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still considered attempted suicide a crime (North and South Dakota, Washington, New Jersey, Nevada, and Oklahoma, which repealed its law in 1976).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
12/23/2018 at 7:56 AMJeana sutherland
Don't live in Oklahoma and try this. I was having a breakdown from extreme losses. My mother handed me a gun and I shot myself 3 times in the head. Livedand the Oklahoma courts gave me a differed 10 year sentence. I live in constant suffering
12/04/2018 at 2:15 AMJoshua Evan Mishler
is it a crime to attempt to commit suicide in texas? please respond.