Full access allows:
- Solve all tests online without limits;
- Remove all advertisements on website;
- Adding questions to favorite list;
- Save learning progress;
- Save results of practice exams;
- Watching all wrong answered questions.
13. If the teenager's companions are subsequently tried as accomplices to manslaughter, they should be
A teenager and two of his friends were members of a teenage street gang. While they were returning from a dance late one evening, their car collided with a car driven by an elderly woman. After an argument, the teenager attacked the elderly woman with his fists and beat her to death. The teenager's two friends watched, and when they saw the woman fall to the ground they urged the teenager to flee. The teenager was eventually apprehended and tried for manslaughter, but the jury could not decide on a verdict.
Comments (0)
There are no comments at the moment. If you found an error or think question is incorrect, tell everyone about it
Only signed in users can write comments
Signin
There is no duty to rescue a victim except in limited circumstances, such as when that duty is imposed by statute, or if the defendant is closely related to the victim, or if the defendant assumed that duty (for example, by agreeing to serve as caregiver to a person unable to care for herself).
Mere presence during a crime, without more, is not enough to constitute aiding, abetting, or facilitating that crime.
Urging a criminal perpetrator to flee the scene of a crime is not sufficient to constitute aiding, abetting, or facilitating the perpetrator's commission of that crime. It may be reprehensible conduct, but it is not criminal.
B is correct. It may be tempting to find the friends guilty here because they are unsympathetic as members of a street gang who did not step in while their friend killed a helpless elderly woman. However, the facts show that the friends were only present as the teenager killed the woman. They did not aid, abet, or facilitate the teenager's crime, and therefore they cannot be guilty as accomplices to that crime.
A is incorrect. The teenager committed the underlying crime by killing the woman, so his friends may be tried as accomplices even though he was not convicted.
C is incorrect. The friends would have had to do more to trigger accomplice liability, such as encouraging him during the beating, serving as lookouts to alert him of police presence, or serving as getaway drivers. Without more, just being present and urging the teenager to flee after the beating cannot support convicting the friends.
D is incorrect. None of the circumstances that would impose a responsibility to intervene applies to the teenager's friends to help the victim in this case. Again, although not attempting to stop the beating may be socially unacceptable, it is not criminal. Additionally, for the friends to be guilty as accomplices to manslaughter, they would have had to know that the teenager planned to kill the woman and they would have had to aid, abet, or facilitate the teenager's homicide. As discussed above, mere presence and urging the teenager to flee after the beating are not enough to constitute aiding, abetting, or facilitating. The friends cannot be convicted only because they made no effort to intervene.