Legal Question in Criminal Law in California
Domestic Case
To Whom It May Concern:
Do you know of any cases where the parent of a person convicted of a first degree murder was found innocent because they were uninvolved in the murrder and did not know it was their child until the murder had already been committed? Let's say, Bob killed someone and his parent, John was completely unaware of his child committing murder until after the crime; are there any laws or precedented trials where John was found innocent because he wasn't involved in the murder, yet his child was? Thank you for you time!
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Domestic Case
If I understand your question correctly, you seem to believe that if a child commits a murder his parents are guilty of that murder. The law does not work that way.
Parents are civilly responsible for the harm their children cause but are not criminally liable. The family of the murder victim can bring a wrongful death action against the parents of the juvenile killer, but the parents cannot be imprisoned or otherwise punished criminally for the murder.
Your question asks if parents could be found not guilty because they only learned of the murder after the fact. The alternative would be that the parents did know of the planned murder ahead of time and did nothing to stop their child from committing it. In such a situation the parents could probably be convicted of a variety of other crimes, but they still could not be convicted of murder unless they actually caused the child to commit the crime.
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