If the law calls for life imprisonment, I’m fine with that. Can’t take time to be appalled by the sentence, too busy being appalled by the crime. Those two dopes convinced themselves they could outsmart billions and billions of people who have raised billions and billions of children throughout the ages. They lost on some pretty bad odds.
That whole scheduling thing is STILL big, particularly among parents of twins. People want something in writing that says “Here! THIS is what you’re supposed to do! Follow these directions.” I can relate to their fear motivation, but geez - kid cries, tits leak, duh! Seems like two parts of a puzzle to me.
I’m still not sure I agree with your analysis, the linked statute still makes it seem to me that you have to have intentional malice to be convicted of murder. The article in the Atlanta newspaper even says the jury convicted the couple of murder because the prosecutor convinced them it was intentional.
Intent, is usually pretty big in the definition of murder.
On a lot of the products I use it says that. That’s mind boggling to me. I can’t imagine what they were thinking.
Think they’ll choose to starve to death?
I was going on what I knew of the case at the time. If the prosecutor was able to prove intent, then it makes it a whole lot easier to hang a murder conviction on the defendant.
Read the statute again. You have to do two things to convict someone of murder: kill them unlawfully AND do it with malice aforethought.
To kill someone unlawfully is pretty easy. Most killings are unlawful. An unlawful killing is a homicide. What kind of homicide you’re going to charge the defendant with is going to be determined by the circumstances.
The circumstance necessary for murder is malice. Evidence of a plan to kill you could go a long way toward proving express malice- that I intended to kill you and took steps to carry it out.
HOWEVER, malice can be implied by the circumstances. If, for example, you and I are ice fishing, and I push you into the hole (solely because I want to annoy you) but then I watch you die because the thrashing and squealing you’re doing is funny, that’s murder. I didn’t intend to kill you- I didn’t intend for you to die. But I did allow you to do so in such a way that malice can be implied.
Intent is certainly easier to prove than implied malice, but proving intent is NOT NECESSARY to convict someone of murder.
Remember that I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice, and at no time did I ever push you into an ice fishing hole.
My only objection to your post is you seem to be saying to me that intent does not matter, when every murder statute I’ve ever read makes it clear that it does.
Also, a homicide is any killing of another human by a human, in common usage.
The very statute you quote at me makes it quite clear that intent is an element of the crime:
And while perhaps intent doesn’t matter in Georgia, that’s certainly not a universal truth under the law, the Virginia murder statute clearly states:
Your ice fishing example only seems to further my point. If you pushed me into a frozen lake, you’d clearly have intent to cause me harm.
They may not have “intended” for the baby to die, but they definitely “intended” to feed it a totally substandard and inappropriate diet, and if I am reading the article correctly, not even enough of the bad diet.
I am terribly sorry the baby died. I don’t even have or like kids but it makes me sick to my stomach to think of a newborn starving to death. And by locking them away maybe these stupid, stupid people will never get a chance to breed again.
Would “depraved indifference to human life” fit the bill for “malice”. (I keep hearing that one on Law & Order).
And reading more detailed articles. It looks more like they were just beyond stupid. Not only was it the wrong food they were giving the infant, but they were also underfeeding. Fools.
My question: so, it appears that the parents are such avid vegans that they push their draconian diet on their infant. Even setting aside the issue of “maybe they wanted to avoid animal fats in breast milk”, did these people not realize that there are many many varieties of soy-based baby formulas on the shelves at this moment, any one of which could keep the little critter fat and happy? Would that not be sufficient to satisfy their need to force the kid to “like, harm no animals in any way, man”?
Christ, people are stupid.
As for the “feeding according to a strict schedule” stuff like Nava mentioned above, another big UGH. If you’re feeding the kid every two hours, all you’re doing is training him/her to be hungry every two hours, and to expect food at that time whether it’s needed or not. I live by what our doctor told us: “She’s the boss.” Just pay attention, feed her when she’s hungry, and it’s just that freakin’ simple.
We have my 8 month old on somewhat of a schedule now because it’s just naturally worked out that he eats around the same times, but until a month or two ago, it was totally feed on demand. Even now, if he’s hungry at 4:00 instead of 5:00, he eats at 4:00. And if he’s still not hungry at 5, we wait until he IS hungry. It’s not that freakin’ hard, people! It’s like the idiots I see on boards who want their 10 week old to sleep through the night, so they refuse to feed them from 10 PM until 6 AM, and let them cry themselves back to sleep - your kid is freakin’ crying because he is HUNGRY. Just because they sleep that long once doesn’t mean they’re ready to sleep that long all the time!
And you know what? I have no sympathy for ignorant fucktards, which is what these parents are. It is possible to be a RESPONSIBLE vegan parent, as I know several, and even some who formula-fed due to low milk supply…they fed their child food with NON-VEGAN INGREDIENTS because it was best for the baby. Jesus Christ, how fucking stupid do you have to be not to realize that if your child is losing weight at a rapid rate like this, perhaps you should consult someone and give up your so-called ‘morals’ to keep your baby healthy?
Lock em up so they can’t breed and do this to yet another child.
E.
My finacee and I were discussing our vegetarianism w/r/t to rugrats the other week. (We have no kids and no current plans to have any). We both chose not to eat meat… so would we foist that on our kid(s)? Answer: Nah. My fiancee balked at the idea of preparing meat herself, and I must admit, the idea of throwing a steak on the BBQ for my kid to eat is a little weird, but neither one of us objected to the kid(s) eating whatever he/she/they liked (well, not junk food, clearly). We’d probably just be eating a helluva lot more fish at home.
We’d have input, so when they were old enough they could make an informed decision, but the decision would still be theirs.
Soy-based baby formulas? I haven’t seen those. (Granted, why would I be looking?) Still, we’re mammals. I can’t imagine not providing a baby mammal with real millk with real milk plasma, proteins, and fats, whether I was an avid vegan or not.
This reminds me of some hippie-ish acquaintances of mine from about ten years back. The mother proudly informed me that she had her infant on a low-fat diet, and I just about swallowed my uvula. I explained to her as calmly as I could (which wasn’t very) that infants need fat. She, meanwhile, had a look of utter astonishment on her face. “Why would anyone need fat?” she seemed to be thinking. But thankfully she ultimately took what I was telling her to heart.
I’m not saying that intent does not MATTER, I’m saying “intent” as a term of art is not necessary to prove murder.
But we’re not talking about common usage here. We’re talking about the term as a term of art, a “legal term.” The problem with talking about things like this on a message board is that people assume that what they think “intent” or “homicide” means is what the court says it means.
You’re not reading the statute carefully enough. You need MALICE. You can get malice in one of two ways: EITHER by showing intent, OR by implying malice through the circumstances. If you don’t have enough to prove intent, you can ALTERNATELY prove that the circumstances are such that a finding of malice could be implied. So it’s perfectly possible to get malice without intent, as I will show by addressing your argument with my ice-fishing hypo.
I would have intent to cause you harm, certainly. I wouldn’t have intent to kill you. And the two things are supremely different, and the circumstances would have a huge effect on my life.
Assuming, on one hand, that, after pushing you in, I realized that you couldn’t swim, had no real amount of fat on you, and gasped in a lungful of water. Realizing what a horrible thing I had done, I run over, pull you out, wrap you up, and try to get you to a hospital, but you die on the way.
-in this case, I have certainly committed battery by pushing you. I have almost certainly committed some form of manslaughter and perhaps even second-degree murder, because when I acted, I knew or should have known that pushing a skinny guy who can’t swim into a frozen lake presented a risk of loss of life. However, at no point here is there a showing that I intended to kill you. I’m probably not going to jail for life or getting a nice vaccination courtesy of the State.
Assume, on the other hand, that I pushed you in the day after I complained to all my buddies, “That Martin… Uncle Stu-Bob always liked him better and he’s gonna get this here ice-fishing cabin in the will… unless something were to happen to him,” whereupon I push you. That shows that I intended my push to have life-ending consequences for you. In that case, we have a showing of express malice. I’m going to be either the prettiest girl in Cell Block 4 or I’m going to go zappity zap.
Assume, on the third hand, that my initial example stands. There is no way to show that I intended for you to DIE, but there is plenty to show that I intended you to SUFFER, and suffer horribly. Absent this section of the law that allows for malice to be implied, if the DA were dumb enough to charge me with murder and no lesser-included felonies, I would walk out of the courtroom a free man. Why? because the DA would then be forced to show that I intended to kill you and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, and he’s got no way to do that since it was only you and me in the cabin and you ain’t talkin’. I don’t even have to pretend to try to find the real killer.
Does that make it more clear? It’s nuanced, and the nuance is maddening, but the precise reason why we have implied malice statutes is so that the government can put away murderers for life or string them up without the high evidentiary hurdle of showing malice.
That’s 2nd-degree murder in NY.
Sure, but usually not in 6 weeks, not even for a newborn.
Embarrassing confession: due to some breastfeeding problems, it turned out I was only feeding WhyBaby about an ounce of breastmilk a day for nearly a month. This was after she spent four months in the hospital as a preemie, but just after her due date, so she was the same developmental age as this baby. I’d been pumping and my supply was so-so. When we finally got her on the breast, we were all “yay!” and I stopped pumping, until a month later she weighed two ounces less. 
Back to the pump - and I got out 1 ounce a day. Let’s be generous and double that in theory, since the baby is more efficient than the pump. So she might have been getting 2 ounces a day. For a month. And she grew two inches in that time - her body kept on doing its thing, using her stored fat to grow on. It’s also worth noting that she was a slim baby to begin with - she was never one of those Buddha babies with two elbow creases on each arm. So even a slender infant has plenty of fat reserves to last a month or more.
So I still don’t get it. Even a few mouthfuls of *something *a day should keep a baby alive, if not the picture of health. Our bodies can survive on pretty well anything - look at the orphaned African kids with big bellies - swollen from a lack of protein. They’re not healthy, but they’re alive, on a handful of rice or taro root a day.
Once starvation goes on long enough, they stop crying. Even WhyBaby was only extra fussy for a day or two, then she just stopped being hungry, I guess. She nursed a LOT, trying to get more milk, but we just figured she had finally figured it out and needed extra nursing time for comfort. Since she gained inches, she outgrew clothes, so we had no idea there was anything wrong until the next doctor weigh-in.
So, yeah, if you’re going to be a total paranoid loon and feed your baby some alternative diet and not see a doctor, at the very least buy a scale and weigh your baby periodically, I guess.
(And yes, as soon as we figured out she wasn’t gaining weight, I went back to pumping and supplementing with formula to make up a reasonable amount.)
There are lots of soy based formulas, but they are not as nutritious as milk-based ones. My doctor would not authorize them for a preemie.
Still, they’re better than soy milk and apple juice. 
I know lawyers sometimes confuse a casual conversation with a legal debate :p. (That’s with levity intended, not snarkiness) But I wasn’t trying to use the word intent as a “term of art.”
I see entirely what you’re saying. But surely you recognize that the way you use the word “malice” it is more or less synonymous with what a layman would call “intent to cause harm” which is all I was really talking about in my OP. My assertion was, that in general someone who has not intended to cause harm (I’m not using that word as a “term of art” there) is generally not sent to prison for life when they kill someone. I don’t have to be able to speak in legalese to know that in general people who didn’t mean to hurt someone don’t usually go to prison for life–while the actual prison term and the name of the crime they get sentenced under varies from state to state.
I’m not trying to argue necessarily that the mother/father in this case don’t deserve the life sentence per se.
I’m too squeamish to read the article, but is there the possiblity they were just ignorant about how much to feed a child? I never understood how people figured that one out anyway with their first kid- it’s not like you can tell a hunger cry from any other type of crying. Do you just give an infant a bottle constantly, and see from that determine how often it wants/needs it? Does anything indicate that they did this on purpose?
I totally agree. It’s pretty obvious when a baby is being starved and there’s absolutely no reason not to feed them on demand. They’re self-regulating for god’s sake.
When I delivered our son a year ago, I had ecclampsia and wasn’t coherent enough for about two weeks to nurse properly. We had no idea that my milk hadn’t come in. But the day of his two week appointment he started peeing orange crystals. He had been screaming about every hour and a half before that, but we’d never had a child and had heard that some kids were just more vocal than others. When we saw the crystals, we were horrified and took him in as soon as possible where he downed almost three ounces of formula and promptly conked out in absolute bliss. After that, I still nursed but had to supplement as well.
I can’t imagine that these idiots couldn’t have figured out that something was wrong. Babies tell you if they need something. And even if they become lethargic, there are clear physical signs (like peeing crystals) which should tell you something.