A Year and a Day

A man stabbed another man in the heart. During surgery the victim's heart stopped, his brain was starved of oxygen, and he fell into a coma. He never woke up. About fifteen months later he died of a kidney infection, a common complication of lying in a coma. The man was charged with second-degree murder. His defence: an old common-law rule says a killing is not murder unless the victim dies within a year and a day of the injury. The state's murder statute says nothing about that rule either way.