Is suicide a crime?
Historically, various states listed the act as a felony, but all were reluctant to enforce it. By 1963, six states still considered attempted suicide a crime (North and South Dakota, Washington, New Jersey, Nevada, and Oklahoma, which repealed its law in 1976). By the early 1990s only two U.S. states still listed suicide as a crime, and these have since removed that classification. In some U.S. states, suicide is still considered an unwritten "common law crime" as stated in Blackstone's Commentaries. (So held the Virginia Supreme Court in Wackwitz v. Roy in 1992.) As a common law crime, suicide can bar recovery for the family of the suicidal person in a lawsuit unless the suicidal person can be proven to have been "of unsound mind."
Comments
07/26/2016 at 8:55 AMTony
I heard somewhere that some states have penalties that the grieving family may be charged with, which is messed up.
06/17/2015 at 2:43 PMKaren Nemet-Nejat
Suicide is not a crime For some people,life is too painful to continue to keep trying to stay alive. Some religions consider suicide a sin against God who gives and takes life. I believe that all measures, religious or otherwise, should take into consideration the needs of the grieving family.