4 ms·
How violent an action truly is is irrelevant when deciding whether a murder was premeditated(first degree) or not(second degree). If I swing a hammer at a wall
by entropy_ 10y ago
How violent an action truly is is irrelevant when deciding whether a murder was premeditated(first degree) or not(second degree). If I swing a hammer at a wall and someone happens to be passing by, I hit them in the face and kill them, it's going to look very gruesome in slow motion. That doesn't mean I intended to kill the person. If a jury is more likely to think I had time to notice the person passing by because of slow motion and thus believe that I intended to kill the person, then that's an error.
- kevin_b_er 10y agoIt doesn't even have to be a killing. The slow motion makes it look like actions were deliberate instead of spontaneous. So it makes it look like a planned action. If the defendant deliberately did it, they must be pretty terrible, right? Guilty of a worse crime.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoHow often does spontaneous violence occur? If it looks like actions were deliberate and planned, wouldn't you need some other reasoning to believe that they weren't?
- syk26 10y agoRight, but the dangerous part is that slow motion biases our judgement so that we ultimately determine an action was deliberate and planned.