Legal Question in Criminal Law in California
Assisted Suicide
If you know someone who's going to commit suicide, and you do nothing, other than beg them not to, to stop it, is that illegal? What if you're present, at their request, when they commit suicide? Is that illegal? What if you told them how to open a battery, when, although you didn't know it at the time, they wanted to open the battery so they could drink the acid inside and kill themselves? If all this is illegal, which laws would it be breaking?
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Assisted Suicide
Knowing and doing nothing may not be a crime, but it is certainly a moral obligation to intervene you would be disregarding and violating. Call the police, call the paramedics, call a psychiatric hospital, call someone - to avoid being a party to suicide and moral guilt the rest of your life.
Re: Assisted Suicide
Not trying to prevent a suicide isn't the same as actively assisting it, and is not a crime. The same is probably true even if the person is present at the suicide; criminalizing such presence would prevent anyone from intervening if the suicidal person changed his mind after setting the process in motion.
Your hypothetical involving the battery also would not be a crime. The person providing the information has no idea how it will be used and it would be unjust to punish him for a decision the other person had made but had not disclosed.
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