For point two, I would say that it is not a capable human adult and is under your care. You're as responsible for its actions as you would be for yout child's or those of a pet of yours

For point one, letting the monster escape is itself negligence

I'd personally try to plead insanity

If you want to go hail Mary, I would actually argue that in order for criminal negligence to be applicable a reasonable person in the same situation would had to have perceived that your reincarnated monster would be super strong and aggressive.

Because there is zero precedent for such an event, there is no way to know what a "reasonable person" would typically perceive, and thus the standards of criminal negligence can't be applied.

For a last ditch effort, you could try to look up the laws in the early 1800s (1818?) or whenever the book is actually set, to see about negligence laws. Most likely, it was lax or nonexistent, so your mock court proceeding shouldn't be taking place at all. And if they say that they are having a modern court proceeding, bring up statute of limitations since the actions occurred.

It has been ~205 years since my client allegedly committed this crime, ~185 years past the statute of limitations or whatever if he is guilty of anything. Also a funny ending could be saying that your client has been dead for hundreds of years, and thus cannot be charged.

These probably don't really help you that much.

You could argue that instead of acting in disregard for obvious risks to human life and safety, he does the exact opposite. He protects humanity by refusing to create a second supernatural being from coming to life that could threaten thousands of lives.

Plus, right when the being is created, there's no way of knowing if it's actually living. Living means the seven criteria in biology that we specify, so you could maybe refute that Frankenstein is indeed a living being since it cannot reproduce (maybe??).

Along the same vein, right when it awakens, there's no way to know its intelligence, capacity to understand human language, speak, or possible danger to humanity. It could've stood up, walked over to him and then fell over dead again, how was he to know when the galvanization would stop working? We find out later that the monster can jump great distances, run at a speed much faster than humans, has superhuman strength, and withstand frigid temperatures well. Maybe it is even a different species at this point, and that could nullify the negligence part for Victor as creator/parent/assumed guardian.

The crimes in question were committed in the 18th century. I think the statute of limitations might be up on this one.

"Realistically," it all depends on what legal standards are being applied. I'm unfamiliar with nineteenth century English law and am too lazy to try to look it up.

But given that you say the charge treats the monster as a human child, I think your strongest argument is probably going to be that the monster isn't human and therefore the charge doesn't apply. "It" is a scientific experiment created by Frankenstein, not a natural person (in fact, it's decidedly unnatural). Frankenstein gets off on a technically. He probably would have some liability for his creation, at least in most jurisdictions of the modern US, but the prosecution should have covered their bases and been more careful with the charges.

you are fighting an uphill battle. Frankenstein is essentially 300 pages of whining by a deadbeat dad.

you might have something on point 3, but you'd have to get the jury to do some real mental gymnastics to sell them on points 1 & 2.

The primary test for negligence is this:

If a reasonable person would have foreseen the reasonable possibility of harm and would have taken reasonable steps to prevent it happening, and the person in question did not do so, negligence is established.

It would be unreasonable for any person to expect it to be actually possible to stitch together parts from multiple corpses, shock the resultant pile of dead meat with lightning, and instead of it being burnt to a crisp to have it suddenly sit up and question it's existence.

More than this, no reasonable person could be expected to believe, nor to prepare for such a seemingly impossible event occurring, regardless of whether or not they themselves had collected, portioned, and stitched the corpses together, and then sent up a kite with the purpose of catching an unlikely lightning strike.

Because no reasonable person could have truly expected such an outcome as a monster being born - the very notion being ludicrous and utterly impossible to all learned and unlearned men alike - it is unreasonable to expect even a person attempting such a creation to have any preparation whatsoever for its containment, nourishment, or care of any kind.

It would be even more unreasonable to expect such a collection of electrically animated meat to burst out the door and go on a rampage across the countryside, because such things cannot reasonably be expected to ever occur in the first place.

On these grounds, it is unreasonable to expect any person, regardless of any other circumstance, to foresee any harm, or indeed any events whatsoever happening beyond the smell of burning meat on a hospital gurney.

Therefore, you can only be reasonably held accountable for complaints about the smell of overcooked meat being disagreeable, which in the Germany of the 1700's (which is where the creature is literarily created, at the University of Ingolstadt), is not a crime. more than this, the meat was not charred in any way, but instead walked away complaining of existential dread, so that not even a bad smell was involved at all. You are therefore not responsible for the extraordinary and utterly unimaginable events that occurred once the monster leapt up from the table.

No man can be responsible for the impossible, and until the monster actually stood up, every aspect of its existence and behavior was universally considered impossible.

On these grounds, you must be considered guiltless and all charges must be dropped.

Well, there was no precedence to create said monster at all?

Its not like, "what man, I was trying to create life, but like, totally thought I would have the soft lovable cuddly undead. Who ever heard of murderous evil, abomination against humanity sort of undead? Totally surprised me I swear!"

such an attention seeker that guy...

Frankenstein is guilty of a lot of things but his creation's murders is not one of them. Yes, the way he treats the creature is atrocious.

But the creature murders out of carefully planned selfishness. It shows itself to be intelligent and reasoning and the line of reasoning it chooses to follow is that it can use intimidation, torment and murder to force Frankenstein into creating a companion for it.

The creature's killings aren't the result of a lack of self control or lashing out in a moment of insanity. The creature calculatedly chooses to murder carefully selected targets designed to force Frankenstein into doing its bidding.

I'd plead innocence on the basis that nothing Frankenstein has done causes the creatures cold, cruel, calculating plotting nature. If the creature had randomly lashed out, maybe. But there's nothing random about its actions.

The creature didn't turn into an amoral monster that doesn't know any better due to Frankenstein's neglect. It knows exactly what it's doing and chooses its course of action for maximum effect on Frankenstein.

Frankenstein's careless creation of the monster is an entirely unrelated crime to the monster's rampage.

I think it's a mistake to come from the standpoint that "the charge mistakenly likens the Monster to a human child". I think the charge doing that is in your favor. If you try to refute that idea it'll get turned around on you - so make "The charge likens the Monster to a human child" the argument that is in your favor. Start here -

If the charge does assume that the Monster is like Frankenstein's child, then we must also ask ourselves a question about fathers and parents - when is it that a parent is no longer culpable for the actions of the child? It could be argued generally that this happens whenever the child reaches the "age of reason", whatever that might be for the culture in question. In our culture, that equates to the teen years sometime, but the actual age is not important - it's the autonomy that is gained. When one becomes an adult and stops being a child/minor/whatever, they gain personal autonomy.

Was the Monster acting with autonomy? We have to conclude that he was. He made the conscious decision to do the things that he did with direct influence or instruction from any outside party. Not only that, but he did those things while sustaining his own existence. Did Frankenstein abandon him, like so many fathers abandon children? Perhaps, and perhaps what he did was even worse than that (because Frankenstein is definitely morally reprehensible - you can't avoid that and should avoid trying to make him the "good guy" at any point). But if the Monster was a helpless dependent, then he shouldn't have even survived without Frankenstein. He not only survived, but he learned to speak and read while in hiding, from watching people. He was isolated, but he thrived and grew - all on his own. Did the father influence the child? Even with nothing more than absence this is inevitable - parents always influence their children. But did the father instruct or force the child - the Monster - to do what he did? No - he did that on his own completely.

Further, in his own narrative the Monster says that he initially wanted to connect with humans. It was only after mistreatment after mistreatment that he decided that he was going to start killing humans. If Victor was responsible, why didn't the Monster immediately begin killing after Victor abandoned him? The answer is because the Monster chose to do those things, and Victory Frankenstein was not involved in that decision. He created the person that made the decision, but he did not motivate it.

Finally: Did Victor Frankenstein intend to create a creature which would cause death? Absolutely not. His intentions were... sort of good. His real intention was to self aggrandize and be a little god. Still, at least he wanted to do so by creating, by bringing forth life from death. It was the Monster, while isolated completely from it's "parent", who decided that humans did not deserve to live. What did Victor Frankenstein ever do that would motivate the Monster to kill? Well... I guess the only thing would be that Victor did abandon him. But every single person the Monster meets rejects him. If Victor Frankenstein is responsible for the Monster's actions, so are we all, every single one of us who would run in fear at the sight of him. And I know I'm not responsible, and I don't think you are either - so that means Victor Frankenstein isn't, just the same.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but I hope this is cogent and maybe even helps. smoke bomb

i'd say you're guilty simply for creating the monster at all: mentally ill or not,digging up dead bodies,sowing them together and bringing them to life is a little beyond what most would see as reasonable even for someone that's insane (you didn't HAVE to create the monster for any reason: you CHOSE to and the amount of work required pretty much requires you to be sane enough to know what you're doing).

also you live in,what? the 1900's give or take? your ass can be locked up or even killed for a LOT less so you were already screwed.

you're guilty and will be lucky if you're not hanged.

Nothing Frankenstein did? He rejected him at the first possible moment, not only that but every person he met treated him in the worst way they could. It is no surprise at all that he behaved how he did, the world left him very little choice.

I guess it depends on the fictional history of the trial, but I would argue that all successful resuscitations before and after this one resulted in a normal living human.

This one resulted in a horrible monster. How could he have predicted it would be a horrible monster? Science doesn't really recognize "souls" as real, so Dr Frankenstein - a scientist - would have had no reason to think a body made it disparate parts versus an intact corpse would act any differently upon revival.

(Obviously I'm not asking this for real merely just playing the part of a defense attorney here)

I'd like to hear what the other mock trial cases are so I can read people lawyering them. Reading these comments makes my brain happy.

This should be a book series

Your argument is in bad faith because even if something/ someone is born fully sapient they are still ignorant. The "monster" was given no chance to adjust to his sudden existence. You people are putting all the blame on the monster despite him being the only innocent character in the story. Every living creature has a need to survive brain washed into the deepest part of our brains you can't expect him to just give up and die because everyone dislikes him, there is a reason a right to life is included in the constitution of nearly every free country on the planet.

Frankenstein ran out on him and came back to nothing. No sane person would argue that's cause to go on a murder spree.

Along the same lines. he creature had very little contact with people other than his creepy stalking of the blind girl before he decided that murder and intimidation was the way to go.

The creature made a speed run to deciding that killing Frankenstein's loved ones, framing him for the murders and threatening to do more. These weren't crimes of passions, these weren't the creature lashing out at his tormenters.

The monster made a very cold calculation to target very specific innocent people for very specific self serving reasons.

Nothing that happened the creature is a valid excuse or even motivation for what it did. It explicitly did not harm its tormentors. It harmed innocent people in a way it hoped would benefit its goals.

1. Allowing the act of escape at all is negligence. Dr. Frankenstein cannot argue that he was negligent before he was negligent, it makes no sense. He should instead argue that a reasonable person could not have foreseen the consequences of the monster escaping, thereby placing agency onto the monster itself. If your cat escapes and somehow sets into motion a chain of events resulting in an old lady being hit by a bus, you are not liable for that. The monster, being an unknown quality, could not be predicted in advance and a reasonable person would not assume it would turn murderous.
2. The monster is deeply philosophical and intelligent. This gives it its own agency. Given it is an intelligent being, it is the one which should be on trial. It should argue diminished responsibility, given the abuse it suffered in captivity. Frankenstein would do well to argue the monster's intelligence and education means it is a legal person of its own accord.
3. Frankenstein was clearly in possession of his faculties. He could argue he was in a manic state of bipolar II, but his best chances are to argue the monster was intelligent enough to know right from wrong. He may have created the weapon, but he did not use it.

Needs examples

Zombies are the most numerous known undead.

Responsible for his creation, but who can assume murder?

If you beget a baby, the natural way with a woman, and he becomes a murderer, is it not the same case?

Frankenstein was not trying to create a murderer, when people have babies they don't assume murder.

Dr. Frankenstien does nothing to create a murderer, by whipping, bullying, tormenting his creation to cause agression. If a parent has not done such thing to it's offspring, how can the parent be held responsible.

The accusation can respond, that Frankenstien dug up from the graveyard, murderers and robbers and criminals who have been hung. But what is the accusation saying? that such men should not be allowed to bear children? Is it a criminal offence, if a woman becomes pregnant with the child of a dangerous man?

Is the accusation being borderline eugenic, are they advocating for sterilization of unwanted people?

Right, this gets into the fiction of the world. Are zombies real in this world, or just fiction? Would make a substantive difference in this line of argument

More bad faith arguments. He didn't just run out the very second he woke up without Frankenstein having time to say anything. He woke up and his creator immediately started screaming at him that he was an abomination and should never have been created while acting physically threatening. Every human he met after that treated him with immediate fear and distrust while driving him off. Did you forget that humans have to be taught empathy/sympathy? He was born as a blank slate and was only shown hostility of course that was all he knew.

I'm sure you can cite "documentaries" depicting Frankenstein's monster & vampires & mummies (curse people!) & skeletons & zombies.

Even Jason & the Argonauts, a very old tale, has people creating extremely dangerous skeleton warriors by throwing teeth on the ground.

Sure but you can also look at modern day practice of stopping and restarting the heart to bring people back and see they don't become monsters.

So I would argue it's not the revival of the dead that's in question but the method. And while Frankenstein's methods were certainly unorthodox, theres no reason to assume they would inherently lead to an evil outcome. He didn't use voodoo or teeth to make skeletons or do witchcraft or demon summoning, he was doing a medical procedure.

We transfer organs all the time and have even done penis and face replacements. So using foreign organs to restore someone's health isn't inherently evil, and using electricity to restore function to a body isn't inherently evil, therefore I'd argue Frankenstein could have reasonably assumed his experiment would have similar, non evil outcomes, and not result in a monster.

I think you just need to ask the jury to consider whether we are responsible for our own actions or not. Is a parent whose child grows up to be a murderer responsible for the murder? Or did the child make his own decisions?

You made a real, living person with his own mind and will.

Sure, but there doesn’t necessarily need to be precedent as long as Frankenstein “acts in disregard of a serious risk of harm that a reasonable person in the same situation would have perceived.“

I don’t know much about criminal negligence, but he’d get SLAUGHTERED in Civil Court.

He has an obvious duty of care, blatant breach of the duty, clear damages in this case, and the link between his breach of duty and those actual damages are indisputable.

He’s paying up and losing his lab for sure.

It is the creation of undead, not just reviving someone that hasn't reached a natural death.

I would convict your ass, Victor.

You ABANDONED the monster as soon as you saw he was ugly. Then you took to your bed for a few months while the monster ran off to do whatever.

You knew the monster murdered your brother and framed Justine, but you let her hang for that to cover your good name.

You also failed to alert the authorities to the monster, definitely making your negligent while he kept murdering your friends and family. And you reacted to that by taking your bed. Again.

You suck, Victor. But you might be insane, so maybe try pleading mental incompetence? You were pretty clearly insane toward the end.

And which of those do you imagine is excuse enough for a premeditated murder spree?

Back in the real world we'd laugh at anyone using something like that as an excuse for carefully planning and executing a series of murders for clear personal gain.

It's not a matter of a "right to life". It's a matter of who is making choices in that life. Even if the Monster is sapient but ignorant, that doesn't change the fact that the Monster is making decisions without the influence of Frankenstein (he's just making those decisions from a place of ignorance, which is further proof Frankenstein did NOT influence the Monster towards killing people). If the Monster were even truly physically and mentally identical to, say, an average 6 year old child, if that small child committed a murder you couldn't blame the father of that child; epecially if it was a father who abandoned them at 5 years old. Sure, what the father did in abandoning the child is despicable, but in the interim period the child showed personal autonomy and made its own decisions. It was acting outside the sphere of the father's influence or control. The father can be held culpable of abandonment, negligence of the child's own safety, etc., but he is not culpable for the actual acts of murder - those were completely the idea of the child (here "Monster").

The deny the Monster this autonomy, then you are denying the Monster's humanity entirely. So, is the Monster truly an inhuman monster incapable of the free will all humans share? Or is he a man, but a man that chose to kill?

(Just as an aside, I want to make it clear that this is just how I would argue this point to defend Frankenstein. I don't actually believe that Frankenstein is worth defending, but that's the assignment at hand.)

You are fighting an uphill battle cause Frankenstein is not a sympathetic character. I would argue that by pinning all of the blame on doctor Frankenstein they are ignoring the personhood and agency of the monster and he is not a puppet but rather a person with a personality and humanity that needs to be acknowledged and respected in the proceedings. It’s a twisted take, but I’m not sure your accusers will be able to counter that so quickly.

Victor Frankenstein is guilty, but not of murder.

Consider this more mundane situation. A woman wants to have a baby, so she gets pregnant, gives birth... and then finds that she's not very interested in being a mother. She treats the kid like crap. After 18 years of her shitty parenting, the kid goes up... to be a serial killer.

Is the mother responsible for all the murders? Obviously not. Only the murderer is the murderer. But had she abused or neglected the child who grew up to be the serial killer? Absolutely.

In Frankenstein's defense I would argue that the monster has a conscience that's equivalent to an adult human conscience (at least when some of the crimes were committed, if I remember the book correctly), and so the monster is capable of legal guilt. In that scenario, Dr. Frankenstein is akin to the monster's parent. We can decry his actions but, ultimately, it's the monster who's responsible.

In prosecuting Frankenstein I'd argue the opposite: That the monster is merely a machine (albeit a biological machine) and therefore has no conscience. Granted, that argument would have worked better in the late 18th century than today!

What's interesting to me about this question is that it probably won't be much longer before it goes from being hypothetical to being an actual legal case. Presumably, at some point in the not too distant future, a human-created machine with at least the appearance of sentience will harm someone and we'll have to decide, legally, who's responsible. I don't think we know how to determine whether such a machine has a conscience. After all, the consciousness of a human defendant is only a legal presumption. We have no way of knowing it exists. Will we decide to extend that presumption to anything that behaves like it has consciousness? Anything that claims to have consciousness?

Your goose is cooked. This is all your fault. The biggest issue is how did the court know that the monster was your creation?

A few of things that might be worth a punt maybe?

• The Monster is (AFAIK) made completely from parts of adult humans, so maybe you could argue that it's a human adult? Some sort of "ship of Theseus" type of thing? How many parts can you transplant on a person before they become a monster instead of a human?

• By a similar note it presumably has a brain from a specific person? If I die and get revived and lose my memory and commit a crime, am I still culpable? Maybe you could argue that it's like a Doctor reviving an injured person who then has brain damage which leads to them being violent?

• The Monster presumably shares no DNA with Frankenstein and I doubt he did any formal paperwork to adopt it, so is he legally responsible for it? Morally he probably is, but would that hold up in court?

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In the book, I was overwhelmed by the physical and mental exertion of my experiment so I took a nap. Just as a pregnant woman is probably not able-bodied as soon as she gives birth, would it also be negligence on her part if she fell asleep while her baby escaped?

we assigned ‘expert’ roles like psychologist and biologist. im probably going to bribe the psychologist

fr

Thing is, I didn’t treat my monster like crap, society does. The only thing you could argue I did do is let him escape to society in a vulnerable state

It’s given

He did not 'let her hang' what are you talking about

How can you read the novel without sympathising with Frankenstein? The whole story is about how he tries to do something huge and then everyone he loves gets brutally murdered

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That’s true. Even though he acts like a completely new person I could argue that I didn’t create his brain - Is a doctor responsible for the crimes that a patient performs post-resuscitation?

Agreed- He developed a conscience by observing the family even if he didn’t have one when I made him.

Would your prosecution not be defendable in the same way that Oppenheimer was not guilty for Truman’s decision to drop the bomb?

If a parent lets his toddler wander off and then takes virtually no efforts to find the toddler, wouldn't that parent be charged with child abuse or neglect?

How would “virtually no efforts” hold up in court? Nobody knows that I was glad the monster was out of my sight 😈😈

I mean, neither, it literally doesnt know a thing when I created it

Even then, aren’t zombies basically a virus? How can we even assign morality to that

Make them prove that you created the mobster. Make them prove than mere man can create life from inanimate body parts. It's preposterous. Lol

Good luck

Right, but would the “reasonable person” defense still hold up once it is clear that the monster is conscious (regardless of what was expected of its moral temperament before it was alive), as it was when I turned my back on it?

Your argument gives me hope, but does the occurrence of an extremely implausible event necessarily place any witnesses in a stupor where they can’t reasonably be expected to do anything? I feel like the unexpectedness of an event doesn’t negate my ability to act justly in real time- no matter what I had foreseen while creating the monster

haters gona hate. I thouught my experiment was cool af

send him to the gallows!>:.O

You are thinking of 'Good Samaritan' law, which compels people to take action to help injured or endangered others. Here, because of the time issue, you are free from legal prosecution: in the Germany of the 1700's, when and where the literary story of 'Frankenstein' occurred, there were no such laws.

If these events had happened after 2009, though, you would be liable for up to a year in prison for failing to render assistance to any person (specifically) in your view that had been injured by the creature - and possibly for failing to raise the alarm to warn the town (though that charge would be unlikely to stick). If you stayed in the university, and saw no person injured, though, you could not be convicted. The law only applies to what you could actually witness.

But, within the given time period of the novel - or even the movie version - no such legal compulsion existed yet, which makes you unprosecutable.

Additionally, there is the issue of the 'Bystander Effect', which is a known psychological phenomena where people fail to take action because they are shocked or stunned into immobility. You could, as a last resort, argue this stance, and that because of the overwhelming horror of the event, you can not be held liable for inaction.

So, yes, sufficiently terrible circumstances do, in fact, paralyze people sometimes, and the law can be forced to account for this effect. The animation of a corpse against all natural law definitely falls under the category of 'sufficiently terrible'.

This hinges on whether the monster has sufficient capacity to be responsible for its own actions. An animal, a child, or an insane person does not have the reasoning capacity (under the law, I'm not looking to get into a scientific discussion) to weigh consequences and make choices accordingly, and therefore be held responsible for their poor choices. Frankenstein certainly INTENDED for the monster to be more reasonable than an animal, a child, or an insane person, and the monster's monologues would seem to indicate that he succeeded. I'm trying to recall one of his final monologues, where he (the monster) seemed to display a knowledge of right and wrong; if this was the case, this would mean he 100% had the ability to tell right from wrong, but just chose not to, and ergo, he is responsible for his own actions. This is the crux of the case.

Questions about "should Frankenstein have ever created him in the first place" are a giant strawman, since no criminal, or saint, ever asked to be born they way they were, either.

It's something that is technically dead that is reanimated.

The only "good" reanimation in popular culture is the resurrection of Christianity, and certainly not applicable to a creature that defiles that very same concept by stealing the earthly remains of the people that need them as part of this supposed resurrection.

It can be

https://mommyish.com/moms-who-sleep-should-be-charged-with-criminal-neglect/

Here's a more recent case involving a babysitter

https://wvmetronews.com/2023/02/09/sleeping-sitter-charged-with-neglect/

edit:this is going by contemporary US law. Not sure what laws are like elsewhere in the world and I doubt leaving a child unsupervised would count as neglect in the 1800s

Yes, he very much did. That was a key part of the plot, in fact.

A parent is not responsible for any crimes committed by their child. Yes, he created and abandoned his monster, but no one forced the monster to hurt other people.

He didn't say anything because "Hey actually the murderer was a zombie I reanimated in another country that followed me here" would have had him committed..

Reading it as "He wanted to protect his image" is such a telling misread, no wonder you people don't feel anything for Frankenstein - do you imagine in his situation you would have saved Jacqueline by publicly declaring yourself a necromancer?

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A nap for like, 5 months.

Really though I feel like the death Frankenstein is most guilty of is Justine’s. He knew for certain she was innocent. He could have copped to the crime, sacrificed himself to save her.

Homework help requests should be posted in /r/HomeworkHelp. Please read their rules before posting

bruh

OP mentioned that an insanity plea was integrated with the defense already. The above argument incorporates that, though it does not mention it by name.

I don't understand your analogy to Oppenheimer and Truman. My prosecutor's argument is that the monster, as a creation of a person, is a machine and therefore has no conscious, and therefore can't be guilty, so the guilt has to lie with Dr. Frankenstein. (I don't subscribe to this theory, by the way, it's just how I imagine myself as a prosecutor arguing it.) Who is Oppenheimer in your analogy and who is Truman?