Law S
Law S
Steven Crosby
Professor Smith
February 2, 2023
2
Facts
In 1982, Reverend Konz was 34 years old and as a type 1 diabetic, he administered his
own insulin treatment. He decided that God would be able to heal his diabetes and discontinued
the treatment after 15 years. He also made a verbal pact with Erikson(defendant) to help him
resist any urge to return to his life saving medication. Erikson and Konz’s wife, Mrs. Konz, made
efforts to stop Konz returning to treatment by hiding his insulin and when Konz wished to search
for the insulin, Erikson and Mrs. Konz locked Konz within a room. The defendants also stopped
an attempt by Konz to call for police services by breaking their telephone. Once all parties
returned to a calm state, Reverend Konz guaranteed to the defendants that he wasn’t going to
seek his insulin. Soon after, Konz and his wife traveled to a hospital to pick up a close friend of
Mrs. Konz. While there, Konz did not make any attempt to notify the hospital staff of his missed
doses of his life saving medication and the staff noticed that he appeared to be lethargic but
was cognizant of his surroundings. Once at their home, Konz got increasingly worse and died
the subsequent morning by diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that is of the utmost severity for
medical care where the body cannot produce enough insulin. Mrs. Konz and Erikson were
convicted of the crime of involuntary manslaughter in the original jurisdiction of the Court of
Law
The evidence within Commonwealth v. Konz deliberates the issue of imposing criminal
liability for an omission vs. an affirmative act in relation to the crime of involuntary manslaughter.
An omission must be expressly addressed within the statute defining the offense or duty that is
neglected or omitted. An affirmative act is distinctly no general duty for one to take action and
prevent harm.
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Holding
As the statute for involuntary manslaughter does not expressly address any omissions,
imposing criminal liability upon Mrs. Konz and Erikson relies on the question if whether Mrs.
Konz had a duty to interfere with Reverend Konz’s actions while he refused his doses of insulin
and sought medical care for her husband or not. While it is a spouse’s duty to seek medical
treatment for a spouse that unintentionally entered a helpless state. The evidence produced in
Commonwealth v. Konz contrarily proves that Konz made his own cognizant decision to refuse
the medication that he knew his life depended on, as shown from the fact that he already
administered insulin for 17 years up to that point. Konz’s appearance at a hospital and still
remained silent to the hospital staff of his desperate need to seek insulin treatments
expeditiously, after he previously verbalized the symptoms to Erikson and Mr.s Konz. Mr Konz
behaviorally alert and aware actions decidedly was inconsistent with the spousal duty of Mrs.
Konz to seek medical care for her husband, thus she was acquitted and the decision of
Impact
After the case of Commonwealth v. Konz decided, courts, although infrequent and
circumstantial, have gone against the common law rulings that any one person is “under no
legal compulsion to take action to aid another human being.”, see 18 Pa. C.S. § 301.
The Commonwealth went on to argue that the duty of a martial spouse would lie within the
same relationship that of a parent and child as already defined by common law.
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References
Commonwealth v. Konz | Case Brief for Law School | LexisNexis. (n.d.). Community.
https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-commonwealth-v-konz
https://www.quimbee.com/cases/commonwealth-v-konz
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. (1973, June 6). 18 Pa. C.S. § 301. Casetext. Retrieved
statutes/title-18-pacs-crimes-and-offenses/part-i-preliminary-provisions/chapter-3-
culpability/section-301-requirement-of-voluntary-act#:~:text=(b)%20Omission%20as
%20basis%20of,is%20otherwise%20imposed%20by%20law
utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=prospecting-emails#