Attempted Murder, Resulting in Death

Friday, May 16, 2025

#Misc

I'm no lawyer, so take this with a spoonful of salt. I ran this story by an LLM which thinks it might be correct. I heard it years ago from a student at a police academy, and it sheds a light on the (sometimes necessary) obscurities of the law.

Assume the following: Bob hates Alice and wants to get rid of her. He decides that he is going to poison her. However, his knowledge about the poison is insufficient, and he administers only 50% of the lethal dose.

Then there is Charles. He also hates Alice, and he wants to get rid of her. He has no clue about Bob, Bob has no clue about Charles. Charles decides that he is going to poison Alice. However, his knowledge about the poison is insufficient, and he administers only 50% of the lethal dose.

Alice, having ingested a lethal dose, perishes.

Did someone commit a murder? If so, who?

Some more guidance:

• This is about the German law.
• Let's assume all other preconditions for murder are a given. In other words, would Bob have doubled his dosage, Alice would have died, without any intervention from Charles (and the other way around), and this would have been ruled a murder.
• Without the second party, Alice would have survived, and the ruling would have been attempted murder.

(This is where I give you some space to think…)

The answer is:
No one murdered anyone. Both Bob and Charles are guilty of attempted murder, resulting in death of the victim.^[1]

The reason is that in order to qualify for murder, the death has to be linked objectively to the deed, but that's not possible in either case. Practically this doesn't make a difference, though, as attempted murder and murder are both punished the same way.