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Homicide is legally defined as the killing of one human being by another. The term human being includes an unborn child. However, homicide does not include the following. Homicide is not an act that causes the death of an unborn child if those acts were committed during an illegal abortion to which the pregnant women consented. Another exception is acts which are committed pursuant to the usual and customary standards of medical practice during an diagnostic testing or therapy or treatment. Here is an example of a homicide case.
The defendant was driving drunk and went into oncoming traffic. She collided with another car. The driver the other car was nine months pregnant and expected to deliver in four days. The collision caused the pregnant woman stomach to hit steering will. Enables took her to the hospital. Doctors delivered the baby but the only sign of life was an extremely slow heartbeat. The doctors could not revive the baby.
Prosecutors charged the defendant with first-degree manslaughter. The law states that homicide is manslaughter in the first degree when perpetrated without is a to cause death by a person will engage the commission of a misdemeanor. The jury convicted the woman of proof first-degree manslaughter and driving under the influence of alcohol. It sentenced her to eight years in prison for manslaughter in a six-month suspended sentence for driving under the influence.
The defendant argued that a conviction should be reversed based on the common-law born alive roll. Because Obama’s neither altered or abolished common-law remains effective. The alive roll a child cannot be the subject of homicide until it’s complete expulsion from the body of the mother. This also is a life have an independent existence. The defendant claimed that the fetus is not born alive and that staff cannot be considered a homicide.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals abandoned the common-law approach and held that whether or not it is untimely born alive, and the unborn fetus was viable at the time of injury is a human being. Therefore the unborn fetus can be subject to the homicide, said Tulsa criminal defense attorney Stephen Cale. The appellate court based his decision on the origins, history, and purpose of the born alive rule.
This rule will be cited as early as the 1300s. The health of the child within the one cannot be determined until the child was observed after birth. As a result, live birth was required to prove that the unborn child was alive and that the material acts as a proximate cause of death. Because it cannot be established otherwise if the child was alive, this was the reason for the rule.
Additionally, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals said that advances in medical and scientific knowledge have done away with the need for the born alive rule. In this case, the medical evidence established of the child in the woman was living in viable at the time the crash. It also showed that the child died as a result of the wreck. Tulsa criminal defense attorney Stephen Cale has handled many homicide cases. This includes jury trials for murder.
Other states have also abandoned the born alive rule. Stated that it would be inconsistent to construe a viable fetus as a person for the purposes of civil liability or refusing to give it some more of fact in a criminal case. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals so that has a right and duty to develop the common law of Oklahoma to serve the evolving needs of its citizens. Therefore it abandoned the common-law definition of the human being and utilize the term is defined by statute.
Due process requires that a criminal statute give fair warning to the conduct that is prohibited, said Tulsa criminal defense attorney Stephen Cale. Specifically, the U. S. Supreme Court has held that a criminal statute violates the constitutional requirement of definiteness when it failed to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute. The underlying principles that no man should be held criminally responsible for conduct a cannot really understand. Prohibited. However, when a judicial enlargement of the criminal statute is applied retroactively, it operates as an ex-post facto law. The Constitution forbids this.
The federal principle that the required criminal law must have existed when the conduct at issue occurred applies to bar retroactive prosecution. The ex-post facto clause is a limitation upon the powers of the legislature. Originally did not apply to the judicial imprints. But the principle on which the clauses based is fundamental to our concept of constitutional liberty. As such, that right is protected against judicial action by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The question of whether judicial construction of a statute can be applied retroactively rests in the foreseeability of the court’s action. Specifically, the question is whether or not the defendant had a fair warning that is conducted with the result of the criminal charge. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals held that the section dealing with viable fetuses was not foreseeable. The defendant did have notice of the criminal nature conduct when she chose to drive her car while under the influence. However, liability for one specific consequence is conduct in the possibility of increase punishment resulting from the could not have been foreseeable.
So because the defendant did not have fair warning that is conduct was criminal and subject punishment, the appellate courts do not apply to her. There are basic principles upon which this country founded the compels result that the appellate court reached. But will due process when it is one of those. Retroactive application of criminal law and an ex-post facto manner is so important that the court must occasionally there’s some frustration in order to preserve and protect the foundation of of our system of law.