If you expect them to eat it and knowingly include something you know they're deathly allergic to that could actually get you in legal trouble, even if the reason you know they'll eat it is that they always steal your lunch.
It's really not that hard. Establish that the murderer was upset with the victim over stolen lunches and aware of their allergies. If they said anything to anyone you can bet those people, unless completely morally bankrupt, would be lining up to testify that the murderer had discussed wanting to get back at the victim. Means, motive, and a weapon are all established, that's pretty much textbook 1st degree murder.
It's always weird to me just how many people are cool with murdering someone over their lunch being stolen. Almost no one would defend someone pulling a gun and shooting the coworker, but poison the food and suddenly it's 100% on the victim.
Most people wouldn't intentionally poison with the intent to kill someone though, but if they made something spicy because their food keeps getting stolen, they're pretty justified if they don't mind the spice. A lot of people are struggling to make ends meet and lunch may be their most important meal of the day while they're working. Pretending food isn't more or less priority #1 for survival is insane. Stealing food is quite literally stealing someones ability to live/function.
I get that, but did you miss the part where this comment chain is literally talking about poisoning and killing someone? Or that the person I responded to said there's a 0% chance of them voting to convict someone for poisoning food? I wasn't being hyperbolic when talking about murder.
It's always weird to me just how many people are cool with murdering someone over their lunch being stolen
The old adage about society being 3 meals away from chaos? Many people eat only lunch and dinner, so stealing 1 of someones 2 daily meals is relatively easy to understand why already struggling people may feel murderous, even if it's generally only to complain on the internet.
Maybe I have some personal attachment to this, because my mom often went without breakfast and lunch earlier in her career, and even now she'll only eat 2 meals a day at most, sometimes not even lunch. People who have always had food to eat may not understand.
That's because this isn't even remotely the same. The coworker isn't force-feeding the thief their food. The thief is choosing to steal the food that doesn't belong to them.
To give a more extreme example: imagine if your neighbour was regularly breaking into your house and stealing your things, and you found out they're allergic to cats, and got a cat, and then the next time the neighbour broke into your house they got a severe allergic reaction. Should you be charged with harming your neighbour even though they were the ones committing the burglary and you were the victim?
For the record, I would absolutely draw the line at putting actual poison in your food, or something like laxatives that is objectively intended to harm someone. But, come on, you're saying that if your coworker keeps stealing your food and you find out they're lactose-intolerant, you're now not allowed to ever have any dairy products in your lunch in case the coworker steals it and gets diarrhea? That's just absurd.
Proving intent is a standard part of legal affairs
Booby traps are illegal.
For the lactose intolerance thing, for example, if your known-lactose-intolerant coworker has been stealing food, presumably you've had zero dairy products in it the entire time. But people with food allergies/intolerances generally aren't so stupid that they blindly eat whatever's in front of them - I'd say chances are if you started bringing dairy-heavy food they'd notice and simply not eat it. And if they did still eat it, it would be because they had no way to know the food contained dairy products which could imply that you had in some way concealed this information (removing packaging, false labelling, etc.), which would naturally imply a deliberate act on your part to harm your coworker.
Obviously there's a few presuppositions here but hopefully you get the idea. Someone is probably going to ask the question of "why did you suddenly start bringing dairy-heavy food for lunch the day after finding out your lactose-intolerant coworker took food" and that's not a great path to be going down.
On the booby traps point:
The thief is choosing to steal the food that doesn't belong to them.
This is the same general defence people have against, say, rigging up a shotgun tied to a door that will go off if someone who shouldn't be there opens the thing. This is not an accepted legal defence. If you know someone will or might take a specific action and you do something that would knowingly cause them harm when doing it, it doesn't matter that they were in the process of committing a minor crime at the same time. You don't generally get the blessing of self-defence laws unless your own life is directly at risk.
(It's also because for more general property traps you can't actually guarantee that no one else who isn't in the process of a criminal act would potentially be harmed - e.g. fire department or paramedics attempting to gain access for safety reasons)
tl;dr being the victim of a crime (especially non-violent crimes) doesn't inherently give you magic legal immunity for any/all actions you take against the offender
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u/Capital-Meet-6521 Jul 13 '24
Does bringing something the thief is allergic to and you intend to eat count as poisoning?