For Kicks

On an afternoon in August 1975, the Defendant walked up behind a 34-year-old man on a street in the Dorchester section of Boston and struck him in the head with a baseball bat. When later asked why, the Defendant reportedly said he did it for kicks. The victim suffered catastrophic skull and brain injuries. At the hospital, surgeons removed part of his skull to relieve the pressure and placed him on a respirator, but within two days he showed no brain-stem reflexes, no spontaneous breathing, and flat readings on repeated tests of brain activity. Doctors, applying the Harvard criteria for irreversible coma, pronounced him brain-dead. The respirator was disconnected, and his heart soon stopped. The Defendant was charged with first-degree murder. The Defense argued that because the victim's heart was still beating when the doctors withdrew the respirator, it was the physicians - not the Defendant - who caused the death, and that the law should define death as the stopping of the heart. The Prosecution argued that the victim was already dead by any modern medical standard when the machine was turned off, and that the Defendant's brutal blow was the true and only cause of death.