I pit finding something to charge someone with

The BBQ Pit
1

In the case of the boys who laughed at another kid who was drowning, I think we’d all agree that these are first class losers. But since it’s the modern day and moral outrage has to be followed by consequences, it’s been reported that prosecutors are scouring the lawbooks to find SOMETHING to charge these kids with.

IMO, this isn’t rule of law, nor is it justice. Laws should not be used creatively to get at people we don’t like. Especially when it’s clear that their failure to heed the law in particular isn’t the source of the outrage, nor were they likely to even be dimly aware that such a law existed. In any other situation, would a teen be charged with failure to report a death?

This is prosecutorial activism and it probably won’t even work. Although it’s often said, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse”, prosecutors routinely have to prove intent to violate the law, something which will be nearly impossible to do in this case.

Let’s be clear here: Their “crime” is laughing. If they had just watched and been too scared to act, or were even just in plain “not my problem” mode, there wouldn’t even be much of a story. It’s because they laughed at a dying man that it’s a story, and because it’s a story, it must also be a crime. Bullshit. Laughing at people dying is one of the most morally awful things one can do, but it’s not a crime for a reason. And pretending you are charging them for something else when you’re really trying to get at them for the act that wasn’t a crime is in itself outrageous.

Finally, this is also just plain dangerous. There are so many laws that the average person is almost certainly in violation of many of them. If they want you, they’ll find something to charge you with. This behavior should not be encouraged.

2

If I remember right, it’s a crime not to report a dead body. If that’s the case, I’m all in favor of them being charged with it. The crime isn’t laughing. It’s failure to follow a law that says that a dead body must be reported.

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3

Which would be fine, if Florida was normally in the habit of doing such prosecutions. According to articles, they had to look hard to find this law, which indicates that they do not normally prosecute it.

And again, how will this even be presented at trial? The fact that they laughed at the guy is immaterial to whether or not they reported this death. If the judge doesn’t allow it, I can’t imagine a jury unaware of this story before going in being willing to convict.

4

Just out of interest, do you have any evidence that there is a significant number of instances in Florida where people actually know about a dead body, and fail to report it?

Maybe the reason that “they do not normally prosecute” people under this law is that most reasonable human beings actually do report the dead bodies they know about to the authorities.

5

If a law isn’t normally prosecuted, is it invalid? Is there an amount of time that passes since a law’s last application after which it is considered null and void? And if so, how long?

6

I’m with adaher on this one. When something that is wrong isn’t illegal (barring things like the Nuremburg trials), you don’t go hunting around for reasons to prosecute, you shake your head and fix the law. In Germany, there’s a thing called “Unterlassene Hilfestellung”, a law where if you could help someone in mortal danger without putting yourself at risk but choose not to, you may be punished for up to a year in prison. There’s a clause about it being “reasonable”, which gives the courts a fair bit of wiggle room, but it’s a pretty important and reasonable law, if you ask me. Something like that might have made a difference here.

7

Laughing at the death of someone is not just laughing. It is psychopathic behavior. Combined with not even trying in any way to help, it’s horrible, and undesirable for any modern culture. If I were dying, crying for help, would I not want someone to help me? Wouldn’t everyone? That’s why we need a law.

Yes, if they weren’t laughing, and cowering in fear, we might give them an excuse for being unable to act. But they weren’t. They were laughing, having a good old time. That shows their moral depravity. They are partly responsible for this man’s death, because they failed to even try–because the suffering and death of a fellow human being is funny to them.

Like in many cases where we can’t catch some horrible people on the laws we have, we find other laws that can fit. We should have a law against this behavior–it is depraved indifference–but we don’t. So we use what laws we can to provide the consequences that should exist. We use what we can to fix the problem.

It’s no different than when we couldn’t pin down a mob boss, so we used tax evasion as an excuse. No one complains about it then. But, when it’s kids who watch someone die and fucking enjoy it, suddenly it’s a bad thing to slap a misdemeanor on them.

Why the fuck should the lack of a proper law mean that we shouldn’t stop these depraved individuals? They’re even kids, so there’s a chance they will learn from this if we do this right. Why in the world does the lack of a law mean we should let evil continue exist?

These kids acted like psychopaths. Psychopaths are dangerous to society. When they are intentionally partly responsible for killing someone, they need to be held to account in some way. If we have to use some incidental law they violated, so be it.

Then we can work on getting an actual law for this abominable behavior.

I mean, you do realize that trusting these kids alone with your kid would be a dangerous thing, right? They’d see the kid screaming for help and laugh. Would you like it if that were your kid? Would you really not treat them like the killers they are?

8

Then I am extremely disappointed in you. Yeah, there isn’t such a law. So why shouldn’t we use what laws we can? You admit this law would be a good thing, which means you agree what these kids did was wrong. So why in the world do you want them to get away scot-free?

Why should the fact that Germany has the better law mean we should sit on our hands and do nothing?

This isn’t defensible by the “law only” standard or a moral standard. Either all laws can be punished, including small ones, or we need morally to punish this abhorrent behavior that literally nobody would want to let happen to them.

No one wants to scream for help, and those people who could help laugh at you and let you die.

9

Well, jumping into the water to save a person who is drowning is far from a risk-free endeavour, so even that German law wouldn’t really apply. I’d imagine that law doesn’t get enforced much either, because situations where you can save someone at little risk to yourself are rare.

10

They should go after Casey Anthony with this one, huh?

11

See “Logan Act”. It’s a law. It’s on the books. No one ever was prosecuted for it, and I don’t think anyone ever will.

12

Why wouldn’t it apply? It doesn’t require you to put yourself at risk. It requires you to, at a minimum, call 911, or 999, or otherwise notify emergency responders. If you don’t even make that minimal effort, you can be prosecuted. It’s like that law that Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer violated in the last episode of Seinfeld

13

How much risk does calling 911 pose?

14

Seriously, how often would it come up? You think there are people all over the place that find dead bodies and don’t report them? Or is rare because most folks have enough of a moral center to know that they should report it. Even those without a moral center might think it’s probably a smart thing to report it.

15

I agree with the OP. Those kids did nothing illegal. A requirement to report a dead body is a stupid law also. Making general inaction a crime is stupid also.

Someone gets hit by car on the highway, hundreds of people see the dead body on the road. How many of them have to report it? When do the police ever track down all the people who saw the body and didn’t report it?

We have enough people who aren’t being held responsible for their actions, why would waste time on prosecuting people who have literally done nothing?

16

That’s the problem - they did nothing. They had a chance to save this guy themselves, or call 911 in time, but they chose to do nothing, just laugh.

Should there *not *be a failure-to-assist law?

17

Does posting the video count? 'Cause the police monitor those things all the time, right?

18

How were they to assist? Risk drowning themselves? If they called for help it probably would have been too late. They did nothing to cause that man’s death. You’re suggesting that being an asshole should be a crime. We don’t have enough prisons for that.

19

Depends on their own swimming abilities etc. But we don’t know that, do we?

We don’t know that either.

Correct, they did nothing. They could have, but they didn’t.

Not being one, acting like one - not the same thing. And not an asshole, but a psychopath.

20

You talk as if the rule of law is something society exists to serve, rather than laws existing to help and serve society.

If an act is deemed by society to be so heinous that it cannot be allowed to go unpunished then I see nothing wrong with society using the tools at its disposal to do something about it.

What those kids did was psychotic and abhorrent to any right thinking person, the only problem here is that society needs to dance around the issue like some rules lawyer in ATMB, instead of just using the don’t be a jerk rule.