It should come to no one’s surprise that
there are a few issues with the justice system in the United States. Essentially
shit is fucked up.
I’m going to tell a quick story and you
should think about what the person should be charged with. Even
better totally ignore our legal system and just imagine yourself as judge jury
and executioner. Decide on your own moral and justification what you
think should be the punishment for the set of circumstance I lay out.
There’s a big party with
some underage drinking. Our culprit is twenty and getting reasonable
drunk. Some of his buddies, mostly harmless low level criminals and
idiots and getting drunk with him. During the course of the night
they joke about robbing this girls house. The culprit know they
aren’t straight arrows but doesn’t actually think they’re going to do
anything. Later on during the night they ask to borrow his
car. Intoxicated the culprit agrees knowing full well they might
actually rob this girls house. He also knew they might knock her out
if need be. Maybe you can see where this is going. Bad
stuff happened and the buddies, when committing a felony for the robbery,
accidentally killed the girl. So I ask you what punishment should be
meted out to our culprit for lending the car to his friends who went out robbed
somewhere and them killing them in the process. We will get back to
this before the article is over I promise.
Part of the reason things get so tricky
in law is this whole common law bit. Common law like so many parts
of our culture came over from England. Common law basically works
off of legal precedents. If there is a case and there other tried
before it than have similar circumstances you can refer back to it. There
were certain precedents set. With each case being different and
having certain mitigating factors you can refer back to all manner of cases
with varying amounts of similarities. When we break new ground and
broach subjects that have no precedent we are able to set important and new
precedents. Right now things like privacy, information and all sorts
of copyright law due to the proliferation and new uses of the internet are
springing up. Because the internet is a beast like no other it’s
difficult to draw conclusions off past cases. There is another
system of justice that operates not off of precedent but off a strict code of
laws – the civil system – and that’s what Louisiana uses because they wanted to
be different and its difficult to argue with people with swamp dialects and
win. Actually it’s because of the prevalence of the French as we get
that system by ways of France and Spain though its roots are in ancient Rome. The
Romans loved them some strict laws. Just ask Cicero. But
I suggest against it as he won’t answer being very much dead for a long
time. So we’ve got this common law thing which is at times arcane
because you know sometimes we don’t get new precedents and the standing ones
aren’t terrible new. This can be a problem with some laws that may
or may not be morally troubling. One such law which can in certain
interpretation be at best morally murky the felony murder law. Now I
assume we can agree that murders and felonies are bad.
According to a free online legal
dictionary* (obviously the best choice for all knowledge) The felony murder law
is “A Rule of Law that holds that if a killing occurs during the
commission or attempted commission of a felony (a major crime), the person or
persons responsible for the felony can be charged with murder.” Now
you might wonder well why the fuck would we need that. Isn’t killing
someone always a murder. No you argumentative fool. Stop
arguing and being all foolish. It makes you look bad, and
ignorant. And you smell. Well maybe not smell but anyway…
killing someone could result in several different charges like manslaughter and
some other stuff I don’t feel like researching. I’m an analyst
you’ll have to talk to other people I know for actual paid for their knowledge level
of legal advice. So what this law does is take any killing, and this
we can assume include accidental/unintentional killing as well, and makes it a
charge of murder (generally not a good charge to have) when there is a felony
involved. Even more disturbing is the bit below from the same site.
“Generally an intent to kill is not necessary for felony-murder. The rule becomes operative when there is a killing during or a death soon after the felony, and there is some causal connection between the felony and the killing.”
Maybe you can see where this is
going. Reread the casual connection part. My mind screams
that’s some scary inclusive shit. I don’t like that. Here
might be why: “punishing accomplices as though
they had been the actual killers is perfectly appropriate.”
Remember that what if scenario that I gave at the
beginning, well, that was real. And the punishment? A
charge of murder and a conviction with life in jail without the possibility of
parole. For lending a car and making a bad decision when drunk. Here’s
the article:
In this article the author notes that
Canada, our neighbors above who do silly things like play hockey and provide
free and equal healthcare, abolished the law, “In 1990, the Canadian Supreme Court did away with
felony murder liability for accomplices, saying it violated “the principle that
punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.”
”
If this doesn’t scare you a little
think about your friends. Now think about your idiot friends who you
wouldn’t trust to watch your dog. Now imagine being held culpable
because of “some causal connection.” I’m already nervous enough in
general without having to worry about being responsible for my idiot friends’ actions.
Ben
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Thanks for posting. You are awesome!