5 ms·

> And if there's no chance of a conviction, there's no benefit to anybody from reopening the investigation. It's probably true that without a chance of convict

> And if there's no chance of a conviction, there's no benefit to anybody from reopening the investigation. It's probably true that without a chance of conviction, standard protocol dictates that public resources should not be expended on reopening the investigation. But I was also heavily distracted while reading the article, scanning optimistically for the happy (under the circumstances) ending where justice is served. I certainly don't think there is "no benefit to anybody".

teraflop 8mo ago
Serious question: if the chance of evidence leading to a convistion is very very small, what would be the benefit of opening an investigation? Just to go through the motions on principle? And what would they even investigate?
- j-bos 8mo ago
  One benefit is demonstrating at least a facade of seeking justice. Also, obscuring a crime for personal benefit is itself a crime.
  - knowitnone3 8mo ago
    so cops driving around is good enough, they don't have to actually catch criminals because it's it facade that really matters.
    - happosai 8mo ago
      It's security theater, like airport security where red teams succeed in 95% cases https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-find-widespread-security-failures/story?id=31434881 https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-fin...
- brianpan 8mo ago
  It's a cost-benefit analysis like many other things. There are limited resources, they should be spent on investigating cases that have a chance of getting closed. Cold cases might get reopened because of advances in technology or other changes over time.
- cucumber3732842 8mo ago
  There is no potential "principal" here that is distinguishable from posturing and dick swinging. Unless you find some unforeseeable smoking gun any conviction will necessarily be questionable at best. That doesn't really serve much of a purpose beyond saying "we're the prosecutor's office, look how bad ass we are, look how we somehow manage to convict someone decades later, fear us". Never mind the fact that dredging this stuff up is not likely to be good for the family and that odds are all of these deaths are purely accidental/negligent so it's not like you're going after a "real criminal".
  - radiator_1451 8mo ago
    Investigating a murder is posturing? I really don't understand the "bad ass, fear us" language. Do you consider all criminal investigations to be as frivolous? > odds are all of these deaths are purely accidental/negligent How can you say that given that the article presents evidence that > "... someone gave this baby crushed Tylenol-3,” likely mixed in breast milk or formula Is that an accident according to you, or do you have any evidence that the article is wrong about that conclusion?
    - cucumber3732842 8mo ago
      >Investigating a murder is posturing? I really don't understand the "bad ass, fear us" language. Do you consider all criminal investigations to be as frivolous? >How can you say that given that the article presents evidence that Take a freakin step back and look at the big picture. Someone lost their kid, their first kid FFS. Even if a crime was technically committed along the way call it time served. On a technical level, this is almost certainly not chargeable as a murder. Evidince of intent is lacking and almost certainly does not exist. The best you might be able to do is some negligent wrongful death manslaughter type thing, exact details depending on how such things are defined in the jurisdiction. Just based on plausibility these cases are almost certainly accidents. Very few mothers or the people around them murder newborns in the jurisdictions we're talking about. So if you did find intent, like a text exchange or something, the best you're likely to do is prove intent in the exact opposite direction and that no harm was meant. So then you have to prove negligence or something, which is also likely to be uphill. And this all assumes you can pin it on one person. No good purpose is served by this. You're not getting some hardened criminal off the streets or putting someone in jail for an act committed with a bad frame of mind. Best case you wind up punishing someone using some negligince wrongful death type statues that's written based on the assumption that the person who caused the death DGAF about the deceased. Even if you pull that off this person is probably the mother or father or a grandparent who already lost their kid or grandkid for it so there's a real tinge of double jeopardy to the whole thing. This serves no purpose other than a show of force by the prosecuting office. The "real" crime committed here is not accidentally giving one's infant the wrong pills (someone gave a kid Tylenol, it's not like it was Xanax or booze to shut them up or some other thing everyone knows you don't do), the facts are likely to stack up in a way that make that act a non-criminal accident. So what you're doing in practice is screwing up one or more people's lives, to much fanfare, because they failed to tell the whole truth to the state a decade or more ago. Now, I get that that might sound like a good thing to some people, but those people are bad people and their ideas are bad ideas. >Is that an accident according to you, or do you have any evidence that the article is wrong about that conclusion? Stop trying to re-frame my assertion as an issue with the article rather than a critique of the proposed action (prosecuting someone). I know you'd rather discuss that, because that's much more defensible than a hypothetical decision to prosecute, and I do not accept your slight of hand.
mindslight 8mo ago
The "happy ending" where one of the parents and their three other kids find out that the other parent likely killed the older brother they never met? That doesn't sound very happy to me, but maybe we have different definitions of happy? When I tried reading into the causes of so-called SIDS it seemed like at least some of the cases were a catch-all diagnosis that included cases where parents inadvertently killed their infants (eg co-sleeping and rolling onto them). Fundamentally I think there often isn't much upside to fully fleshing out the truth of cases where parents have already paid the heaviest price.
- lmm 8mo ago
  > The "happy ending" where one of the parents and their three other kids find out that the other parent likely killed the older brother they never met? That doesn't sound very happy to me, but maybe we have different definitions of happy? While "happy" isn't the word I'd use, that seems better than knowing that this could happen to any baby at any time and nothing would be done.
  - inquirerGeneral 8mo ago
    [dead]
- maxbond 8mo ago
  We don't know it was the parents. Could've been a babysitter. Could've been a grandparent. New parents often have help.
- BLKNSLVR 8mo ago
  Man, SIDS. It's specifically non-specific, but the worry it causes is quite specific. My daughter, as a baby, always managed to find a way to sleep on her stomach. Wouldn't sleep on her back, but almost magically by comparison would fall asleep lying on her stomach (face to one side or the other, not straight down, obviously - I hope). We tried various combinations of devices, arrangements of pillows and cushions, tight wraps, to keep her lying on her back, but babies are remarkably, if involuntarily, wilful (or she was, anyway, and remains to this day). I worry about very few things, but for the first few nights we'd regularly get up to check on her, and literally be holding our breath waiting for her to expel hers. Out of necessity the every-parents-SIDS-fear, from allowing the baby to sleep on their stomach, had to be removed from our psyche so that we could continue to function day-to-day. Said baby is now, thankfully, a semi-healthily functional teenager. As functional as teenagers get anyway :)

teraflop 8mo ago

Serious question: if the chance of evidence leading to a convistion is very very small, what would be the benefit of opening an investigation? Just to go through the motions on principle? And what would they even investigate?

j-bos 8mo ago
One benefit is demonstrating at least a facade of seeking justice. Also, obscuring a crime for personal benefit is itself a crime.
- knowitnone3 8mo ago
  so cops driving around is good enough, they don't have to actually catch criminals because it's it facade that really matters.
  - happosai 8mo ago
    It's security theater, like airport security where red teams succeed in 95% cases https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-find-widespread-security-failures/story?id=31434881 https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-fin...
brianpan 8mo ago
It's a cost-benefit analysis like many other things. There are limited resources, they should be spent on investigating cases that have a chance of getting closed. Cold cases might get reopened because of advances in technology or other changes over time.
cucumber3732842 8mo ago
There is no potential "principal" here that is distinguishable from posturing and dick swinging. Unless you find some unforeseeable smoking gun any conviction will necessarily be questionable at best. That doesn't really serve much of a purpose beyond saying "we're the prosecutor's office, look how bad ass we are, look how we somehow manage to convict someone decades later, fear us". Never mind the fact that dredging this stuff up is not likely to be good for the family and that odds are all of these deaths are purely accidental/negligent so it's not like you're going after a "real criminal".
- radiator_1451 8mo ago
  Investigating a murder is posturing? I really don't understand the "bad ass, fear us" language. Do you consider all criminal investigations to be as frivolous? > odds are all of these deaths are purely accidental/negligent How can you say that given that the article presents evidence that > "... someone gave this baby crushed Tylenol-3,” likely mixed in breast milk or formula Is that an accident according to you, or do you have any evidence that the article is wrong about that conclusion?
  - cucumber3732842 8mo ago
    >Investigating a murder is posturing? I really don't understand the "bad ass, fear us" language. Do you consider all criminal investigations to be as frivolous? >How can you say that given that the article presents evidence that Take a freakin step back and look at the big picture. Someone lost their kid, their first kid FFS. Even if a crime was technically committed along the way call it time served. On a technical level, this is almost certainly not chargeable as a murder. Evidince of intent is lacking and almost certainly does not exist. The best you might be able to do is some negligent wrongful death manslaughter type thing, exact details depending on how such things are defined in the jurisdiction. Just based on plausibility these cases are almost certainly accidents. Very few mothers or the people around them murder newborns in the jurisdictions we're talking about. So if you did find intent, like a text exchange or something, the best you're likely to do is prove intent in the exact opposite direction and that no harm was meant. So then you have to prove negligence or something, which is also likely to be uphill. And this all assumes you can pin it on one person. No good purpose is served by this. You're not getting some hardened criminal off the streets or putting someone in jail for an act committed with a bad frame of mind. Best case you wind up punishing someone using some negligince wrongful death type statues that's written based on the assumption that the person who caused the death DGAF about the deceased. Even if you pull that off this person is probably the mother or father or a grandparent who already lost their kid or grandkid for it so there's a real tinge of double jeopardy to the whole thing. This serves no purpose other than a show of force by the prosecuting office. The "real" crime committed here is not accidentally giving one's infant the wrong pills (someone gave a kid Tylenol, it's not like it was Xanax or booze to shut them up or some other thing everyone knows you don't do), the facts are likely to stack up in a way that make that act a non-criminal accident. So what you're doing in practice is screwing up one or more people's lives, to much fanfare, because they failed to tell the whole truth to the state a decade or more ago. Now, I get that that might sound like a good thing to some people, but those people are bad people and their ideas are bad ideas. >Is that an accident according to you, or do you have any evidence that the article is wrong about that conclusion? Stop trying to re-frame my assertion as an issue with the article rather than a critique of the proposed action (prosecuting someone). I know you'd rather discuss that, because that's much more defensible than a hypothetical decision to prosecute, and I do not accept your slight of hand.

mindslight 8mo ago

The "happy ending" where one of the parents and their three other kids find out that the other parent likely killed the older brother they never met? That doesn't sound very happy to me, but maybe we have different definitions of happy? When I tried reading into the causes of so-called SIDS it seemed like at least some of the cases were a catch-all diagnosis that included cases where parents inadvertently killed their infants (eg co-sleeping and rolling onto them). Fundamentally I think there often isn't much upside to fully fleshing out the truth of cases where parents have already paid the heaviest price.

lmm 8mo ago
> The "happy ending" where one of the parents and their three other kids find out that the other parent likely killed the older brother they never met? That doesn't sound very happy to me, but maybe we have different definitions of happy? While "happy" isn't the word I'd use, that seems better than knowing that this could happen to any baby at any time and nothing would be done.
- inquirerGeneral 8mo ago
  [dead]
maxbond 8mo ago
We don't know it was the parents. Could've been a babysitter. Could've been a grandparent. New parents often have help.
BLKNSLVR 8mo ago
Man, SIDS. It's specifically non-specific, but the worry it causes is quite specific. My daughter, as a baby, always managed to find a way to sleep on her stomach. Wouldn't sleep on her back, but almost magically by comparison would fall asleep lying on her stomach (face to one side or the other, not straight down, obviously - I hope). We tried various combinations of devices, arrangements of pillows and cushions, tight wraps, to keep her lying on her back, but babies are remarkably, if involuntarily, wilful (or she was, anyway, and remains to this day). I worry about very few things, but for the first few nights we'd regularly get up to check on her, and literally be holding our breath waiting for her to expel hers. Out of necessity the every-parents-SIDS-fear, from allowing the baby to sleep on their stomach, had to be removed from our psyche so that we could continue to function day-to-day. Said baby is now, thankfully, a semi-healthily functional teenager. As functional as teenagers get anyway :)