Legal death

Legal death is a legal pronouncement by a qualified person that further medical care is not appropriate, and that a patient should be considered dead under the law. The specific criteria used to pronounce legal death are variable and depend on circumstances. Cardiac arrest is typically sufficient, but brain death is a more stringent criterion for pronouncement.

Legal death may also be pronounced on persons whom have been missing for extended periods or who go missing after a catastrophic event of some sort (see Presumption of Death and Death in absentia). This has allowed murder charges to proceed against a suspected murderer even in the absence of a body, and has also led to unusual ramifications when a person who has been declared legally dead returns.

The demand to increase the supply of organs for organ transplantation is a focus of concern about a legal definition of death that is medically accurate and respectful of the rights of the living, which is why the brain death criterion has been applied more often in such cases. The question is further complicated by the fact that an "irreversibility" criterion for legal death cannot be adequately defined and can easily change with changing technology.