But it’s not just about improper supervision. At least not necessarily. Encouraging someone to commit an offense can make one, in Canadian parlance, a party to that offense. Liable the same as the one who actually did it. And I already cited the statute that would make not necessarily the initial impact (if accidental) but the driving off while dragging the victim (if done knowingly), murder. I think that’s got to be the basis for the first degree murder charge here, both for the driver and the passenger. Not that they were reckless and hit a police officer but that they (perhaps knowingly) drove off while dragging the victim (and thus aggravated the injuries to the point of death) as they unlawfully fled the scene.
We’re not disagreeing.
I just don’t think the issue of accompanying driver has much to do with the murder charge. It has to be that the passenger in some way was a party to the driving that resulted in the death, whether by active encouragement or something else. That will depend on the facts that the police and Crown can prove.
I suspect that in this particular case, this is the answer to why the passenger was arrested, or at least it seems like the obvious answer. Even if he is completely blameless in this incident, if he’s already wanted on another warrant they’d arrest him for that alone. Just because both were arrested, that doesn’t mean they were necessarily arrested for the same reason.
No, the police obtained arrest warrants for both of them on murder charges:
They’ve now both been charged with 1st degree murder.
We might be disagreeing—or at least not on the same page—on this one thing:
In general, the law does not punish omissions, but acts. In the classic trolley problem, for instance, no matter the scenario presented, a failure to pull the lever and send the trolley down an alternate path, thus allowing whatever outcome that was already set up to occur, would not make one liable for murder. That’s even if pulling the lever would have saved everyone and resulted in no deaths in exchange.
Among the exceptions to that, however, are if you caused the harm (lawfully or not) or if you have some sort of specific duty to act imposed by law. So, being the supervising driver, it could be argued that his actions helped to cause the collision and thus the arm and so he had a duty to affirmatively act to try and prevent further harm. It could also be argued that as the supervising driver, he had a duty, to the extent he could without risking harm to himself, to try and stop the minor driver from fleeing the scene after the collision.
That is independent of the other potential source of liability (encouraging or assisting). He could thus be guilty even if he offered neither encouragement nor assistance in driving off, but remained silent and failed to act, knowing that the victim was being dragged. That’s (potentially, IANAL) more than the liability a normal passenger would face. Normally, mere presence is not enough. Mere inaction is not enough. But for someone with a special legal duty to act, presence, with the ability to act, and yet failing to act or intervene can be enough.
Thanks for clarifying.
In the case of murder, in Canada failing to act can only support a murder conviction if it rises to the level of an intention to kill, or an objective foreseeability that death will likely result, coupled with a duty to act. I would be surprised if a failure to properly supervise a probationary driver is found to meet that constitutional standard. It might support a manslaughter conviction, on the “unlawful act” test.
If the passenger in some way encouraged the driving that resulted in the death, that could make him a party to the offence - not as a supervising driver, but on the simpler criminal standard of party to an offence.
Pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if the outstanding arrest warrant against the passenger came to light during the traffic stop and in some way contributed to the driver’s decision to try to drive away? As I say, pure speculation. Will have to wait and see.
And poking around further, I find that the Supreme Court has since updated the mens rea for murder: the constitutional standard is that murder requires either an intention to cause death, or “… proof beyond a reasonable doubt of subjective foresight of death.”
I really have my doubts that failure to properly supervise a probationary driver would rise to that level of subjective foresight that death would result.
Right. So under my “theory” of the case, the omission that would make the supervising driver (assuming a supervising driver has a duty to act—ill grant that has to be firmly established) guilty of murder is not the initial hit to the officer, but the driving on after.
If the officer did not die on impact, but because he was dragged for some distance. Or, alternatively, if the officer received a fatal wound on impact that surely would have resulted in his death, but the fact that he was dragged accelerated his death (reducing his life even by a matter of minutes) then that makes knowing that the officer was being dragged, and knowing that such an action would likely kill him or cause him severe harm, a source of liability for murder.
In other words, had they stopped as soon as they struck the officer, I think your point would hold. But here, the fact that the victim was dragged and that the dragging itself could have been the cause of death or at least accelerated he death, makes the actions (or, even as omissions, the inactions) after the collision relevant in determining the degree of criminal culpability.
ETA:
I really have my doubts that failure to properly supervise a probationary driver would rise to that level of subjective foresight that death would result.
To recap, that’s not (as I see it) the source of liability rising to first degree murder for either the driver or the passenger because you’re implicitly focusing on the apparent recklessness (if there was any) that led to the collision. It’s the actions after they struck the officer, the act of dragging him, that make it murder, even if the hit itself was purely accidental, no more than manslaughter.
The critical questions re, did they know they were dragging the officer as they fled, did they know that death or severe bodily harm was likely to result, and did death or severe bodily harm in fact result from that?
No, I’m considering the entire sequence of events: the initial hit, and the driving away.
So you don’t think there should be any greater culpability (for the driver or the supervising passenger?) in knowingly dragging someone a distance and (hypothetically) killing them in the process, than for accidentally hitting them?
Because I do. Take A, B, and C:
A is driving along, perhaps recklessly, and strikes a pedestrian. Any pedestrian. A stops immediately, but the pedestrian dies some minutes later on the way to the hospital.
B is driving along, perhaps recklessly, and strikes a pedestrian in the exact same way as A. Any pedestrian. B does not stop, but drives on, even knowing they are dragging their victim underneath. Their victim dies within seconds beneath their wheels (and an attorney could prove this in a court of law if they had to).
C is driving along, perhaps recklessly, and strikes a pedestrian in the exact same way as A. But their pedestrian is uncommonly stout and hearty, and would be able to survive the trip to the hospital (and an attorney could prove this in a court of law if they had to), if only C would stop and call an ambulance. C does not stop, but drives on, even knowing they are dragging their victim underneath. Their victim dies within seconds beneath their wheels.
Do you see A and B as having the same kind of culpability, and worthy of the same legal sanctions? How about A and C?
I’m not really interested in debating hypotheticals. I’m interested in this particular case. I’m curious to see what evidence the police and Crown will bring forward to support the charge of murder against the passenger. That won’t be apparent for a while.
The hypotheticals have a bearing in this particular case. You seem to be arguing that there ought to be no distinction in the law between A, B, and C. Will you not clarify your position on this? Because whether or not there is a distinction in the law for the driver in those scenarios has a bearing, in turn, on at what point a supervising driver could be considered liable (and liable for what: murder, manslaughter, or maybe even nothing).
It would get real deep real quickly if the facts later emerge that
- The passenger knew he had the prior outstanding warrant.
- The officer obtained enough info from the passenger to run his records in addition to the driver’s.
- The passenger, concerned about being arrested, encouraged or demanded that the driver flee.
- The driver did so, hitting the officer in the process plus dragging him some distance. Wittingly or otherwise.
- This might rise to the level of inverting which bad guy is the actor and which is the party to the other’s offence.
In any crime that’s not a carefully pre-planned event, it’s a good bet that the perps are not the brightest folks you’ve ever met. It’s further highly likely that at least one of them is under the influence of some recreational substance. Really really bad snap judgments are the hallmark of such folks.
Here’s another thought:
Leaving a injured immobilized person by a rural roadside or highway in January in Canada is a pretty good way to ensure the elements kill them quickly even if their injuries are fairly minor.
Upon checking the news articles for a location, Google Maps shows me this event occurred in typical suburbia. So plenty of bystanders, emergency services, and shelter to hand. At least these knuckleheads got that much right.
Starting to look like these two predictions are the basis for the charge against the passenger. The two appeared in court today, with bail hearings adjourned to later dates. CBC is being careful not to report anything that came out in court, but gave the following information from “sources close to the police investigation”:
If that is a correct summary of the offence, then it’s got nothing to do with Abdulrahman being an accompanying driver. It’s a joint offence, with both potentially being party to the offence of murder, based on the test of subjective foreseeability that death could result.
Yowza!
Sunset in Calgary on 12/31 was at 4:39pm*. “Around 11pm” is ~6-1/2 hours later. No headlights that far past sunset pretty well demands driver intoxication or a real beater of a car.
Additional patrol cars joining a traffic stop is far from rare, at least in the US, but given the likely workload of the Calgary Police Service an hour before New Years, I’m gonna bet those officers only showed up based on a request from the original officer that he’d stumbled on a multi-warranted violent offender.
If indeed the passenger was steering and the driver was attempting to beat the officer off his car that pretty well eliminates any though this was inadvertent or unwitting. It may not have been “intentional” in the sense that the driver expected the whole thing to unfold as it did when he first mashed the gas pedal. But as soon as they’d moved even a car-length with the officer still connected to the car what followed was functionally intentional.
* Why yes, of course I had an app on my phone pocket supercomputer for that.
I dunno. With auto-headlights, I’ve gotten out of the habit of turning on my lights, and occasionally I’ve found myself driving around the city at night without lights on, because the headlight switch got bumped to “off” instead of “auto”. And, with modern street lighting, sometimes it takes a while to notice.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I found myself behind an SUV on a busy city street and noticed that the taillights weren’t on, so of course neither were the headlights. After a couple of blocks, I managed to catch up to it and flashed my lights; they turned the lights on right away and waved. No idea how long they’d been driving without their lights on.
Still, definitely articulable suspicion for an officer to pull them over.
Yes, it gets dark early up here at this time of year. Right now, I’m going to the office in the dark, and coming home in the dark. Office hours are 8 to 5.
We’ve discussed elsewhere, there are some models of SUV in particular, where driving without headlights seems to be actually characteristic. I postulate that, as in my car, it’s difficult to tell if the headlights are on or off.
In my car, when the headlights go on, the dash lights dim. So, in daylight, I can tell that the headlights are on because I can’t read the speedometer. At night, I can sometimes tell that the headlights are off because the dash is too bright, but that depends on how bright I’ve set it. I can actually tell because of the headlight indicator on the dashboard, but if that was easy to miss, it would be difficult to judge any other way.
There are, on the freeway, particularly some SUV’s that I occasionally see with no tail lights. When I overtake, I can see that the riding lights are on, but not the headlights. What ever it is, it appears to be a characteristic fault of the control interface on that model.
I can see that, though not necessarily confined to SUVs. Back in the day of conventional mechanical gauges lit with incandescent lighting, when it got dark your unlit panel was too hard to see. Turning on the headlights (or at least the riding / running lights) lights brought up the panel lights too.
With modern backlit LCD screens as displays, they’re lit day or night, albeit differently as you say. So there’s no obvious visible clue inside the car that the exterior lights are off.