When pressure came to arrest the bishop, he was hustled in and out of that jail in mere minutes. He didn’t have to wait with the others apparently. :dubious:
Do you know if he was charged or convicted with some form of homicide? Or just for leaving the scene? It appears he got special treatment not only from the police, but from the New York Times.
Of those to whom much is given, much is expected.
Or perhaps, of those to whom much is given, much more continues to *be *given…
I presume you mean sweetheart deals with the cops are expected.
Indeed not. See post 57.
Fight wasn’t possible in this case; the reason Tom Palermo wasn’t able to fight is because he lay there dying after she hit him with her car. :rolleyes:
Yes. And because she was in a car. Though I guess she could have frozen up and wound up driving off the road, too.
Panic is something I know way, way too much about, from experience.
I am confused by the pronouns here - the OP and discussion is about a female bishop, and I believe it’s customary to refer to such a personage as “she” no matter how much Star Trek tried to change the language. What are the “he” references above?
There was no fight or flight involved. She struck a person with her car, then tried to flee the scene. She was in no immediate danger. I’ve seen people hit pedestrians & cyclists with cars and own up to it. What makes her so special?
Was she afraid of a zombie cyclist?
campp linked to an article about a similar case in which a male Roman Catholic Bishop in Phoenix killed a man in a hit and run. The “he” references are to that case.
Maryland Episcopalians have a new suffragan bishop: Md. Episcopal Diocese Chooses Replacement For Defrocked Bishop : NPR
So they’re replacing an alcoholic with a recovering alcoholic.
They like to live dangerously, I guess.
Can you explain what special treatment you feel the New York Times gave him?
In Arizona, ARS 28-661 provides:
It was this law that Bishop O’Brien violated.
I sense that you’re wondering why he wasn’t charged with “some form of homicide.”
The answer is that there was no evidence to support such a charge.
If you’re interested, I can provide each of Arizona’s varities of homicide: negligent homicide, manslaughter, second degree murder, and first degree murder, and the required elements for each. But the short answer is that even “negligent homicide,” 13-1102, requires that the death occur as a result of criminal negligence.
This is very different from ordinary, or “civil” negligence. Ordinary negligence can simply be inadvertence or heedlessness. But criminal negligence can only arise from conduct that the actor knows has a high degree of likelihood, a substantial risk, to cause the outcome in play. It also requires a “gross deviation from the applicable standard of conduct.”
So far as I know, there’s nothing in evidence to suggest that the Bishop was driving in any way that created a substantial risk of loss of life, and that he was driving in some way that could be described as a gross deviation from ordinary driving.
So he wasn’t charged with homicide because there was insufficient evidence to support that charge.
I refer you to my comments in post 97 …
I’m not sure why you felt the need to qute the law, I was reacting to the language in a newspaper article and I didn’t know exactly what crime her was convicted of. And the fact that he wasn’t convicted for homicide is kind of beside the point. Convicted “for his role in a hit and run”?That really puts him at quite a rempve from causing this man’s death and running away, apart from the question to what degress his acts may or may not have been criminal.
Well, there was no evidence that his role in causing the man’s death was criminal. So convicting him for his role in the man’s death wouldn’t really be an option, and the paper shouldn’t use a sentence that suggests the death was criminally imputable to the driver.
On the other hand, there was ample evidence that his role in leaving the scene of a fatal accident was criminal.
So what phrasing should the New York Times have used?
How about, “He was convicted of leaving the scene of an accident in which he had hit and killed a pedestrian.”
The problem with that sentence is that it’s unclear whether the crime was killing the pedestrian, and then leaving, or leaving the scene period.
The crime with which he was actually charged was completed with the leaving, regardless of the death. However, the death is not legally irrelevant, since the punishment becomes more serious when a death is involved.
Still, in looking again at the New York Times’ choice, it soft-pedals the issue by not making clear that he was the one that left, and not merely someone peripherally involved in some other “role,” so I do see your point.
Hey, they’re Episcopalians. Where there’s four, there’s a fifth.
You have a pretty consistent habit of judging everything that happens in the real world as if it were happening within a courtroom. That sentence is crystal clear to me. “He was convicted of leaving the scene of an accident” is exactly what he was convicted for, and the rest of the sentence is a accurate description of the undisputed facts of the event. So what if if fails some legal standard of clarity, it certainly meets journalistic standards. And it makes clear that the man was not a fleeing witness, or one of a number of people who shared some kind of contributory guilt.