3 ms·

The most bonkers thing here to me is giving a man a death sentence because of a believed shaken baby death that he promptly took to the hospital.

quickthrower2 3y ago
That is what happens if you are innocent. An irony, because you wont make a deal so you can roll the dice on justice.
vorpalhex 3y ago
You realize a lot of abused kids are taken to the hospital by their abuser? Kids got a broken arm or a broken nose from being slapped around, abuser can't hide it forever. Eventually kids gotta go to school or cops are going to do a welfare check. Same thing if kid disappears off the radar.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  That’s a very different problem from shaken baby syndrome. See adjacent reply.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    Your assertion is simply wrong. SBS is not just a parent trying to shush a baby - it requires a very significant amount of force in a healthy infant. This is not a "oh shush let me hug you" thing, this requires repeatedly seriously jostling the baby hard enough to pinch it's airway off or bounce it's brain off the inside of it's skull. Usually repeatedly.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      I’m not saying it’s “let me hug you” I’m saying it’s out of desperation. And one of the biggest ways to avoid it is EDUCATION for parents who do not know better. Because most cases of this are not people intentionally murdering children but people who are at their wits end and desperately need help, the bare minimum of which is a mental note that this particular form of desperate exhaustion is dangerous to the child. And as a general rule, KILLING people because they made a mistake is really fucking dumb.
flangola7 3y ago
That is in no way evidence against it being murder. Abusers do that kind of thing all the time.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Shaken baby syndrome is very unlikely to be the result of malicious abuse though. It’s almost always a deeply frustrated parent or caregiver who is desperate, trying to assert control over a screaming infant, and does not understand that this could kill them, or at least thinks they will not. It is child abuse, but hardly of the same nature as most people assume with the term. Death sentence strikes me as an idiotic punishment.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > It’s almost always a deeply frustrated parent or caregiver who is desperate, trying to assert control over a screaming infant, That sounds like malicious abuse to me. > and does not understand that this could kill them, or at least thinks they will not. It would still be manslaughter at least, if not murder. And if shaking the baby was itself felonious abuse, then an accidental death resulting from that is probably felony murder in states with such statutes.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system? Congrats, you killed some undereducated, desperate parents who fucked up and lost their child.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        > And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system? It suppresses the rate of vigilante justice. If the courts can generally do a better job than the vigilantes themselves, then society comes out ahead. If we were to live in a society where parents can abuse their children to death and receive nothing more than a scolding from the state to be more careful in the future, then we'd have a lot more people killing each other in retribution. And once that starts in earnest, it often forms unending blood feuds. At the very least, imprisonment for manslaughter is warranted. For the state to mete out no punishment at all would be an abdication of their duty to deliver justice so that others don't have to seek it themselves.
DoreenMichele 3y ago
People who intentionally killed a kid "accidentally" may well promptly go to the ER to establish plausible deniability. There may be no clear, bright line making it super obvious who is merely a dumb schmuck without parenting skills and who is a murderer. We should do a better job of putting out quality parenting info for free and also provide appropriate legal consequences.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  SBS is overwhelmingly an accidental harm. WTF do people imagine when they say “murderer”?
  - DoreenMichele 3y ago
    As luck would have it, there is apparently new research out on SBS that you might enjoy reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402

quickthrower2 3y ago

That is what happens if you are innocent. An irony, because you wont make a deal so you can roll the dice on justice.

vorpalhex 3y ago

You realize a lot of abused kids are taken to the hospital by their abuser? Kids got a broken arm or a broken nose from being slapped around, abuser can't hide it forever. Eventually kids gotta go to school or cops are going to do a welfare check. Same thing if kid disappears off the radar.

jncfhnb 3y ago
That’s a very different problem from shaken baby syndrome. See adjacent reply.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  Your assertion is simply wrong. SBS is not just a parent trying to shush a baby - it requires a very significant amount of force in a healthy infant. This is not a "oh shush let me hug you" thing, this requires repeatedly seriously jostling the baby hard enough to pinch it's airway off or bounce it's brain off the inside of it's skull. Usually repeatedly.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    I’m not saying it’s “let me hug you” I’m saying it’s out of desperation. And one of the biggest ways to avoid it is EDUCATION for parents who do not know better. Because most cases of this are not people intentionally murdering children but people who are at their wits end and desperately need help, the bare minimum of which is a mental note that this particular form of desperate exhaustion is dangerous to the child. And as a general rule, KILLING people because they made a mistake is really fucking dumb.

flangola7 3y ago

That is in no way evidence against it being murder. Abusers do that kind of thing all the time.

jncfhnb 3y ago
Shaken baby syndrome is very unlikely to be the result of malicious abuse though. It’s almost always a deeply frustrated parent or caregiver who is desperate, trying to assert control over a screaming infant, and does not understand that this could kill them, or at least thinks they will not. It is child abuse, but hardly of the same nature as most people assume with the term. Death sentence strikes me as an idiotic punishment.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > It’s almost always a deeply frustrated parent or caregiver who is desperate, trying to assert control over a screaming infant, That sounds like malicious abuse to me. > and does not understand that this could kill them, or at least thinks they will not. It would still be manslaughter at least, if not murder. And if shaking the baby was itself felonious abuse, then an accidental death resulting from that is probably felony murder in states with such statutes.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system? Congrats, you killed some undereducated, desperate parents who fucked up and lost their child.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      > And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system? It suppresses the rate of vigilante justice. If the courts can generally do a better job than the vigilantes themselves, then society comes out ahead. If we were to live in a society where parents can abuse their children to death and receive nothing more than a scolding from the state to be more careful in the future, then we'd have a lot more people killing each other in retribution. And once that starts in earnest, it often forms unending blood feuds. At the very least, imprisonment for manslaughter is warranted. For the state to mete out no punishment at all would be an abdication of their duty to deliver justice so that others don't have to seek it themselves.

DoreenMichele 3y ago

People who intentionally killed a kid "accidentally" may well promptly go to the ER to establish plausible deniability. There may be no clear, bright line making it super obvious who is merely a dumb schmuck without parenting skills and who is a murderer. We should do a better job of putting out quality parenting info for free and also provide appropriate legal consequences.

jncfhnb 3y ago
SBS is overwhelmingly an accidental harm. WTF do people imagine when they say “murderer”?
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  As luck would have it, there is apparently new research out on SBS that you might enjoy reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402