## Facts

- Kevin Patrick Basnaw died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a night of heavy drinking with Steven Paul Campbell.
- Basnaw began discussing suicide; he had not previously expressed suicidal intent.
- About two weeks earlier, Campbell discovered Basnaw in bed with Campbell’s wife.
- When Basnaw said he did not have a gun, Campbell initially refused to lend or sell one, then agreed to sell a gun for whatever money Basnaw had and continued to urge the purchase while alternately ridiculing him.
- Campbell and Basnaw drove to retrieve a gun and returned with the gun and five shells; Basnaw placed them on the kitchen table and began writing a suicide note.
- Campbell and Basnaw’s girlfriend left; after leaving, Campbell told the girlfriend he had provided blanks rather than real bullets.
- Basnaw was later found dead at the kitchen table with the gun in his hand; the death was ruled suicide.
- The prosecution charged Campbell with open murder; after bindover, Campbell moved to quash the information, arguing the alleged conduct was not murder.

## Issues

1. Whether a person commits murder by encouraging another to commit suicide and furnishing a gun, where the other person then kills himself.

## Decision

- The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the denial of the motion to quash.
- The court ordered the information quashed and the open-murder charge dismissed.
- The court held that, under Michigan law at the time, encouragement of suicide and furnishing the means, without the defendant doing the killing, did not constitute murder.

## Legal Principles

- Murder in Michigan is defined by the common law as a form of homicide, and homicide is the killing of one human being by another.
- Suicide, by definition, is not a homicide because the decedent kills himself rather than being killed by another.
- Acts that merely precede a suicide (including urging the act and providing the instrumentality) do not satisfy the “killing” element required for murder when the decedent performs the fatal act.
- Statutory language requiring a “wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing” presupposes that the defendant kills another person; it does not reach a case where the only lethal act is performed by the decedent.
- Expanding murder liability to cover incitement or assistance to suicide, absent a specific legislative enactment, is inconsistent with the principle that criminal liability must rest on defined offenses.

## Conclusion

Because the decedent’s death was a suicide rather than a homicide and the defendant did not commit the lethal act, the alleged encouragement and provision of a gun did not amount to murder under Michigan law, requiring dismissal of the murder charge.


People v. Campbell, 124 Mich. App. 333, 335 N.W.2d 27 (Mich. Ct. App. 1983)