By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
A man was acquitted of aiding and abetting a suicide even though he handed over a device used and provoked the action.
A high court Wednesday reversed a lower court ruling which handed down a one-year prison term to the 30-year-old man. He was charged for handing over a cigarette lighter to his girlfriend's former boyfriend who died after using it to set himself on fire after threatening to do so unless she got back with him.
``Suicide abetting is an act inciting a person to commit suicide assuming the person will die. But he handed over the lighter on the assumption that the victim would not die, so he did not abet the suicide,'' the court said in the ruling.
Last September, the ex-boyfriend poured gasoline on himself in front of the couple and threatened to set himself on fire unless she came back to him. The new boyfriend threw his lighter to him, saying, ``Go and die, if you dare.'' The ex-boyfriend, after hesitating for a while, set fire to himself with the lighter and later died.
The new boyfriend claimed at the lower court that he did not intend to assist in the suicide as he never expected he would actually set himself on fire. But the court handed down the jail term and arrested him.
The high court, however, ruled the ex-boyfriend had not decided to actually commit suicide but poured gasoline on himself as an action to express his love for her, considering he placed his own lighter and cigarettes in his friend's custody before the incident and did not leave a suicide note.
``He seems to have set fire to himself impulsively, not intending to do so beforehand,'' the court said.