> No, but they do get into the car reckless as to harming someone else
False, you can be charged with DUI while perfectly sober; DUI applies to far more than alcohol.
> Why is manslaughter different than murder?
Manslaughter means accidental, murder means on purpose; if you don't see the difference, perhaps you need to think about that a bit harder.
> When the state of mind is the same, why should luck in the outcome change the punishment?
If you don't see the difference between an accident and doing something on purpose as requiring different punishment, well then you just fundamentally disagree with about all of mankind. If your car tire blows and you hit another car and kill someone through no fault of your own, apparently you think that's an equal crime to murder. Really... c'mon... really?
> > When the state of mind is the same, why should luck in the outcome change the punishment?
> If you don't see the difference between an accident and doing something on purpose as requiring different punishment, well then you just fundamentally disagree with about all of mankind. If your car tire blows and you hit another car and kill someone through no fault of your own, apparently you think that's an equal crime to murder. Really... c'mon... really?
You miss the question here.
If I am driving my car and I take y attetion off the road for a moment to adjust my car radio, and then plough into another car...
1) ... And kill the driver of that other car
2) ... And injure, but don't kill the other driver
Why should y punishment for (1) be more severe than for (2)? My intent was the same, my poor behaviour was the same. Perhaps the difference between causing death and not causing death is the quality of the crashed driver's car.
Murder requires intent to kill. Man-slaughter also requires intent to cause harm. That's why there are seperate laws for vehicular death - causing death by dangerous driving or vehicular manslaughter. It's hard to meet the burden of proof required by murder or manslaughter.
At some level punishments based on outcome are a practical necessity. We cannot lock up everyone who takes their eyes off the road and causes a minor accident. Even though we know the did everything necessary to cause catastrophic injury, we let them off.
It's a balance between the modern concept of punishments based on state of mind and actions, and the oldschool concept of an eye for an eye, punishment based on outcome.
I agree! We create offences of "causing death by dangerous driving" and similar because we need to provide justice for the killed and because murder / manslaughter have (rightly) high burden on proof.
Please apply the principle of charity here: it is very likely that rayiner knows that "under the influence" applies to substances other than alcohol, and wants his conclusions to apply to those circumstances as well. (Although, personally, I define "sober" as not under the influence of any intoxicant, not just alcohol.)
Then he should know DUI applies to more than just drinking and shouldn't be making such a silly point. And being a lawyer means he knows the existing law, it doesn't mean his opinion about what the law should be in regards to punishment is any more valid than anyone else's.
I absolutely agree with your last sentence. My intention is not to stand on the law as authority, but try to work through the logic of the law.
Why do we punish people criminally? For doing bad things with malicious intentions. Intention is the most important thing in criminal law, because a guy who shoots at someone is equally a bad, culpable person worthy of punishment whether or not his aim is very good. On the flip side, someone who kills someone while driving in an accident that could happen to anyone is not worthy of punishment while someone who kills someone intentionally with their car is worthy of being punished as a murderer. Even though the end result is the same--the intention is what matters.
That's why drunk driving is illegal in and of itself. You make a conscious reckless decision to put other people at risk. Even if you don't hurt anyone, you're guilty of that act and that recklessness is a form of malicious intent justifying punishment.
>That's why drunk driving is illegal in and of itself. You make a conscious reckless decision to put other people at risk.
If you are a novice driver and you choose to drive, you are consciously making a decision to put other people at risk.
There are different skill levels of driving. A highly skilled driver drinking can easily still be more skilled than someone who hardly ever drives or has poor reflexes in general.
So what are we punishing for, reducing your effective skills and then driving? If so, why don't we just charge everyone with a crime who fails to drive once a week to keep their skills sharp?
> Why do we punish people criminally? For doing bad things with malicious intentions.
Agreed, however, the problem is what's considered "bad" isn't a matter of fact but of opinion. What is law is a matter of fact, but legal/illegal != bad/good.
Also, please stop calling it drunk driving, the law pertains to more than just alcohol which is why it matters and why it's unjust. Getting in a car and driving while sober can still get you a DUI because the law is stupid in defining what intoxicated/impaired means, this is especially important now that marijuana is legal for recreation in several states. Just because someone gets a DUI does not mean they were in any way reckless, beyond that it's just as reckless to drive tired as to drive intoxicated yet no one argues that should be DUI worthy, additionally "reckless" is a matter of opinion, not empirical fact.
The law is not logical, it is political, a popularity contest, not a logically evidence based means of helping society. There's certainly logic in keeping law self consistent for sure, which is where lawyers and judges have a role, but what becomes law has little to do with what is actually just. As you're a lawyer, you know this already.
I'm not talking about applying DUI to marijuana or people sleeping in cars, which is why I'm saying drunk driving and not DUI. I'm talking about why drunk driving is legitimately criminal even when it doesn't result in harm. And that's because it's voluntarily reckless conduct that creates risk to the public.
Law is absolutely logical, you just have to be willing to look at the premises. And it is absolutely a structured expression of what people think is just.
The premise of criminal law is that it's an action taken with malicious intent that makes someone a criminal, not just causing a bad outcome. The law follows that logic to its conclusions. For example under the Model Penal Code, an attempt at murder is punished the same as a completed murder. Someone who, with intent to kill, points a gun and shoots at someone is no less criminal if he misses than if he hits. Criminal law is about punishing culpable conduct. It's illogical to punish two people differently who engage in the same culpable conduct because circumstances outside their control lead to one result versus another.
Now, you can disagree with the basic premise and apply a different logical framework. Just because the premise of the law is that intent is the most important thing does not mean you can't believe something different, such as actual harm being the most important thing. But you gotta wrestle with the implications of that. If harm is the most important thing, killing someone should always be murder. Shouldn't matter whether you hit a jogger wearing all black at night or whether you ran over your boss in broad daylight on purpose.
In my experience, the people who complain about the law being illogical and not the same as justice are the ones abandoning logic. They know what resuls they want, based on what "justice" means to them, (X should not be illegal) and get upset that's not the law. They don't take the time to look at the premises underlying the law to see if the rules logically follow from those premises. If you do that, you'd be surprised how often you conclude "well I think that premise is incorrect, but I can see how the rule follows logically from that."
Ps: also, reckless is a precisely definable concept: when conduct causes a measurable rise in the risk of some negative outcome. Where the line between acceptable and unacceptable rise in risk can't be precisely defined and must be established by social concnsus, but that doesn't make it an illogical concept as you imply by calling it an "opinion."
> I'm not talking about applying DUI to marijuana or people sleeping in cars
Great, but I am, and that's the disconnect. I agree with most of your comment, but the issue isn't that the premise is wrong, it's that the implementation is wrong. When I say that law isn't just, that's what I'm referring to.
The law may be logical in its premise in the abstract, but the actual implementation of DUI laws strays far outside those logical premises, the real world doesn't match the abstract. You're talking about what the law intends to be, I'm talking about what it actually is because imho that's what actually matters. I don't care about the good intentions behind the laws, I care about those being fucked by the poor implementation of said laws.
We don't have the highest incarceration rates in the first world because our laws are just, we have it because they aren't.
> Where the line between acceptable and unacceptable rise in risk can't be precisely defined and must be established by social consensus
That's just rephrasing what I said, something that relies on social consensus "is" just opinion and is not precisely definable, and by that I mean it isn't empirical, rather it's a popularity contest, i.e. political.
Very interesting comment, thank you. I guess as this applies to drunk driving, the tricky thing is the intent to cause harm. One one hand there is very rarely an intention to hurt someone while drunk driving, however on the other hand there is a demonstrably increased risk of hurting someone. It seems hard to me to square those two things up.
I would disagree with the second sentence. I give more weight to a lawyer in regards to the law and politics. As lawyers they have put thousands of hours into studying these types of issues. I respect his/her opinion more in the same way I would respect any doctor's opinion on biological matters.
Well the lawyer himself just agreed with me on that point. The day defining justice is a specialized matter only the initiated have valid opinions on, is the day freedom is gone. Lawyers are trained in interpreting law, they have no special qualifications in defining what is or isn't justice. Law and justice have little to do with each other.
False, you can be charged with DUI while perfectly sober; DUI applies to far more than alcohol.
> Why is manslaughter different than murder?
Manslaughter means accidental, murder means on purpose; if you don't see the difference, perhaps you need to think about that a bit harder.
> When the state of mind is the same, why should luck in the outcome change the punishment?
If you don't see the difference between an accident and doing something on purpose as requiring different punishment, well then you just fundamentally disagree with about all of mankind. If your car tire blows and you hit another car and kill someone through no fault of your own, apparently you think that's an equal crime to murder. Really... c'mon... really?