Actually it is your side that seems to be arguing there can never be any criminal culpability assigned. AFAICT, no one arguing for prosecution is saying every case should be prosecuted as manslaughter or something equally harsh. What most are saying is that someone’s dead child being punishment enough is a completely odd and presumptive standard of justice.
But are these cases completely unavoidable? There are dozens of protocols people in various careers do do prevent the kinds of oversights that lead to these sorts of mistakes. Things as simple as alarms and checklists. So even if you can convincingly argue that mental oversight due to extreme fatigue or whatever can cause people to forget, the sheer fact that we know this, and have ample resources to prevent these oversights from becoming fatal is more than enough reason to not act as though these incidents are unavoidable.
Deterrence, punishment, and a host of other reasons similar to the reasons we prosecute any crime.
Would you say the same about someone who accidentally kills their spouse? Surely losing your wife is punishment enough.
So being a breadwinner is an extenuating circumstance? The issue with this logic that compassion is basically limited to crimes and criminals you can relate to which in turn reinforces a number of biases and prejudices. Again, do you think the average non gun owner can empathize with someone who leaves there loaded gun in a place their kids can use them? Every year, some jackass gets shot by their baby, or some kid takes the gun and kills themselves or others. I have little sympathy for those people, and would hope that people would not excuse their negligence based on tangentially related brain science and relatability.
My side? I don’t have a side except to say that I can understand how good, attentive, responsible parents can make this tragic mistake that it’s not, by definition, negligence.
I never said its always unavoidable but that I can understand and believe that sometimes it was just a simple lapse, not a criminal one.
I’ve said nothing in absolutes one way or another.
Perhaps, but the question is whether brain’s imperfection should preclude punishment? Surely the brain’s tendency to become addicted to drugs means we shouldn’t punish any drug crimes, right? And the tendency of some to become addicted to gambling means we should outlaw casinos, right? And the tendency of some to be attracted to children means we shouldn’t punish them, right?
What is the purpose of punishment? Generally we require some showing of bad intent. At the very least we try to connect consequences to ideas of deterrence or rehabilitation.
In cases in which it is someone merely forgetting, just as a consequence of how the brain sometimes fails, then what are you doing exactly by punishing someone, if there’s no bad intent, little likelihood of deterrence or rehabilitation (because fundamentally there’s nothing wrong that can be fixed).
It just comes down to society wanting to punish someone because it feels good to punish someone when something bad happens.
And a big part of this is people not wanting to believe that this is something that can happen to anybody. If we treat that person harshly enough, then that makes me feel good that I’m not like him or her.
These are not good reasons for punishment, not in a civilized society.
I’m not following how you don’t see this as negligence - which is the obligation to exercise reasonable care. We all have negligent moments, I’m certain - but that doesn’t mean negligence doesn’t exist.
If we were, we wouldn’t be trying to castigate a person for a failure like this. We would be talking about how to require car makers to design cars so that this can’t happen, or designing workplaces or other social institutions so that someone is less likely to leave his or her unattended or unobserved in dangerously hot conditions for hours on end.
You are wrong. It is by definition negligence. It may not always rise to a criminal level given the circumstances, but killing your own child due to inattentiveness is clearly negligent behavior. Being a generally good, attentive parent doesn’t mean you are never inattentive or irresponsible. Criminal prosecution isn’t a means to adjudicate one a bad person, it’s to punish a crime.
But again, why CAN’T you understand almost any crime? It’s just a failure of imagination and experience in my opinion. I can understand why people do drugs, or why people kill people, or why people to almost anything. There is a saying, “I am human, and nothing of that which is human is alien to me.” If you are around guns a lot, you can probably understand how someone could leave one out near a child. If you have constant pain, you can probably understand why someone would go out and rob people just to get a fix. The point is that punishment is a completely separate issue from how much I can empathize with a given person who commits the crime. I feel bad for parents who leave their kids in car. I fully acknowledge that I am capable of such a thing. Yet, I don’t think one’s grief means they should avoid prosecution.
Nonsense. We are working on self driving cars, but that doesn’t mean we don’t punish inattentive drivers who cause accidents. We are using robots to do surgeries, but that doesn’t mean we don’t punish doctors who make mistakes. Using technology for hard reduction and safety has little to do with whether people who make mistakes should be punished.
Again, these types of crimes typically don’t need to show “bad intent”. Would you think this made sense for a guy who went into a robbery not intending to kill anyone, but did so nonetheless? Probably not.
Not every mistake is automatically negligence. There are lots of deadly mistakes that never are punished as criminally negligent. And if they were who would benefit?
I can understand many crimes. What I can also understand is how a good person can make a mistake with tragic consequences that doesn’t make them criminally negligent (which the kind of negligence we are talking about). You seem to be the one struggling with this idea. You seem to moving the goal posts all over the place- not every accident, even with a tragic outcome, is a crime.
I’m still not following why you think leaving a child in a hot car is not criminally negligent. I totally understand the views of others who say that punishment has already been meted out for the negligence – but you seem to be saying that no gross negligence occurred in such situations. I don’t get that at all.
There’s a difference between negligence and a crime.
You’re outside watching your toddler play. You fall asleep and he runs into the street and gets killed.
Is there a difference between you being drunk and passing out vs dozing off for a few minutes? In both cases you were negligent and inattentive. Are they both crimes?
Im not sure what else to say here if people don’t see the difference between a tragic accident and a crime. I truly hope it never happens to you or someone you care about.
Look, I’m just seeking clarification on what you consider negligence. By saying that situation A is an accident and situation B is a crime, I’m no further along in distinguishing what you think is criminal negligence. I’m honestly not trying to pester you, I’m trying to understand your point of view. Repeating that “some things aren’t crimes” isn’t very enlightening to me.
In your scenario, I think consuming alcohol to a point of extreme intoxication that results in passing out, while that person has a duty to watch a toddler, is a very big deal. As in, child protective services should probably get involved before there is a fatal accident.
If someone simply falls asleep while watching a toddler, I need to know more about the circumstances. If for example, someone had just worked a double shift and a reasonable person likely wouldn’t have the physical capability to stay awake, I would probably view that differently than someone who was relaxing on a couch listening to calming music on an iPod while their toddler runs free.
You’re the one who has to establish that it is criminal negligence. Because currently it’s not clear or obvious or assumed that it is criminally negligent. If you are claiming that it is “by definition” criminally negligent, it’s your burden to cite to a specific definition of criminal negligence found in some actual criminal statute and a citation to some interpretation of that statute that says that ordinary forgetfulness in such a case is “by definition” criminal negligence. Because as things stand, it’s not.
Generally speaking, negligence requires showing a failure to exercise a duty of care.
In the case of fatalities caused by drunken driving, you have a specific duty of care imposed by law—don’t drink and drive.
What is the specific duty of care that the law imposes that someone who accidentally leaves a child in a hot car has violated? What specific acts does the law require or prohibit that would have prevented the child’s death? “Don’t forget” is not a viable negligence standard.
If a surgeon amputates the wrong leg, the duties will be something like “check the patient’s file and use a pen to mark the correct leg and when operating look for the correct marking.” Each step will have a point that a court can look at and say “yes, this is a specific step that the doctor must take and this is what she failed to do.” It won’t be “don’t forget which is the correct leg.”
ascenray - I’m not trying to score points, have a debate, prove anyone wrong, or whatever. I’m trying to understand someone else’s point of view. I don’t believe I need to establish what the law is in order to ask someone to more fully explain their point of view.
Those are not negligence cases. There is a bad intent that the law looks for there—The intent to commit the robbery, or the intent to employ a deadly weapon while committing a crime are the applicable bad intent in those cases, even if there was no specific intent to kill someone.