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agree. I am not sure this distinction matters . Neely would otherwise be alive if not for the altercation. Maybe Penny's team can argue that the force was not excessive, because Neely died later.
This is a terrible take, that wipes away intent, reasonable expectations of the outcome of the altercation, and is just pure dystopian strict liability. It erases all differences between tazing someone, shooting someone, pepper spraying someone, holding someone, or even just yelling at someone with a frail heart. Did you take any sort of action in the direction of someone who died? Not sure the distinction about what you did really matters.
No. The eggshell skull rule is for civil law. In criminal law, if they punch you not intending to kill you, but do kill you, that's likely voluntary manslaughter, or what New York calls First Degree Manslaughter. It might not even be a crime at all, if the punch would not have been expected to cause serious physical injury.
Even in civil law, the eggshell skull rule is also only supposed to apply to damages; if there is no negligence there is no responsibility and thus no damages regardless of the plaintiff's skull state. In practice courts will draw the inference that there was negligence from the amount of damage caused (ignoring the plaintiff's hidden frailty), then apply the eggshell skull rule to award full damages, but that's because the courts are utterly broken.
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