes that how and when you do doesn't matter, and with that viewpoint we will all die, and hence murder is fine. Reductio ad absurdum. – Lennart Regebro Jun 07 '11 at 20:33
  • @Lennart Fair point. –  Jun 07 '11 at 20:45
  • I would upvote this save that you say that even if the action of killing him was morally correct the actor would still be culpable. Culpability seems only to apply to wrong actions. It makes no sense to say that I am culpable for saving the drowning baby in the bathtub. – vanden Jun 11 '11 at 20:40
  • @vanden: Culpability rather applies only to illegal actions. And of course, something can be morally praiseworthy but still illegal, such as refusing to join the army, for example. – Lennart Regebro Jun 11 '11 at 21:10
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    @Lennart Legal culpability applies only to illegal actions. Moral culpability applies only to immoral actions. If the sense of culpability in the last sentence of your answer was disambiguated, my objection would go away. – vanden Jun 11 '11 at 21:26
  • @vanden: Note that it's the question that doesn't make this distinction, while my answer does. That said I don't think it's possible to misunderstand neither question nor answer. You are "protesting" against a choice of word even though you understand the answer perfectly. – Lennart Regebro Jun 12 '11 at 04:21
  • Not at all sure why the scare quotes. I believe I understood your intent, yes. I also believe that clarity and precision in the use of language are virtues in general and especially in philosophy. You could choose to read my comments as an honest and good faith effort to improve the text in question. As I understand it, questions and answers are better the fewer possibilities for honest confusion and misinterpretation they admit. Perhaps we differ. – vanden Jun 12 '11 at 05:05
  • @vanden: I don't believe there is a possibility of any confusion, and talking about "objections" and refusing to upvote an answer because I use the same word choices as the question is silly. Feel free to downvote now. – Lennart Regebro Jun 12 '11 at 05:31
  • Culpable does not mean you go to jail it means you have an answer for your actions. If you shoot someone in the head who is going to commit suicide you will have to answer for it. Even if they were going to kill someone else too you still have to answer for it and you are still responsible for the death. If you believe in god he may demand accounting for your action. If you just stand there and do nothing then you are culpable for that as well. When you take action you are culpable for it. It may be forgivable but you still did it. – Chad Aug 09 '11 at 17:50
  • -1 for a failure to draw reasonable distinctions. Killing someone five seconds before they would otherwise die is different than killing them five decades before they would otherwise die since you can do more in five decades than five seconds. What you are culpable for, morally, is drastically different in the two cases. (You are morally culpable for shooting the body after the guy dies, too--maybe he didn't want a bullet hole in his corpse. This does not mean that shooting a corpse is comparable to shooting a healthy non-suicidal person.) – Rex Kerr Nov 12 '11 at 16:28
  • @RexKerr: You are asking me to answer another question than the one posed. The question does not ask what the morality of the issue is, only if you are culpable. Which you are. The morality of the issue depends on a whole set of other circumstances, not mentioned in the question. Will the person suffer more or less if you shoot him? I do point that out in my answer. That you are CULPABLE for it does not necessarily make it immoral. – Lennart Regebro Nov 13 '11 at 07:06
  • Okay, fine, -1 for obvious trivialities instead of a thoughtful answer. Of course if (a) people are culpable for what they do and (b) I shot the man as he was falling to his death then I am culpable for shooting the man as he was falling to his death. There is pretty much zero insight in that, except as a definition of "culpable". And if that was your goal, the whole "everyone dies eventually" point is irrelevant. – Rex Kerr Nov 13 '11 at 15:31
  • @RexKerr: Welcome to philosophy; where words matter. I answered the question. It's your problem that the question is not a question you find interesting. You are welcome to ask a question you do find interesting instead. – Lennart Regebro Nov 13 '11 at 22:03
  • I have no problem with the question, only with your trivial or misleading answer. Anyway, I was informing you of the problem only out of courtesy. Since you either do not understand why I find your answer not useful, or persist in failing to address any of my points, I think I have reached the bounds of courtesy in this regard. – Rex Kerr Nov 13 '11 at 22:24
  • The answer is neither misleading or trivial. Your problem is that the question does not ask what you think it asks or want it to ask. – Lennart Regebro Nov 14 '11 at 08:22
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An autonomy/consent perspective strongly distinguishes this scenario from assisted suicide. You do not generally forfeit your right to bodily autonomy just by doing something that's dangerous or that you mean to die from, and shooting the falling man might interfere with some way in which he was exercising autonomy-- you might keep him from being remembered as someone who wholly chose the moment of his death, or you might deprive him of a few seconds of weightlessness that he had intended to be his last experience.

Of course, you also might NOT be interfering with that, but you don't know, whereas an accomplice (partner?) in assisted suicide is arguably acting to support the dying person's autonomy. (One good elaboration of this argument is Ronald Dworkin's "Life's Dominion".)

I'll mention two ways in which I think you do forfeit some autonomy by attempting suicide, though I'm not sure either one matters here. One, you might be reducing the weight of your interests in any kind of balancing that has to be done; if your suicide is going to break someone else's leg (which jumping off a building might!) then atomizing you with a ray gun on the way down is probably more than justified even if it thwarts an exercise of your autonomy. Two, if your suicide looks like an accident, good samaritans will probably feel free to do all kinds of bodily invasive things to save you, if they think you can be saved, and I think that this is reasonable by most people's lights.

(There are plenty of philosophers who would say that preventing a suicide is an act of good samaritanship even if you know the person wanted to die. But plenty of others would disagree, and it depends among other things on whether life is an intrinsic good, which is a whole other kettle of fish.)

Nails N.
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Well, I think the question is, does the very act of shooting a man make you culpable for his death, or are you only responsible for the way your act has changed the outcome? That is, are you culpable for any exercise of free will, or are you simply culpable for the consequences of your actions?

I lean towards the former. That is, the act itself is wrongdoing, not just its consequence.

john
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Since we assume the person was going to die, we could say your actions were sufficient but not necessary for his death at that particular (rough) point in time. Despite the logical completeness of that assessment, it's probably unsatisfactory for most people. As social beings, we are greatly concerned with what your intent was in that situation, because we want to know if you are likely to do it again. Without intent specified, I personally wouldn't be inclined to offer a firm conclusion on culpability; only a probabilistic analysis with a very low degree of confidence that suggests people don't tend to shoot someone unless they are trying to kill them.

eMansipater
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Somewhat similar in principle, although not involving suicide, was a curious case of murder that happened in 18th century London.

Some felon had been sentenced to death, and while he was being conveyed in a cart to the execution site, a bystander leapt forward and clumped him on the head with a heavy walking stick of the kind they used in those days, and the fellow died immediately.

Well you might think that as the guy was due to be hanged within half an hour anyway, this killing would be treated leniently. But not a bit - The bystander was arrested, and later himself convicted and hanged for the murder! I think he was quite a distinguished person too, a lord or something.

John R Ramsden
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    This probably would have been better as a comment (condensed a bit) because it doesn't really answer the question, but it's a good alternative way to look at the OP's question. – stoicfury Dec 04 '11 at 17:08
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Well, jumping off a building doesn't necessary mean death. It's true that there is a high chance that the person that does such a thing will die, especially if the building is high, but it's not known for sure until he/she hits the ground. From my point of view, yes, if you 'help' someone this way you are culpable for his/her death. On the other hand, assisted suicide, could be another good topic to discuss, I'm not sure about the legal matter of it, but from my point of view it shouldn't be considered culpable as long as both parts agree upon it (I'm thinking especially about terminally ill people)

Rad'Val
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    I'm sure it's assumed to be a skyscraper... you and @eMansipater are saying the same thing (essentially). – wizlog Jun 07 '11 at 20:34
  • The point is, even if it is a skyscraper you don't know for sure until he/she hits the ground, that being said, as long as the person is alive, even if everything seems forfeit, 'helping' should be culpable – Rad'Val Jun 07 '11 at 21:00
  • terminally ill people jump from skyscrapers, with accessories shooting them? – propaganda Jan 22 '12 at 20:24
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No you are not responsible for his eventual death that would have been caused by hitting the pavement.

Yes you killed him before he hit the pavement,

Therefore Yes, you have killed a guy, but you are not culpable for his eventual death, but you are culpable for his death.

Hope that confuses the matter more! :)

jimjim
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Yes you are responsible for his death. Think of it this way. If someone is terminally ill, their organs are shutting down, they have hours left. If you put a bullet through his brain, your killing him. You sped up his death.

wizlog
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  • But why does speeding up death make you culpable? And is there really no difference between a split second and hours? –  Jun 07 '11 at 20:33
  • Of course! Are you telling me that doctors ARE allowed to ease someone into death by initiating a morphine drip (ensuring that they die a peaceful, painless death)? – wizlog Jun 07 '11 at 20:39
  • First, asking questions isn't "telling" anything. Second, we're talking about the basis of the issue, not what rules have been made up for a particular case relating to it. –  Jun 07 '11 at 20:44
  • Yes, the underlying issue is is killing someone who is about to die, really killing? Is it murder? Right?

    In the United States of America, for a doctor to help speed up a terminally ill patients life is illegal. The amount of time they have left to live is irrelevant. The fact that you are personally putting an end to someone else's life is the only thing that matters.

     – wizlog Jun 07 '11 at 20:46
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    @wizlog I don't think we are talking about the legal matter of this question, laws are different in every country. Law and ethics are different things. – Rad'Val Jun 07 '11 at 20:57
  • Philosophy is the foundation for all laws. Why do you think its against the law to kill someone? Its because its morally, ethically wrong, and from a philosophical standpoint, I think the argument is how can you say your better than he is. All men are created equal is philosophical, not just legal.

    However, culture does play a role. Ex: In certain Middle Eastern countries, women have less rights than men do. The penalty for killing a man is much more severe than for killing a woman.

     – wizlog Jun 07 '11 at 21:01
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    @wizlog "Philosophy is the foundation for all laws" is patently false, especially in non-democratic countries without modern laws. And even if it were, philosophy would determine legality, not the other way around. –  Jun 07 '11 at 21:08