This article gives the outcome and basic facts of a criminal trial that had being going on for the last couple of weeks in the Canadian province of Newfoundland. Thank gawd it ended the way it did - with acquittal of the accused.
In brief, a woman and her husband were bear hunting. As late afternoon was turning into dusk, the woman shot her husband as he emerged from the bush. Described as being hysterical and inconsolable immediately after the event, she explained that she thought he was a bear. And, although she clearly could not have been certain at what she was shooting at, she pulled the trigger. Stupid? Undoubtedly. Criminal? Are you serious?
Expert witnesses and police re-enactments both supported her version of the events. Still, the Crown Attorney (like a DA in the States) decided to press charges - criminal negligence causing death. If convicted, she would have had a minimum penalty of four years in jail. The maximum would have been life.
What was the Crown thinking and what did they, or anyone, have to gain by pressing charges, or even (god forbid) by a successful prosecution? This was a woman who instantly regretted what had happened and where there was absolutely no hint of marital discord or any other reason why she would have wanted to hurt him. She was devastated by her loss. And now the Crown was going to prosecute her? Why? To set an example? To protect the public? It’s even less understandable when one considers the circumstances of what happened: It was obviously an accident. As her lawyer said, “accidents happen”. People can be careless, and they can be stupid, but that doesn’t make them criminals deserving of imprisonment. The Crown Attorney was an ass. The woman was made to suffer twice, each time because of someone’s stupidity.
(Pretty mild, I know. But I had to get it off my chest)
I think that the sentence in this case would have been excessive - perhaps, if there was a statutory minimum, some lesser charge might have been appropriate (something like “careless discharge of a weapon”, if such a charge exists). But I also believe that the Crown Attorney’s impulse was a fundamentally sound one - the criminal law exists to protect us from recklessness and stupidity, not just malice. I feel for this poor woman’s loss - but yes, I do think it is important to make an example of her, in order to demonstrate that the state does genuinely Take This Seriously.
Ideally, I’d have liked her to be charged with something that would have resulted in a modest sentence, with time served at the end. She deserves a criminal record - but I agree that she doesn’t deserve to have her life torn apart the way a years-long sentence would.
That. She was negligent, and negligence is not an innocent act. Whether that negligence rises to the level of criminality is for the legal system to decide, and evidently the jury decided that it didn’t.
Killing someone accidentally is still killing someone, and she was culpable in the accident. It was not a freak occurrence that nobody could have predicted – she shot at something she couldn’t see. Not that far removed from a drunk driver, IMHO.
Frankly, she should have been prosecuted, and a sizable prison term is entirely appropriate.
She did not shoot her husband accidentally. She took aim and shot deliberately, not having a fucking clue what she was actually shooting. It could have been a bear, or her husband, or some random kid hiking through the woods with his parents.
Criminal negligence? Damn Straight it is. Causing death? You bet.
Why prosecute when she’s already been punished? Because hunters need to damn well know that you don’t shoot if you can’t see what’s there. Not only couldn’t she identify her target, she couldn’t see what was past her target either.
If it’s dusk and you can’t see clearly, put your fucking gun away!
If you Google for this, there appears to be many cases of people being convicted of criminal negligence for this type of hunting accident. I’m surprised she wasn’t found guilty. Shooting when you can’t clearly see what you are shooting at seems like negligence to me.
I agree with much of what you say, and i think that people need to be held responsible for what they do with loaded weapons.
Still, if it’s dusk and you’re still in the woods, and there are also bears in the woods, it seems to me that keeping your gun handy might be a reasonably prudent thing to do.
What is not clear to me in this case, and what doesn’t really come out in the OP’s linked story, was whether the shot was along the lines of “Oh, shit, there’'s a bear coming at me out of the woods,” or “I’ve got a bear in my sights, and i’m going to take the shot.”
That is, did she take the shot in (what she thought was) self-defense, or was it a regular hunting kill? If the former, i’m more likely to accept that her actions were reasonable, because she may have thought that she had only a matter of seconds between shooting and possibly being mauled by a bear. If the latter, however, and the “bear” itself was far enough away that she did not consider it an immediate danger to herself, then she should have taken more care to work out what was actually in her sights.
KarlGauss - Would your feeling about this prosecution be the same if instead of shooting her own husband, this woman had accidentally shot and killed your spouse? The fact that she was devastated by the loss of her victim doesn’t change the fact that her actions caused someone’s death. If your spouse was walking in the woods, and someone aimed a gun and shot him/her because it was dusk, and they saw a black mass, would you be as willing to say, “Oh well, accidents happen”?
She used the rifle’s scope, which would indicate the target was some distance away.
You aren’t in much danger if the bear is so far away that you can’t see it clearly, even looking through the scope.
So, she was in the back of a truck, suggesting that she had at least some protection, and a height advantage, and that the bear was not right on top of her.
It seems that, in mistaking him for a bear, that he was leaning over and was probably side-on to her. Doesn’t exactly suggest that he posed an imminent threat, or that the figure was charging at her in a manner suggesting an attack. She should have spent more time working out what the fuck she was shooting at.
Unlike Harshbarger, i can understand how someone might mistake a human for a bear at that distance in very dim light. What i can’t understand is why she felt the need to fire, without spending more time making sure she got it right.
This creature, whatever it was, was far enough away that she should have spent much more time in that dim light working out what she was firing at. As i said in my previous post, if she fired to stop a direct attack, that’s one thing, but this shot was not fired in self-defense, it was a regular hunting shot, and the only consequences of not taking the shot would have been not having a trophy at the end of the day. Under those circumstances, she fucked up big time.
I wonder, now that she’s been found not guilty, what the consequences are for the $500,000 life insurance policy her husband was carrying?
Clearly, she was reckless. And stupid. My point is that locking her up for four years (minimum) serves no purpose that I can see. How is anything made better, or anything or anyone helped by having her sit in a cell for the next 4+ years?
ETA: I guess what I’m trying to say is that she is no criminal in my mind.
This is what I was going to say. What if she shot a stranger? Oh, well, it’s okay, she thought it was a bear? This was no accident. An accident would be if the gun went off without her pulling the trigger. Killing someone out of stupidity is still killing someone. Shooting something without knowing what you’re shooting at is criminal, and she should be treated as such.
It prevents her from accidentally shooting at anyone who might look like a bear at dusk for the next four years.
It sends a warning to hunters to be follow safety regulations and not to shoot unless they can clearly identify their target, because there will be severe punishment.
It provides a measure of justice for everyone who feels the loss of the man she killed - he wasn’t just her husband, he was someone’s child, sibling, co-worker, friend, etc.
It might make others think twice before acting recklessly/stupidly – just one more tool in the fight against ignorance.
I’m local to where the lady is from and this story has been brewing for several years. A lot of the story as its been told had been contradictory, and The insurance company IIRC has not been willing to pay out either.
