On the 'death penalty' thing

Even with commercial software, if a piece of the product infringes copyright (even a minuscule part of the product) whether it came from a subcontractor or not isn't going to matter in US courts. Microsoft has been sued numerous times for code they didn't even write. This is because even though it was supplied by a third party it was included in their product and they were the company violating copyright by distributing it.

From the courts point of view the infringer is the one distributing it, if you got the code from a third party your only recourse is to sue the supplier for the damages and costs associated with curing the copyright infringement.