South Carolina Requests to Charge – Criminal
PART VI DEFENSES

§ 6-5 Suicide

The defendant denies his guilt and claims the victim committed suicide. Suicide is the deliberate termination of one’s own life. The defendant claims he did not participate in the victim’s death but that the victim took his own life by his own acts.

There is no burden upon the defendant to prove the victim committed suicide. Suicide is not an affirmative defense. The burden is on the State to prove the defendant guilty of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt.

You may consider evidence of the victim’s conduct, declarations, and threats indicating a suicidal disposition for the purpose of showing the victim’s state of mind or intention. You may also consider the length of time elapsing between the utterance of any statements declaring an intent to commit suicide and the death of the person who made the statements.

• See Commonwealth v. Donough, 103 A.2d 694 (Pa. 1954) (declaring that suicide, like accidental death, is not an affirmative defense and defendant does not have burden of proof on such issue in murder case); 40A Am. Jur. 2d Homicide § 287 (1999) (stating that in prosecutions for murder where suicide of the deceased is relied on as a defense, the deceased’s conduct, declarations, and threats indicating a suicidal disposition are generally admitted in evidence for the purpose of showing the deceased’s state of mind or intention, unless the facts of the death preclude the possibility of suicide; generally speaking, while declarations of intent to commit suicide could undoubtedly be made at such a remote time as to be inadmissible, the length of time elapsing between the utterance of such statements and the death of the person who made them does not affect their relevancy but only their weight; where the defense asserts the deceased’s death was a suicide or an accident that occurred when the defendant attempted to prevent the deceased from committing suicide, the prosecution may introduce evidence to rebut that claim); Black’s Law Dictionary 1434 (6th ed. 1990) (defining suicide).

 

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