[ExI] Murder

[Mirco Romanato]

ben ha scritto:
> "Gary Miller" <aiguy at comcast.net> wrote:

> Should they?
> Only if you're going to redefine 'murder'.

> If you'd asked me before i read this, i'd have defined murder as 
> deliberately killing someone, and my dictionary supports this definition 
> (adding that it is an 'unlawful' killing).

> Deaths caused by drunken driving are clearly not premeditated (usually). 

They are not premeditated, for sure.
But people drinking too much before driving are behaving in a way that 
put others in a grave danger. And I'm not writing about a glass or two 
of Bud, I'm writing about people driving with enough alcohol to risk coma.
If you do something like this, you have a "Reckless indifference to an 
unjustifiably high risk to human life (abandoned and malignant heart)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder

And the example give is:
"An example of this is a 2007 law in California where an individual 
could be convicted of second-degree murder if he or she kills another 
person while operating a motor vehicle while being under the influence 
of alcohol, drugs, or controlled substances"

> I'd think that the term 'manslaughter' was more appropriate, and 
> wouldn't muddy the figures (somebody taking a gun and shooting a person 
> in the head is clearly a different thing to getting drunk and 
> accidentally causing a fatal accident, and should be recorded as such).

The difference is in the state of mind and behavior of the killer.
Near where I live a man was convicted for three manslaughters ("Omicidio 
Colposo" in Italy) in ten years (five people killed); all under 
influence of alcohol.
The penalties were so light it didn't do a day of jail and the judge 
retired his driving license after the third killing as this was the only 
  way to keep him out of the roads.

After this and others episodes a few prosecutors started charging for 
second degree murder arguing that these people know they are putting 
other in harm's way.

> I'm not saying that the result is any less serious for the victim. 
> Mainly, i'm objecting to the loss of information in redefining the word 
> 'murder' like this.





> It seems to me that the classification of drunk-driving-caused deaths as 
> 'murder' is more of a marketing exercise than anything sensible, with 
> the thinking that if you redefine it, and the penalty therefore 
> automatically becomes harsher, there will be more of a deterrent. This 
> might be easier to achieve than doing the sensible thing, and making the 
> penalty harsher without redefining drunk-driving-caused death into an 
> inappropriate category.

There is a difference from a manslaughter by an error: E.G. a nurse 
administering the wrong drugs to a patients.
If you modify the penalties of manslaughter you make harsher the 
penalties for all type of manslaughter. And this would be wronger.

Mirco
-- 
[Intangible capital is] the preponderant form of wealth.
When we look at the shares of intangible capital across income classes, 
you see it goes from about 60 percent in low-income countries to 80 
percent in high-income countries.
That accords very much with the notion that what really makes countries 
wealthy is not the bits and pieces, it's the brainpower, and the 
institutions that harness that brainpower.
It's the skills more than the rocks and minerals.
—Kirk Hamilton
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