12 ms·

"Criminal" and "negligence" aren't mutually exclusive

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Sure but there are gradations. The law has different categories for these. 1. I'm just bad at maintenance. 2. I was performing an illegal act, like the fuel switch. 3. I'm really intentionally trying to hit this bridge and have done some sabotage to make it happen.
- Retric 3y ago
  In many jurisdictions 2 and 3 are only treated differently if #2 isn’t a felony or recklessly dangerous. Example of someone convicted him of Murder for a fatal car accident while driving dunk at 80+MPH. https://www.countyofmonterey.gov/Home/Components/News/News/10634/ https://www.countyofmonterey.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1...
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Interesting Anybody know if 'fuel switch' is a felony?
    - Retric 3y ago
      I don’t know but doing so while approaching a bridge could also qualify as recklessly dangerous.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    Huh. That's surprising to me, in England Murder requires that you intended to cause at least grievous harm. So e.g. you intended to "hospitalize" Jim - but he died, those facts are murder. But if prosecutors don't believe they can show at least intent of grievous harm they aren't to charge murder. Without intent the most could be (Gross Negligence) Manslaughter, which has a significant sentence considering it doesn't require intent, but is very specifically not Murder.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      If you intend to drunkenly drive at 80+ mph, your goal is to risk the lives of others. You might as well not charge people criminally for shooting other people dead while trying to flee, because the intention was to get away, not to kill.
    - hnfong 3y ago
      My understanding is that in the US there are different degrees of "murder", the less-serious ones are equivalent to some variants of manslaughter in the UK, while in the UK, "murder" refers only to the kind that gets you a mandatory life sentence.
      - tialaramex 3y ago
        Best to speak specifically of England (and Wales), some of the UK's countries have different laws. Yes, "X degree Murder" isn't a thing in the English system and the sentence for Murder will be life imprisonment (what Americans might call "indeterminate" life because you can get parole) England used to have an oddity where the Home Secretary (ie a government minister, a politician) gets to decide whether some people can be paroled. As you might expect it's not popular politically to parole famous criminals and so certain people regardless of how long ago the crime was committed and other circumstances were refused parole. The Supreme Court eventually concluded this isn't justice, and took away this power. In their ruling (which I fixed a typo in) they looked at a whole suite of interesting cases where people were currently basically facing life with no possibility of parole 1. They decided they need to pick the worst possible criminal circumstance and single that out for this punishment, as punishment is all it is, any other possible purpose isn't circumvented by the existing parole institution - if we want people to show remorse, to accept what they did and why it's wrong, to be useful in their community, or whatever - stuff like that is already what parole is for. 2. They decided that circumstance should be two more separate murders. So e.g. you kill Bill with a hammer, and his wife walks in on you, she tries to intervene, you struggle and stab her, that is two murders, but it's not two separate murders, you could still be paroled some day. Whereas if you've got a habit of hiring prostitutes and then murdering them to relieve stress after a long week at work, those are separate murders, so if you get convicted for two (or more) that's life-means-life. 3. A lot of the really awful people whose cases were front of them haven't committed two separate murders. But, they point out, just because the law doesn't refuse these people the possibility of parole now that a politician doesn't get to decide, it doesn't magically mean they're granted parole. Paroling the guy who just really likes raping old ladies isn't going to happen. He's not even remorseful, he still wants to do it again, so obviously we can't let him out of prison, but we don't need to change his sentence - he's already going to be in prison for the rest of his life anyway. This reminds me of the situation for Anders Breivik. He killed a whole bunch of kids, but in his country the maximum was 21 years. But Breivik is never getting out, he still believes what he did was good. So in effect it's exactly the same as life-means-life for him, it only makes a difference where it should, for the people who change. [Edited to fix Breivik's sentence, which I had previously mistakenly believed was Life, in fact it's 21 years and they'll just extend it as necessary until he's dead or stops being a Nazi terrorist]
  - skissane 3y ago
    My impression is that the US defines murder more broadly than the rest of the English-speaking world; the scenario you mention is murder in some US jurisdictions, but I don’t think that would be true in most other English-speaking countries I guess this is probably connected with the US retaining the felony-misdemeanour distinction when most other countries that inherited their laws from England (including England herself) have abolished it: you literally can’t have a felony murder rule if you get rid of felonies, you can have some somewhat analogous rules, but they usually end up being narrower in practice Also, for a long time (until the 1950s), murder had a mandatory death penalty in England (and much of the British Empire), which produced pressure to define the crime narrowly (if jurors thought the person was guilty but didn’t deserve death, they’d acquit). Since the abolition of the death penalty, that pressure no longer exists, but there has been little pressure to broaden it either

Sure but there are gradations. The law has different categories for these. 1. I'm just bad at maintenance. 2. I was performing an illegal act, like the fuel switch. 3. I'm really intentionally trying to hit this bridge and have done some sabotage to make it happen.

Retric 3y ago
In many jurisdictions 2 and 3 are only treated differently if #2 isn’t a felony or recklessly dangerous. Example of someone convicted him of Murder for a fatal car accident while driving dunk at 80+MPH. https://www.countyofmonterey.gov/Home/Components/News/News/10634/ https://www.countyofmonterey.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1...
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Interesting Anybody know if 'fuel switch' is a felony?
  - Retric 3y ago
    I don’t know but doing so while approaching a bridge could also qualify as recklessly dangerous.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  Huh. That's surprising to me, in England Murder requires that you intended to cause at least grievous harm. So e.g. you intended to "hospitalize" Jim - but he died, those facts are murder. But if prosecutors don't believe they can show at least intent of grievous harm they aren't to charge murder. Without intent the most could be (Gross Negligence) Manslaughter, which has a significant sentence considering it doesn't require intent, but is very specifically not Murder.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    If you intend to drunkenly drive at 80+ mph, your goal is to risk the lives of others. You might as well not charge people criminally for shooting other people dead while trying to flee, because the intention was to get away, not to kill.
  - hnfong 3y ago
    My understanding is that in the US there are different degrees of "murder", the less-serious ones are equivalent to some variants of manslaughter in the UK, while in the UK, "murder" refers only to the kind that gets you a mandatory life sentence.
    - tialaramex 3y ago
      Best to speak specifically of England (and Wales), some of the UK's countries have different laws. Yes, "X degree Murder" isn't a thing in the English system and the sentence for Murder will be life imprisonment (what Americans might call "indeterminate" life because you can get parole) England used to have an oddity where the Home Secretary (ie a government minister, a politician) gets to decide whether some people can be paroled. As you might expect it's not popular politically to parole famous criminals and so certain people regardless of how long ago the crime was committed and other circumstances were refused parole. The Supreme Court eventually concluded this isn't justice, and took away this power. In their ruling (which I fixed a typo in) they looked at a whole suite of interesting cases where people were currently basically facing life with no possibility of parole 1. They decided they need to pick the worst possible criminal circumstance and single that out for this punishment, as punishment is all it is, any other possible purpose isn't circumvented by the existing parole institution - if we want people to show remorse, to accept what they did and why it's wrong, to be useful in their community, or whatever - stuff like that is already what parole is for. 2. They decided that circumstance should be two more separate murders. So e.g. you kill Bill with a hammer, and his wife walks in on you, she tries to intervene, you struggle and stab her, that is two murders, but it's not two separate murders, you could still be paroled some day. Whereas if you've got a habit of hiring prostitutes and then murdering them to relieve stress after a long week at work, those are separate murders, so if you get convicted for two (or more) that's life-means-life. 3. A lot of the really awful people whose cases were front of them haven't committed two separate murders. But, they point out, just because the law doesn't refuse these people the possibility of parole now that a politician doesn't get to decide, it doesn't magically mean they're granted parole. Paroling the guy who just really likes raping old ladies isn't going to happen. He's not even remorseful, he still wants to do it again, so obviously we can't let him out of prison, but we don't need to change his sentence - he's already going to be in prison for the rest of his life anyway. This reminds me of the situation for Anders Breivik. He killed a whole bunch of kids, but in his country the maximum was 21 years. But Breivik is never getting out, he still believes what he did was good. So in effect it's exactly the same as life-means-life for him, it only makes a difference where it should, for the people who change. [Edited to fix Breivik's sentence, which I had previously mistakenly believed was Life, in fact it's 21 years and they'll just extend it as necessary until he's dead or stops being a Nazi terrorist]
- skissane 3y ago
  My impression is that the US defines murder more broadly than the rest of the English-speaking world; the scenario you mention is murder in some US jurisdictions, but I don’t think that would be true in most other English-speaking countries I guess this is probably connected with the US retaining the felony-misdemeanour distinction when most other countries that inherited their laws from England (including England herself) have abolished it: you literally can’t have a felony murder rule if you get rid of felonies, you can have some somewhat analogous rules, but they usually end up being narrower in practice Also, for a long time (until the 1950s), murder had a mandatory death penalty in England (and much of the British Empire), which produced pressure to define the crime narrowly (if jurors thought the person was guilty but didn’t deserve death, they’d acquit). Since the abolition of the death penalty, that pressure no longer exists, but there has been little pressure to broaden it either