An Oklahoma district attorney says he doesn't plan to file any charges in the case of Nex Benedict, the nonbinary 16-year-old Owasso teenager whose death following a fight in a high school bathroom was ruled a suicide.

An Oklahoma district attorney said Thursday he doesn’t plan to file any charges in the case of Nex Benedict, the nonbinary 16-year-old Owasso teenager whose death following a fight in a high school bathroom was ruled a suicide.

Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler said in a statement that after reviewing the investigation by the Owasso Police Department, he agreed with an assessment from detectives that the fight between the teen and three girls was an “instance of mutual combat” and that charges were not warranted.

  • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    I looked into mutual combat a while back, it’s not actually a legal thing. Rather it’s a consequence of it being really hard to prosecute people for fighting when both parties willingly participated.

    • meco03211@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 months ago

      It can be explicitly legalized. This is from Texas:

      CONSENT AS DEFENSE TO ASSAULTIVE CONDUCT. (a) The victim’s effective consent or the actor’s reasonable belief that the victim consented to the actor’s conduct is a defense to prosecution