Snape's Remorse - Errata

[bluesqueak]

> > Neri:
<snip>
> > Considering he was
> > already surviving for many minutes after the poisoning, I'd say
> > someone was using something other than realistic judgment here. 
> >  
> 

Pip!Squeak:
Naah. I was the junior defence counsel at the Accio trial, and as 
such had a good motive to check-count the votes {g}. There were four 
charges, one of which - joining the DE's voluntarily and with malice 
aforethought was withdrawn due to lack of any evidence on 
the 'voluntarily and with malice...' bit. 

The voting numbers for 'guilty' and 'not guilty' on the other three 
charges (bullying, being a DE, and murder) differed noticeably, so a 
substantial number of the jury did seem to be making up their minds 
on the evidence presented. There certainly seemed to be quite a few 
people who thought Snape was guilty of murder but was still not 
working for the Death Eaters...


> Neri:
> Oops, it was of course a horrible mistake to add probabilities 
> here. A more correct calculation would be as follows:
> 
> If the Accio jury think that Dumbledore had more than a 20% percent
> chance to die during the 3 seconds of the fall, it means he had at
> most 80% chance to stay alive in each 3 seconds. So if he weren't
> blasted then during the next 30 seconds he would have at most 80%
> exp(30/3) chance to stay alive, which is about 11%, and during the
> next 60 seconds he had at most 80% exp(30/3) chance to stay alive,
> which is about 1%, which means at least 99% chance to die.
> 
> I still don't see how could they be 99% sure that Dumbledore would
> have died during the following 60 seconds, but then I've never 
> been a jury.

They didn't need to be 99% sure Dumbledore would have died in the 
next 60 seconds. All they needed was a 20% possibility that drinking 
the Green Birdbath of Doom had, by the point Snape launched the AK, 
taken Dumbledore beyond the point of any mortal aid. He could have 
been sixty seconds from death, or he could have lingered another 
hour - but if he couldn't now be saved by anything short of a 
miracle, it was the potion that killed him, not Snape.


That's the kicker in English law; if the person you, say, stick a 
knife into has already been mortally wounded by, say, a gunshot 
wound, you ain't the murderer. The murderer is the one who shot 
them. *Provided* you can show a reasonable probability that when you 
stuck the knife in you changed nothing, and preferably that you knew 
you would change nothing.

For example, if you knew they were dying and stuck the knife in to 
stop yourself being shooting victim number two.

Or, say, if you were a junior officer in a war, and you knew that 
blasting your commander's dying body would set you up perfectly as 
your enemy's number one lieutenant. That doing this would be the one 
way you could make sure your commander's death wasn't wasted...

The term is 'ruse de guerre', and it's legitimate in law. The 
killing someone who is already dying is a case of 'novus actus 
interveniens' - did Snape's act break the chain of causation? If 
there's a reasonable probability Dumbledore was already dying, and 
had reached the point where nothing could save him, then - it 
didn't. And thus it was not murder.

Don't forget Dumbledore, when Snape reached the roof, was struggling 
to stand up. He was sliding down the wall, in fact. And Snape was 
the Potions Master, and might reasonably be expected to know the 
symptoms of certain potions. He might reasonably be expected to know 
when the answer to 'Can you save me from this poison?' is 'It's too 
late'.

And also don't forget that the Defence does not have to prove 
innocence. It's the job of the Prosecution to prove guilt. The 
presumption in English (and U.S.) law is that the accused is 
innocent and that for the accused to be convicted there must be no 
reasonable doubt of his guilt. 

But in the book, there's a number of oddities that add up 
to 'reasonable doubt'. Dumbledore swallowing a possibly fatal potion 
beforehand. Dumbledore's increasing weakness. The odd behaviour of 
the AK, which throws him into the air (unlike any other human we've 
seen). In the background there's that funny Felix Felicis, which 
seems to turn itself on and off whenever Dumbledore or Snape need to 
get to the Tower.

The fact that there is a trickle of blood from Dumbledore's mouth 
when Harry finds him. Yet AK leaves no marks...

We argued in the case that Dumbledore was probably dead when the 
apparent AK hit; simply because that was the easiest version to 
show. 

[Though I cheerfully admit that the moment when my co-counsel asked 
a prosecution witness 'How do you know Dumbledore wasn't dead at 
that point?' and got the reply 'Because he was talking' was the best 
moment of the whole trial...] 

But the defence that Snape changed nothing would still work if 
Dumbledore had died from the AK itself, or if he died from falling 
from the Tower, *provided* Dumbledore was already doomed when all 
that happened. Myself, I think Snape's AK didn't work. He couldn't 
kill Dumbledore. Instead, he fulfilled the Unbreakable Vow by 
*trying* to kill Dumbledore [Voldemort ordered Draco to *try* to 
kill DD]. Dumbledore actually died when he hit the ground, too weak 
to magically break his fall.

But it was Voldemort's potion that really killed him.

Pip!Squeak

"Where do you think I would have been all these years, if I had not 
known how to act?" - Severus Snape