Accidental Death

[Steezie]

Assume you are talking with someone you just met. He/she is a friend of a friend and your friend brought them over to your house. Your friend left you two alone and you start talking,

Somewhere along the line, the conversation gets heated and an argument breaks out. The person lunges at you, trips, falls, cracks thier head on a lamp, and collapses on the floor. You take a pulse and they are dead.

Now from a police perspective, it looks bad. It looks like you picked up the lamp and bashed them in the head. So what do you do?

 

[momalle1]

Be honest and tell what actually happened.

I hope this is a hypothetical situation

 

[R0D]

Be honest and tell what actually happened.

I hope this is a hypothetical situation

Yeah, what he said.

 

[MorkandMindy]

I agree with momalle1 too.

1. A body carries a great deal of evidence. The difference between falling into a lamp and someone hitting the person with it will be
evident from the injury, or the evidence will be inconclusive in which case you won't be found guilty because the case has to be shown beyond reasonable doubt, and inconclusive evidence certainly is reasonable doubt.

2. Over here there is essentially no place to hide a body. Every empty place people walk dogs who soon find things. Travel to another part of the country that really is empty then carry the body past many hikers to a suitable spot bearing in mind your car's number plate has been past about 40 blue cameras on the way there.

3. Forensics can usually tie a body with a suspect, so if you are a suspect you have little hope of just doing number 3.

4. In questioning people give off many subtle clues about whether they are telling the truth.

If you are poor and black in LA, you could have a problem either way. And when outside pressure is applied on the police to 'solve' a crime, mistakes do happen. Most police aren't keen to get the wrong person but they are occasionally under a lot of outside pressure.

You may get picked up and questioned an awful lot but if you tell the truth totally always there is a better than 99% chance it will end up ok. Don't muddy the waters by telling lies.

5. If you did do it then bear in mind you have to survive in that other country.

6. Did this really happen or did I spend all this time writing this for nothing??

 

[Pogue]

Call the police and pretend I found them that way, as long as that would be convincing. I think that would be the best way to get away with it.

 

[Lynden1000]

I'd call the police and tell the truth. Like MorkandMindy said, a competent forensics person (I'm sure they have a title, but I have no clue what it is) will be able to determine that the injury is consistent with a fall. And given that I just met this person and presumably have no motive, I probably would never even be suspected to begin with.

I disagree with Post # 5, pretending you found them that way. Eventually you're going to trip up and give yourself away. The police will realize that you were there when it happened and that you lied- and then they *will* start suspecting you, even though you didn't do anything.

 

[trunks2k]

Steezie, you don't happen to have a dead body on your floor right now, do you?

Edit:

As for the OP. Call the cops. The worst thing you can do is run away or try to hide/destroy the body, because if they find out the person died in your house then you look really guilty. In terms of getting away with it, you would have to hide/destroy the body really well and make sure nobody sees you hide it, clean up the scene really well (but that is getting harder and harder to do these days.), and have a plausible story for how the person left your house. However, being able to actually do all that is kinda hard.

But by calling the cops you'll appear more innocent than guilty because if you killed someone, you wouldn't want the cops to know about it. Plus, since it's a person you didn't know what motive would you have for killing him? And there's the aforementioned forensics. On top of that there's the ethical/moral issues, like doesn't this person have a family/friends that deserve to know what happened to him?

 

[Blackmarch]

Assume you are talking with someone you just met. He/she is a friend of a friend and your friend brought them over to your house. Your friend left you two alone and you start talking,

Somewhere along the line, the conversation gets heated and an argument breaks out. The person lunges at you, trips, falls, cracks thier head on a lamp, and collapses on the floor. You take a pulse and they are dead.

Now from a police perspective, it looks bad. It looks like you picked up the lamp and bashed them in the head. So what do you do?

Call the police and explain it.
If it results in my going to jail for murder, then it's very likely after having paid time in jail that I wouldn't report anything to the police.

 

[sparklecat]

Call the police. However, I wouldn't mention the argument, assuming it isn't likely that anyone else saw or heard it. I'd just say he tripped on the way to the bathroom or something.

 

[Bombila]

I voted calling the police, but as others have noted, I expect the police to be able to forensically tell the difference between a lunging fall and a human directed bash on the head. Perhaps your example is too easy: even as laypersons (police-wise), we know, for example, that our fingerprints would not likely be in the right positions on the lamp to indicate guilt, and that the position of the body, the lamp, and the blood patterns would likely further indicate our innocence.

 

[Norseman]

No pulse doesn't necessarily mean death. Someone who isn't a trained medical professional won't be able to find a pulse about 40% of the time, so he may just be unconcious. The first thing I'd do is grab a phone and talk to 911, to tell them to send an ambulance to my house for a guy with a head injury and no pulse. As soon I've taken the handful of seconds to do that, I would place my hand close to his face and look at his chest to see if he's breathing. If not, I would try performing CPR until the ambulance arrives. Once that happens, I would be able to get out of the way and think about what to do next.

 

[charmtrap]

Call 911 of course. But I'm not much for praying, so I'd hope that the police were competent enough to distinguish between an accidental and purposeful hit with the lamp.

Plus there is the fact that I'd have no motive as far as anyone knew, and I'd be extremely unlikely to have a heated argument with someone I just met. I'd walk for sure...

 

[momalle1]

Steezie, are you going to tell us who you ki..., er, what this is all about?

 

[tocis]

Now from a police perspective, it looks bad. It looks like you picked up the lamp and bashed them in the head. So what do you do?

First, finding no pulse would not mean "He's dead Jim!" to me - it would mean that it's time to call 911 very quickly and then start CPR.

Now, after the nitpicking...

I'd wait for the paramedics (who'll call the cops I trust), then wait for the cops, and tell them exactly what happened. Modern forensics can easily determine what was going on. For starters, going by your description there would be no fingerprints of me on that lamp, so...

 

[Steezie]

For starters, going by your description there would be no fingerprints of me on that lamp

You dont touch your lamps ever? How do you use them?

Of course that evidence wouldnt mean much in court as your lawyer would say that the fingerprints came from general use and didnt necessarily mean that you used the lamp as a weapon.

 

[tocis]

You dont touch your lamps ever? How do you use them?

My bad. Somehow I read your OP as everyone being at the absent friend's place.

Of course that evidence wouldnt mean much in court as your lawyer would say that the fingerprints came from general use and didnt necessarily mean that you used the lamp as a weapon.

Yup.

 

[justanobserver]

call the cops. let the evidence show what happened.

 

[Diane_Windsor]

Call 911 immediately, and then after a reasonable time search for an attorney in case the police try to charge me.

 

[LouTheWicked]

I voted calling the police, but as others have noted, I expect the police to be able to forensically tell the difference between a lunging fall and a human directed bash on the head. Perhaps your example is too easy: even as laypersons (police-wise), we know, for example, that our fingerprints would not likely be in the right positions on the lamp to indicate guilt, and that the position of the body, the lamp, and the blood patterns would likely further indicate our innocence.

I was thinkin' this too.

 

[reina23]

I'd call the police and tell them the exact truth, and then hire a good lawyer.