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Commonwealth v. Konz, 498 Pa. 639 (1982)

Steven Crosby

GSS 2123: Law and Social Control

Professor Smith

February 2, 2023
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Commonwealth v. Konz, 498 Pa. 639 (1982)

Facts

In 1982, Reverend Konz was 34 years old and as a type 1 diabetic, he administered his

own insulin treatment. He decided that God would be able to heal his diabetes and discontinued

the treatment after 15 years. He also made a verbal pact with Erikson(defendant) to help him

resist any urge to return to his life saving medication. Erikson and Konz’s wife, Mrs. Konz, made

efforts to stop Konz returning to treatment by hiding his insulin and when Konz wished to search

for the insulin, Erikson and Mrs. Konz locked Konz within a room. The defendants also stopped

an attempt by Konz to call for police services by breaking their telephone. Once all parties

returned to a calm state, Reverend Konz guaranteed to the defendants that he wasn’t going to

seek his insulin. Soon after, Konz and his wife traveled to a hospital to pick up a close friend of

Mrs. Konz. While there, Konz did not make any attempt to notify the hospital staff of his missed

doses of his life saving medication and the staff noticed that he appeared to be lethargic but

was cognizant of his surroundings. Once at their home, Konz got increasingly worse and died

the subsequent morning by diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that is of the utmost severity for

medical care where the body cannot produce enough insulin. Mrs. Konz and Erikson were

convicted of the crime of involuntary manslaughter in the original jurisdiction of the Court of

Common Pleas of the Thirty-First Judicial District of Pennsylvania.

Law

The evidence within Commonwealth v. Konz deliberates the issue of imposing criminal

liability for an omission vs. an affirmative act in relation to the crime of involuntary manslaughter.

An omission must be expressly addressed within the statute defining the offense or duty that is

neglected or omitted. An affirmative act is distinctly no general duty for one to take action and

prevent harm.
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Holding

As the statute for involuntary manslaughter does not expressly address any omissions,

imposing criminal liability upon Mrs. Konz and Erikson relies on the question if whether Mrs.

Konz had a duty to interfere with Reverend Konz’s actions while he refused his doses of insulin

and sought medical care for her husband or not. While it is a spouse’s duty to seek medical

treatment for a spouse that unintentionally entered a helpless state. The evidence produced in

Commonwealth v. Konz contrarily proves that Konz made his own cognizant decision to refuse

the medication that he knew his life depended on, as shown from the fact that he already

administered insulin for 17 years up to that point. Konz’s appearance at a hospital and still

remained silent to the hospital staff of his desperate need to seek insulin treatments

expeditiously, after he previously verbalized the symptoms to Erikson and Mr.s Konz. Mr Konz

behaviorally alert and aware actions decidedly was inconsistent with the spousal duty of Mrs.

Konz to seek medical care for her husband, thus she was acquitted and the decision of

involuntary manslaughter was reversed.

Impact

After the case of Commonwealth v. Konz decided, courts, although infrequent and

circumstantial, have gone against the common law rulings that any one person is “under no

legal compulsion to take action to aid another human being.”, see 18 Pa. C.S. § 301.

The Commonwealth went on to argue that the duty of a martial spouse would lie within the

same relationship that of a parent and child as already defined by common law.
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References

Commonwealth v. Konz | Case Brief for Law School | LexisNexis. (n.d.). Community.

https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-commonwealth-v-konz

Marcus. (n.d.). Commonwealth v. Konz. Quimbee. Retrieved February 2, 2023, from

https://www.quimbee.com/cases/commonwealth-v-konz

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. (1973, June 6). 18 Pa. C.S. § 301. Casetext. Retrieved

February 2, 2023, from https://casetext.com/statute/pennsylvania-statutes/consolidated-

statutes/title-18-pacs-crimes-and-offenses/part-i-preliminary-provisions/chapter-3-

culpability/section-301-requirement-of-voluntary-act#:~:text=(b)%20Omission%20as

%20basis%20of,is%20otherwise%20imposed%20by%20law

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. (1982, September 13). Commonwealth v. Konz.

Casetext. Retrieved February 2, 2023, from https://casetext.com/case/com-v-konz?

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