The Promise to Feed

A 92-year-old man was hospitalized and recovering when he made an arrangement with the Defendants, a married couple. For a monthly sum drawn from his funds, they agreed to take him into their care and to provide him with food, shelter, and needed medical attention. Instead of caring for him, the Defendants moved the old man into an isolated, enclosed porch room, cut him off from others, and withheld food and water. Over a period of weeks he wasted away, and he died of starvation and dehydration. The Defendants were charged with murder for causing his death. The difficulty was that their alleged wrong was largely a failure to act — a failure to feed and tend a man who died for want of the care they had promised. The ordinary rule is that a person is not criminally liable for merely failing to help another. The question was whether the Defendants’ promise to care for him created a legal duty to act, such that their deliberate failure to feed him could support a conviction for criminal homicide.