That cite does not establish that Canadian law has a purely objective test for criminal negligence that does not also require conscious disregard. It specifically mentions reckless disregard, which at common law and in U.S. law is a subjective test.
Northern Piper’s explanation above my post is closer to what you want. But I’m a little skeptical to be honest. I’d like to see some case law saying that objective unreasonableness is enough in the absence of mental disability (or similar) to convict for recklessness crimes. That would be different from U.S. law.
What I would expect is that it’s easy to get a presumption of recklessness from the objective unreasonableness in the absence of some contrary testimony, but that if the person testified that they lacked conscious disregard and was believed that a jury would be obligated to acquit.
Why? I don’t feel the need to do that in many cases. Deterrence? Sure, to an extent. Protect us for violent individuals? You bet. To “punish?” No thanks.
It is punishment, but that’s not the goal. For example, in this case there really is no need for deterrence. Most people don’t have any desire to accidentally kill their boyfriend. So, it would be simply punishment, and in my view, unnecessary.
To me, it serves no useful purpose. Her being without the father of her child and love of her life because of both of their stupidities is punishment enough and then some to me. It serves absolutely no purpose and is a waste of taxpayer money to incarcerate her. (This is assuming all is as it seems in the story.) To use your rather dissimilar child analogy and make it more congruent: if my daughter and her best friend were playing on the railroad tracks and then her best friend got ran over because they were both being fucking idiots and didn’t listen to us, what’s the utility in punishing them now? I would see absolutely no point in punishment. She learned her lesson; her best friend is dead. There’s no punishment that could drive the lesson home any more than that one.
You should really be able to explain why you punish your children. It’s a good check on whether your punishment is warranted and proportional. For example, I punish my kids to change their future behavior. I don’t punish innocent mistakes, nor do I use punishment in situations in which it doesn’t work (as, for example, when a reward system is much more effective). I don’t punish solely for retribution or to make me feel good about myself. I would hope most parents are the same, but I know they aren’t.
Of course, adults aren’t children. So not all the same principles apply. But you should still be able to articulate rationally defensible principles. If you can’t, that’s a good sign that you’re acting out of emotion or baseless tradition rather than reason.
Yeah, yeah, if you want to abolish laws against everything, then go right ahead and do that.
She took a gun, pointed it at her idiot boyfriend, and pulled the trigger.
Any reasonable person would know this was very dangerous. And it was actually dangerous. Arguing that she was too stupid to know it was dangerous and therefore it wasn’t a crime gives any idiot the license to commit any crime. The standard is not “was she too dumb to know it was dangerous?”, but “would any reasonable person know it was dangerous?”. And it clearly is.
Did she mean to kill him? No, but she pointed a gun at a man and pulled the trigger. If she’s too dumb to know why that would be a bad idea, then she’s too dumb to be allowed to walk around the streets and needs to be in some sort of supervised custody.
Except she’s not literally mentally disabled with the mind of a child. Or so I assume. Maybe her lawyers will try to argue that she’s too mentally incompetent to stand trial.
Absent that, she should be treated like someone who takes out their cell phone and starts texting while driving on the freeway and then crashes into someone and kills them. Did they mean to kill the person they ran over? No. Are they horribly upset that they killed a guy? Sure. Does that mean that we then pat them on the head and declare they’ve suffered enough? They didn’t mean it, it was an accident?
Extreme negligence and recklessness that ends up killing people is and should be criminal. Again, she pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger. And she thought it wouldn’t kill the victim, because the victim assured her that a flimsy book would stop the bullet. Textbook manslaughter.
Yep. But as far as I can tell, the debate here is mostly about whether she should be incarcerated. Some say yes, some say no.
Personally, I’m not getting the connection between “criminal act” (even manslaughter) automatically equaling “prison.” Sure, in many cases it makes sense. In this one, I think not.
I did articulate a rational defensible principle - she should be punished for doing something stupid that led to the death of a human being. Same as the drunk driver who ran over someone and killed them. Same as the safety inspector that pencil whipped a safety inspection that led to the death of a human being. Same as a military officer who disregarded orders and got his men killed.
If there is no threat of punishment, then there will be little to no motivation to change these behaviors.
If there was no punishment for driving drunk, then I wouldn’t need a taxi to go home after the bar. I could just drive home, drunk and all. If I killed someone, my punishment can just be the bad feelings I have about killing someone. :dubious:
It does serve a useful purpose - to society as a whole.
It lets other people know that doing stupid things can have serious repercussions.
As someone once said “No man is completely useless; he can always serve as a bad example…"
No, that’s just circular logic. She should be punished because she should be punished.
This is what people mean when they say “deterrence.” So you can go back and read the replies that explain why people think the deterrence rationale doesn’t make sense here, and realize they’re talking about you.
Here, again, you’re alluding to some kind of moral retribution, I think. But you don’t seem to quite realize you’re doing it. I encourage you to explore that aspect of your thinking, to the extent it is separate from your deterrence argument.
We have a fine precedent in the case of Johannes Mehserle, who was convicted of manslaughter (and served prison time) for the accidental shooting of a man (Mehserle mistakenly grabbed his handgun instead of his taser).
