P.S. As another example of the wrong kind of blind justice, I never
really grasped the need to convict someone for attempted suicide.
The "attempted" part certainly boggles, but my impression of the
rationale for successful suicide is rather more prosaic than
elsewhere on this thread: it's criminal not so much because we are
concerned with any possible moral failing on the part of the dear
departed, but because we wish to have a legal basis for criminal
investigations in each instance to determine that they were in fact
sui- and not homicides.
-Dave
(The romans may have approached this problem from the opposite
direction; I can't recall at the moment whether it was impossible to
inherit from a suicide or if the heirs simply needed to be free of
suspicion of parricide)
