I assume because this is the person who is oldest and in the position of most authority in his life who was a bully.
The other bullies are other minors, mostly, and not only was this an adult, this was an adult with responsibility over the kid.
If genders were reversed, and the male manager was sexually harassing the female employee, and then she (the hypothetical female employee) took her life, do you think that there would be any greater responsibility on the manager?
Why is this different? Just because the harassment was not sexual in nature, just inhumanely denigrating?
It would be good if people had to a reason stop and think before causing others harm.
No, because sometimes a person has to put up with an asshole boss because they need a pay check. I don’t know what this young man’s financial circumstances where, but in some lower working class families a teenagers paycheck may be part of the family income. Regardless, teenagers are not known for the prudence of adult workers.
This lets the boss off the hook. It puts the onus on the victim to leave, rather than the bully to stop bullying.
And what difference does “reasonably prudent” make? Is the boss less culpable?
Not all bullies were/are victims. Many are just brought up in the bully culture. It’s a way of life for some. Others have a screw loose.
IMO, the supervisor should be held accountable, but not criminally. Public pressure on the owner of the franchise to terminate her, a civil suit for a hostile work environment with therapy as part of the settlement would be far more appropriate and likely far more successful.
Even if she were convicted at a criminal level, at some point (in my state, probably after 2-4 years served), she’s going to walk among us again. Is a prison sentence going to reform her or merely to function to fulfill some sense of vengeance?
I’m not sure I understand the point of this hypothetical. Nothing I’ve said here is gender-dependent, and as far as I know, there’s no element of sexual harassment to this story at all. Are there any other unrelated crimes you’d like to add into this shitty situation? What if the manager had an unlicensed firearm? What if the Dairy Queen was violating fire code? What if the “victim” was really an ISIS sleeper agent? We could discuss any of these scenarios, but I’m not seeing how they add to our understanding of the terrible thing that actually happened.
That being said…
Yeah, I’d say the significant difference between sexual harassment and non-sexual harassment is the sexual angle. That’s sort of a weird question to ask, and I’m not sure where you were going with it. I’m generally okay treating assault with a sexual component more harshly than assault with a non-sexual component. Are you… saying that’s wrong?
Regardless, I’m not sure I could get behind manslaughter charges for someone who sexually harassed someone into suicide, either. My position here is less to do with the nature of the abuse, and more to do with the difficulty in demonstrating the motivations and mindset of a suicide victim to the standard demanded of criminal liability.
Surely, for a manslaughter conviction you’d have to prove that the mythical ordinary reasonable person would have foreseen that what they were doing was likely to drive someone to suicide?
My point is that she was creating a hostile workplace. Sexual harassment is usually the thing that is pointed at in hostile work environments, but any time you abuse your employees is creating a hostile work environment. Not sure your other hypotheticals, as they are completely unrelated to anything to do with either the story, or to a rather small change I made to create the hypothetical. And, I feel confidant that, if gender roles were reversed in the story, you’d be hearing about the sexual harrasment side of the abuse as well.
I consider sexual harassment to be a particular evil, because it denigrates those who are weaker and more vulnerable, not because it has anything to do necessarily with sex. Denigrating an employee in the fashion portrayed in the story, I feel, is pretty much up there with denigrating them sexually as well. So, while her treatment isn’t quite at the level of sexual harassment, it’s only a hairsbreadth less. In either case, you have the person with the power treating the person in their charge as a thing, not a person.
As far as charging her with manslaughter, I don’t know. I don’t think it really fits the definition to the point I would convict on a jury, though IU’d be tempted to because of what a miserable piece of shit she is. But, we have no real laws about bullying, so, even though she is a horrible person who inflicted herself on another human to the point where that person decided to take his own life rather than continue to live, I don’t know that she broke any criminal statute.
That said, I hope the civil case goes well, and as her name is pretty well known at this point, I doubt she will ever be given the responsibility over anything more vulnerable than a rock.
I don’t condone bank robbery, but I think this law is total BS…it is a travesty that someone can be convicted of a murder as a driver when they sat there and played no direct or indirect physical role in the killing of the person.
In most cases it would be considered homicide during the commission of a felony. Being a getaway driver is considered part of a conspiracy to commit a felony, so any homicide or assault committed during the commission of the overall crime would be part of it.
I think any half-decent lawyer could get the manslaughter charge dismissed. My guess is there will be a plea bargain and she’ll end up being charged with a lesser offense. IANAL but even if she were convicted of manslaughter I can’t see it holding up on appeal. Definitely an over-reach by the prosecutor who maybe has eyes on higher office in the near future and figures this will boost him with the electorate.
I would suggest that if everyone bullied this kid, it’s not as simple a matter as blaming the one person who was the meanest (unless she was putting out cigarettes on his forehead or something). Nor is it as simple as blaming the kid.
I’ve met people who just do everything wrong and are amazingly socially inept. And the natural reaction of everyone is to ‘nip’ back and try to get that person to do things right and start getting a clue. It’s part of our animal nature, bullying to teach and bullying to force conformance.
It’s an unfortunate reality of our evolved state. You may as well put someone in jail for incorrectly describing a suspect from a crime scene - something we’re all notoriously poor at. Though, again, there’s certainly a level of abuse which is clearly an outlier against the rest of society and should be prosecuted. But throwing a hamburger at someone fails to meet that criteria.
Corpses don’t usually get paychecks, either. You’re quitting your job either way. Just that one of those ways involves also quitting life itself.
Yep, that’s the part they disagree with. I disagree with it too. It’s a felony, and someone died, but that the only thing that makes it remotely similar to murder. Nobody should ever be able to “accidentally” murder someone. Murder requires intent. Intent to rob a bank is not intent to commit murder. Especially, and I’ve seen this happen, when the cop is the one who pulled the trigger. At worst, that’s “felony suicide”, not murder.
Manslaughter is too much, but there should definitely be a separate civil/criminal class for these cases to fall under.
Makes me wonder, is there any other criminal case that essentially requires reading the mind of the victim? What if a victim commits suicide but first releases a long list of names? How does each defendant successfully argue, “I wasn’t enough of a reason for the suicide?”
It’s hard to judge the situation without being there. I’ve intervened a number of times in HS to stop a bully from physically harming someone so I certainly don’t condone or put up with it. But if you don’t stand up for yourself then life isn’t going to be kind to you on any level.
What crime would/should involve saying mean things to someone? If you say, “Ultravires, I read some of your prior posts, and I think you are a worthless piece of shit who should go home and die,” should that really be a crime?
Would it make a difference if I was emotionally unstable and harmed myself because of what you said? Let’s say that you knew I was emotionally unstable. Should there be a rule in a society that values free speech that such speech has to be restrained when the listener is more sensitive than others?
I agree that bullies are bad people and would like to see them go away, but I don’t see how we can craft a law that, essentially, says you cannot insult someone without having a chilling effect on speech.
