I have a question for ya. Suppose my law abiding friend Jamal is walking home from work one night when he passes a bar. Out stumbles a 350 lb drunken off duty cop who for no reason whatsoever strikes him in the face and threatens to rip his head off. They scuffle. Fearing for his life, Jamal gets the off duty officer in a choke hold. The officer says “I cant breathe!” a few times and dies of asthma, heart attack or whatever. Jamal is shocked because he wasn’t even holding him that tight.
What will happen to Jamal? Think they will fail to indict him for murder? Will anyone care that the cop was overweight and had asthma?
The legal doctrine for such situations is called the "eggshell skull rule":
The “eggshell skull” or “eggshell plaintiff” rule states that someone who harms another must pay for whatever damage the injured person suffered, even if it was much worse than anyone would have expected.Of course, the notion that there is one law for all (as opposed to one law for lords and a much stricter law for us peasants) is more theoretical than real at this point.The "eggshell skull" rule is named after the example frequently used in law schools. The example describes an imaginary person who has an extremely thin skull that is as fragile as an eggshell, even though he looks completely normal. This person is hit in the head by someone else. A normal person would only have been bruised by the hit, but the person with the eggshell skull dies. The "eggshell skull" rule says that the person who hit the eggshell-skulled person is responsible for the much greater harm caused by the death, not just the amount of harm that a normal person would have suffered....