There have been pushes to introduce an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit (or allow the prohibition of, I don't know which) flag burning. It didn't come close to making it...
You wouldn't necessarily have to do any action you'd associate as "charging" really. Just have a mat next to your bed you put the book down on when you're done reading and it'll charge. Think of the action as "put the book on the mat" instead of "change the book"
I'd argue that one of the more promising applications of ebooks--textbooks--strongly desire color. You can mark different parts of the same graph or illustration with distinct colors to make them easier to tell apart; you can mark sidebars and formulas and theorems and stuff in color so they stand out without hurting the contrast the way black on gray text would; and a B&W version of "Why We See What We Do", the text for my visual psych course, wouldn't work AT ALL considering half the book is illustrations of visual phenomenon concerning color.
"I know of one as UofM that threatened a grad student with expulsion if he kept circulating a page that cross referenced the new edition's chapter numbers with the older version of the text."
What happened with this? Did he stop? Was he expelled? I'd like to know what they thought they'd expel him for too... seems like a "if we don't like you" clause wouldn't be too popular...
You wouldn't be able to tell multiple restockings, but you WOULD be able to tell how many of the 199 cases of Coke were there both nights, and thus get a good guess as to what was sold. Remember, products will carry not just a product ID but also a unique ID for each item manufactured, so those 199 cases will all have different numbers.
The vulnerability is exploited by reading a tag of a cheap product and writing that tag on a more expensive product. You then buy the expensive product, but the register thinks it is the cheap product.
The duplicate message would arrive when someone actually got around to buying the cheap product. The register would say "hey, someone already bought this product!" but that probably wouldn't be for quite some time. If you paid cash, they probably wouldn't be able to trace you.
"We have a situation. There is a voter dispute, in Florida. They spent thirty-two million dollars since the 2000 election debacle to fix their voting procedures in Florida, and the first time they used it in a major race, let's say for governor, they f[beep]ed it up again. Now here's what I want to say, to Florida, and I'm sorry to have to say this, we're gonna have to let you go. I'm sorry.
"I'm not saying you didn't try hard... There could be a wonderful chance for you to catch on with South America... And you've certainly done some good work in the past, I think the wet t-shirt contest was a wonderful, um... smuggled pot, thank you... But unfortunately it's just not fair to the other forty nine states. And if you don't think we're serious, we've already gotten Puerto Rico to take your job. So there you have it Florida."
Actually, some (reasonable, or at least as reasonable as most others) standards of counting would have put Gore ahead even with the votes that were cast.
Every e-voting discussion someone asks this... this is what I posted last time, combined with ideas from other people:
1) Accuracy. A secure evoting system should be 100% accurate. Unless you happen to have more than 2^32-1 voters in your district all voting for the same person. Now look at Canada. Count the votes 5 times. Do you think you'll get one result, or five? I'm betting on the five. Humans make mistakes. Granted, they will probably be close, but there have been elections in the US (not presidential, but the point stands) decided by literally 12 votes in a large populated area. A couple states in the US in 2000 were, IIRC, decided by under 100 votes.
2) Along with that idea: judgement calls. Maybe the person made a stray mark and didn't notice; was it intended as a vote? You have to decide. With electronic voting, the system says "ok, here's who you voted for" and you can rest assured that the machine recorded it correctly. (We're talking a good system here, not a Diebold system.)
3) Speed. For better or for worse, we're an impatient country. If we can be told the vote totals right after elections close, we're happier.
4) Along with #2, the electronic machine can verify your votes and tell you if you overvoted (in which case you can't submit) or undervoted (in which case it just asks for confirmation). In other words, the DRE can make sure someone doesn't misvote.
5) It is much easier to offer different languages. You don't have precincts ordering boatloads of extra ballots because that many people could show up for the election.
6) People with disabilities can use e-voting systems without assistance. See the ADA's amicus curae briefs in many casese.
7) Even in a recount, there would be no problem to discern the voter's intent. The printer prints a ballot with the names of the people the voter voted for and out it goes. No holding up the ballot to the light to figure out if the ink is closer to a "Bush" shape than a "Kerry" shape.
See the original discussion. There's a fairly hefty discussion that ensued from it, so there's a fair chance that any objections you have were brought up there and you can read them any my responses there and save both of us time.
One of these days I'll write a full description of the evoting system I imagine... maybe now. We'll see.
It's common to have combined elections here (eg local plus scottish parliament, local plus European), so 3 or 4 ballots aren't unknown.
Are 100 ballots unknown though? And yes, there are ballots in the US that have over a hundred measures on them. Especially in jurisdictions (*cough* California *cough*) that put forth tons of referenda in addition to all the local, state, and federal offices. One/. poster claimed in the last discussion on this topic that their last ballot had about 135 measures.
('course, not everyone is gonna vote for all of these (- an understatement too, sadly), but the job is still gonna be astronomically more lengthy than even a large ballot in many other countries.)
Machines would definitely need to cut the ballots. Other than that, have a big box they fall into and pretty much any semblance of being able to figure out who voted for who would go away. I doubt the distribution of votes changes much over the course of a day, so it's not like the people who vote before noon are all gonna vote for Kerry and the people who vote after are all gonna vote for Bush. So looking at the stack at the end of the day wouldn't give much more information than looking at the stack an hour into the vote.
And remember, any place that has paper ballots now would have the same problem, but I haven't heard of any acts like this.
(If you're still concerned, put a fan in the box or shake it or something.)
Sounds like you are paranoid. If someone did that? Well, I am sure that there are plenty of rooms at the federal prison in Terre Haute, IN.
Not paranoid, because it's happened. You need to go back and take the second (probably) semester of U.S. history. That's why laws were passed requiring anonymous voting in the first place. Bosses of big companies were telling workers to vote for the candidate that is friendly to them and unfriendly to the workers or be fired. The bosses would go look at the voting records or get a receipt to verify the votes.
There are absolutely a million ways to make a system where I can cast a vote, get an anonymous key number specific to my vote, and go home and verify it over the net. HELL, it isn't even expensive. How many server farms do you need to make it 'net accessible? We are talking 270 million hits. Yes that is quite a bit. But when you talk about the federal gov't, that ain't squat.
Don't even tell me that the receipt is the problem. It doesn't even need to tell you on the receipt WHO YOU VOTED FOR. It only needs to tell you the way to access your vote to verify it.
If it tells you the way to access your vote it also tells your employer the way to access your vote. The most that system could do is to tell you if you voted, which is pretty useless really. It can't tell you who you voted for, or your employer can demand that you show them. (You could solve this problem by allowing people to change the displayed vote, but that opens up a whole new can of worms by making such a record useless for recounts, which is much of the reason for having it in the first place.)
I'm not saying that if anonymous voting went away you'd see instant widespread corruption. BUT THE RISK IS TOO GREAT. We all know how corrupt businesses are and how they will do anything, even criminal acts, to gain an edge. Allowing people to verify voting in any location outside of the polling place opens the door to corruption of the vote *casting* process. Such is, IMO, much more dangerous than corruption in the vote *counting* process.
This is why I would take unverified, fraud-susceptable DRE machies over ones that allow people to check who they voted for in any place where another person would be allowed.
(It is, of course, completely unnecessary that we should have such a choice between two great evils.)
Statistics show that eating, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beverages (soda, water) is equally as dangerous while driving if not more dangerous then talking on the cell phone. Do you want to ban these too? Should I get pulled over for taking a sip of my Pepsi?
These are momentary distractions. Your sip of Pepsi takes probably under 5 seconds.
Where do you draw the line?
At least beyond cell phones... some studies put the danger caused by them at the level of drunk driving.
Let me ask you this: since it's very possible to speed safely, should we remove speed limits because they are restricting your "freedom"? Alcohol affects people differently; should we get rid of the 0.08 limit and allow people who can take a lot to drive beyond that since the drunk driving laws restrict that? Let ME ask YOU where the line should be drawn. Why should cell phone usage fall on the "allow" side of it?
Okay, I Googled a bit more and discovered a couple things:
First, common law murder includes recklessness.
Second, extremely reckless behavior has been held in courts to imply malice. (This is a hand-me-down from common law; see above.) Thus several of the states that I said don't have reckless murder, specifically the ones that use the "unlawful killing with malice, either expressed or implied" type of definition (I think a bit more than half of the ones I named), actually *do* have reckless murder.
You really don't get it, do you? Murder is the intent to kill
If someone is not getting something here, it's you. Murder is usually an intentional killing, but it can also mean causing a death through extreme negligence in roughly half the states. ("Extreme negligence" is my term; one common formulation is "recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life"; Model Penal Code, section 210.2(1)(b).) A sample of murder statutes across the nation:
Alaska (the jurisdiction in question:
AS 11.41.110. Murder in the Second Degree.
(a) A person commits the crime of murder in the second degree if....(2) the person knowingly engages in conduct that results in the death of another person under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life;....
Alabama:
Section 13A-6-2 Murder.
(a) A person commits the crime of murder if:....(2) Under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life, he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person other than himself, and thereby causes the death of another person;....
Arizona has a clause almost the same as Alabama
California does not have a clause for recklessness (they are still using an old-style crimes code not based at all on the MPC); Georgia also does not have a clause for reckless murder (they do seem to be using a modern crimes code); Massachusetts also has no reckless murder; Nevada too;Missouri; Ohio; Texas
Maryland statutes don't define murder and use the English common law definition; I do not know if this includes reckless murder; Virginia too apparently
Wisconsin has no murder charge, and divides homicides up into intentional homicide and reckless homicide (and others)
Florida: 782.04 Murder.--.... (2) The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, is murder in the second degree and constitutes a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment for a term of years not exceeding life or as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.....
Kentucky:
507.020 Murder. (1) A person is guilty of murder when:..(b) Including, but not limited to, the operation of a motor vehicle under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life, he wantonly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person and thereby causes the death of another person.
Maine 1. A person is guilty of murder if the person:.... B. Engages in conduct that manifests a depraved indifference to the value of human life and that in fact causes the death of another human being
New Hampshire uses the MPC definition almost word-for-word, which includes recklessness
New York: Section 125.25 Murder in the second degree
A person is guilty of murder in the second degree when:....2. Under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person....
North Dakota: 12.1-16-01. Murder. 1. A person is guilty of murder, a class AA felony, if the person:....b. Causes the death of another human being under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life;....
To sum up: based on this hopefully representative sample, in roughly half the states, extreme negligence will suffice for a murder conviction; intent is not needed.
And I may be a sharpshooter and be able to shoot a gun through a crowded mall without hitting anyone, but that doesn't mean that I should not be charged with reckless endangerment.
Killing someone during the commission of a crime is regarded as murder, atleast in my jurisdiction.
Actually, killing someone during the commission of a felony is murder. (And not even all felonies.) Reckless driving is a misdemeanor in any juridiction I know of, and thus would result in the application of the misdemeanor-manslaughter rule, if it exists in your juridiction, rather than felony-murder.
Thus either "driving without due care and diligence" is a felony, you have a misdemeanor-murder rule, or you're wrong in this case. The first could be true, the second is almost certainly false if you're in a jurisdiction with laws based on English common law (e.g. essentially the entire US), so I tend toward the third view.
For example, two crooks rob a bank, the police kill one, the other one is automatically a murderer, because his pal was killed by police during their crime... (ok, prosecutors don't usually do this, but they have before)
Even under jurisdictions with felony-murder, such a conclusion is not widespread. Most follow the "agent" theory, which says that the perps are only responsible for crimes committed by their agents. The officer isn't an agent, and thus the felony-murder rule doesn't apply to killings by the officer.
(You very well may live in a jurisdiction that uses the "proximate cause" theory--as opposed to the agent theory--though, so the above paragraph is there for people's interest and information rather than as a correction.)
BTW: to your parent (my grandparent): murder implies intent OR extreme negligence; manslaughter implies gross negligence.
By degree of guilt, I meant that I am not sure he committed the crime he is being accused of. You are assuming that he is guilty of the crime he is accused of. Don't.
Please don't think that I'm jumping to the conclusion that he's guilty, as much as it appears so from my question. If I were put on the jury, I think I would give him a fair trial (though as I'll say in a sec, I'm not sure that I would be able to).
I've done a lot of legal reading lately, and am thus sorta used to what I hear are law school style hypotheticals where the professor says "this, this, and this happened; what, if anything, is the defendant guilty of?" and where the "this, this, and this" are undisputed as the events are described from a God-like, all-knowing point of view.
Also, I think the question "If someone is watching a movie as they are driving and they kill someone, is that recklessness of the degree required to support a murder conviction?" is a much more interesting question than "Do the facts in the Erwin Petterson case support that he was watching a movie?", and thus I was implicitly talking about the former question rather than the latter. I should have said "If he was watching a movie, I think this guy bears a very high degree of guilt..."
(It's this reason that makes me slightly wary about if I could give a fair trial, but I think in the context of a trial it wouldn't affect me. But maybe that's wishful thinking. I don't know.)
Sending someone to prison for 5 years for a crime with no intent would be unbelievably cruel, and also unbelievably wasteful of tax dollars. If you feel that this crime constitutes criminal negligence, then I would expect a higher burden of proof than has been exhibited in this case.
Drunk drivers routinely get sentenced to 5 years here in PA, and there's no intent there. The Model Penal Code authorizes sentences of up to 10 years for manslaughter (reckless killing of another--note the lack of intent), so I think my 5-10 years is about right. A bit on the upper end of the scale, but about right nonetheless. (The MPC doesn't have a special vehicular homicide charge, but if it did, it would likely be a second degree felony like manslaughter.)
As notasheep said, you can quite easily be responsible for murder without intent.
As an alternate definition, the American Law Institute defines murder in their Model Penal Code (off of which many state crimes codes and legal decisions are based) as a killing that is done purposely, knowingly, or recklessly under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life. The latter does not include intent.
I think this guy bears a very high degree of guilt. He was behaving at least very recklessly. Enough to support a murder charge, I don't know. Would have to actually see the trial. But it's close.
But also, prison serves as a deterrant. If someone else sees this guy get 30 years, maybe they will think twice about watching a movie while driving.
I would say parole the guy in maybe 5-10 years though. That won't get as much publicity, and would not decrease the deterrant significantly.
If he drives recklessly again though, throw the book at him...
I don't think making an example of someone definitely entails that it's unjust... I think that could as easily be seen as just saying that they should establish a precedent that behavior such as this is murder 2 (a crime more severe than one might think by just reading the statutes) and not a form of manslaugher or negligent homicide.
No, it wouldn't. It'd be second degree murder in jurisdictions that distinguish degrees (most or all of them).
The killing would be committed recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life (the ALI's language in the Model Penal Code), and would be murder.
Reckless killing without the indifference would be manslaughter.
(Recklessness appears to about correspond to gross negligence in some jurisdictions)
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I'm missing sarcasm or something here, but do you even know what a fuel cell is?
It combines hydrogen and oxygen, capturing the energy released in the reaction of them turning into water. Note the lack of any sort of gasoline...
The hydrogen very well may originate from hydrocarbons (i.e. oil), but you won't be carrying around that equipment with you.
"If any of the OSTG netops staff are reading this, thanks again for all your help in recent weeks."
Don't you mean:
"If any of the OSTG netops staff are reading this, GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY BASTARDS!"
Kidding of course... nice work fellas.
There have been pushes to introduce an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit (or allow the prohibition of, I don't know which) flag burning. It didn't come close to making it...
You wouldn't necessarily have to do any action you'd associate as "charging" really. Just have a mat next to your bed you put the book down on when you're done reading and it'll charge. Think of the action as "put the book on the mat" instead of "change the book"
I'd argue that one of the more promising applications of ebooks--textbooks--strongly desire color. You can mark different parts of the same graph or illustration with distinct colors to make them easier to tell apart; you can mark sidebars and formulas and theorems and stuff in color so they stand out without hurting the contrast the way black on gray text would; and a B&W version of "Why We See What We Do", the text for my visual psych course, wouldn't work AT ALL considering half the book is illustrations of visual phenomenon concerning color.
And what about flipping through pages? I haven't seen anything that's really analogous... like you're looking for a specific passage or something
"I know of one as UofM that threatened a grad student with expulsion if he kept circulating a page that cross referenced the new edition's chapter numbers with the older version of the text."
What happened with this? Did he stop? Was he expelled? I'd like to know what they thought they'd expel him for too... seems like a "if we don't like you" clause wouldn't be too popular...
You wouldn't be able to tell multiple restockings, but you WOULD be able to tell how many of the 199 cases of Coke were there both nights, and thus get a good guess as to what was sold. Remember, products will carry not just a product ID but also a unique ID for each item manufactured, so those 199 cases will all have different numbers.
What the AC's saying is this:
The vulnerability is exploited by reading a tag of a cheap product and writing that tag on a more expensive product. You then buy the expensive product, but the register thinks it is the cheap product.
The duplicate message would arrive when someone actually got around to buying the cheap product. The register would say "hey, someone already bought this product!" but that probably wouldn't be for quite some time. If you paid cash, they probably wouldn't be able to trace you.
Quoteth Jon Stewart:
"We have a situation. There is a voter dispute, in Florida. They spent thirty-two million dollars since the 2000 election debacle to fix their voting procedures in Florida, and the first time they used it in a major race, let's say for governor, they f[beep]ed it up again. Now here's what I want to say, to Florida, and I'm sorry to have to say this, we're gonna have to let you go. I'm sorry.
"I'm not saying you didn't try hard... There could be a wonderful chance for you to catch on with South America... And you've certainly done some good work in the past, I think the wet t-shirt contest was a wonderful, um... smuggled pot, thank you... But unfortunately it's just not fair to the other forty nine states. And if you don't think we're serious, we've already gotten Puerto Rico to take your job. So there you have it Florida."
Actually, some (reasonable, or at least as reasonable as most others) standards of counting would have put Gore ahead even with the votes that were cast.
Every e-voting discussion someone asks this... this is what I posted last time, combined with ideas from other people:
1) Accuracy. A secure evoting system should be 100% accurate. Unless you happen to have more than 2^32-1 voters in your district all voting for the same person. Now look at Canada. Count the votes 5 times. Do you think you'll get one result, or five? I'm betting on the five. Humans make mistakes. Granted, they will probably be close, but there have been elections in the US (not presidential, but the point stands) decided by literally 12 votes in a large populated area. A couple states in the US in 2000 were, IIRC, decided by under 100 votes.
2) Along with that idea: judgement calls. Maybe the person made a stray mark and didn't notice; was it intended as a vote? You have to decide. With electronic voting, the system says "ok, here's who you voted for" and you can rest assured that the machine recorded it correctly. (We're talking a good system here, not a Diebold system.)
3) Speed. For better or for worse, we're an impatient country. If we can be told the vote totals right after elections close, we're happier.
4) Along with #2, the electronic machine can verify your votes and tell you if you overvoted (in which case you can't submit) or undervoted (in which case it just asks for confirmation). In other words, the DRE can make sure someone doesn't misvote.
5) It is much easier to offer different languages. You don't have precincts ordering boatloads of extra ballots because that many people could show up for the election.
6) People with disabilities can use e-voting systems without assistance. See the ADA's amicus curae briefs in many casese.
7) Even in a recount, there would be no problem to discern the voter's intent. The printer prints a ballot with the names of the people the voter voted for and out it goes. No holding up the ballot to the light to figure out if the ink is closer to a "Bush" shape than a "Kerry" shape.
See the original discussion. There's a fairly hefty discussion that ensued from it, so there's a fair chance that any objections you have were brought up there and you can read them any my responses there and save both of us time.
One of these days I'll write a full description of the evoting system I imagine... maybe now. We'll see.
It's common to have combined elections here (eg local plus scottish parliament, local plus European), so 3 or 4 ballots aren't unknown.
/. poster claimed in the last discussion on this topic that their last ballot had about 135 measures.
Are 100 ballots unknown though? And yes, there are ballots in the US that have over a hundred measures on them. Especially in jurisdictions (*cough* California *cough*) that put forth tons of referenda in addition to all the local, state, and federal offices. One
('course, not everyone is gonna vote for all of these (- an understatement too, sadly), but the job is still gonna be astronomically more lengthy than even a large ballot in many other countries.)
Machines would definitely need to cut the ballots. Other than that, have a big box they fall into and pretty much any semblance of being able to figure out who voted for who would go away. I doubt the distribution of votes changes much over the course of a day, so it's not like the people who vote before noon are all gonna vote for Kerry and the people who vote after are all gonna vote for Bush. So looking at the stack at the end of the day wouldn't give much more information than looking at the stack an hour into the vote.
And remember, any place that has paper ballots now would have the same problem, but I haven't heard of any acts like this.
(If you're still concerned, put a fan in the box or shake it or something.)
Sounds like you are paranoid. If someone did that? Well, I am sure that there are plenty of rooms at the federal prison in Terre Haute, IN.
Not paranoid, because it's happened. You need to go back and take the second (probably) semester of U.S. history. That's why laws were passed requiring anonymous voting in the first place. Bosses of big companies were telling workers to vote for the candidate that is friendly to them and unfriendly to the workers or be fired. The bosses would go look at the voting records or get a receipt to verify the votes.
There are absolutely a million ways to make a system where I can cast a vote, get an anonymous key number specific to my vote, and go home and verify it over the net. HELL, it isn't even expensive. How many server farms do you need to make it 'net accessible? We are talking 270 million hits. Yes that is quite a bit. But when you talk about the federal gov't, that ain't squat.
Don't even tell me that the receipt is the problem. It doesn't even need to tell you on the receipt WHO YOU VOTED FOR. It only needs to tell you the way to access your vote to verify it.
If it tells you the way to access your vote it also tells your employer the way to access your vote. The most that system could do is to tell you if you voted, which is pretty useless really. It can't tell you who you voted for, or your employer can demand that you show them. (You could solve this problem by allowing people to change the displayed vote, but that opens up a whole new can of worms by making such a record useless for recounts, which is much of the reason for having it in the first place.)
I'm not saying that if anonymous voting went away you'd see instant widespread corruption. BUT THE RISK IS TOO GREAT. We all know how corrupt businesses are and how they will do anything, even criminal acts, to gain an edge. Allowing people to verify voting in any location outside of the polling place opens the door to corruption of the vote *casting* process. Such is, IMO, much more dangerous than corruption in the vote *counting* process.
This is why I would take unverified, fraud-susceptable DRE machies over ones that allow people to check who they voted for in any place where another person would be allowed.
(It is, of course, completely unnecessary that we should have such a choice between two great evils.)
Statistics show that eating, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beverages (soda, water) is equally as dangerous while driving if not more dangerous then talking on the cell phone. Do you want to ban these too? Should I get pulled over for taking a sip of my Pepsi?
These are momentary distractions. Your sip of Pepsi takes probably under 5 seconds.
Where do you draw the line?
At least beyond cell phones... some studies put the danger caused by them at the level of drunk driving.
Let me ask you this: since it's very possible to speed safely, should we remove speed limits because they are restricting your "freedom"? Alcohol affects people differently; should we get rid of the 0.08 limit and allow people who can take a lot to drive beyond that since the drunk driving laws restrict that? Let ME ask YOU where the line should be drawn. Why should cell phone usage fall on the "allow" side of it?
Okay, I Googled a bit more and discovered a couple things:
First, common law murder includes recklessness.
Second, extremely reckless behavior has been held in courts to imply malice. (This is a hand-me-down from common law; see above.) Thus several of the states that I said don't have reckless murder, specifically the ones that use the "unlawful killing with malice, either expressed or implied" type of definition (I think a bit more than half of the ones I named), actually *do* have reckless murder.
You really don't get it, do you? Murder is the intent to kill
....(2) the person knowingly engages in conduct that results in the death of another person under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life; ....
....(2) Under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life, he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person other than himself, and thereby causes the death of another person; ....
.... ....
..(b) Including, but not limited to, the operation of a motor vehicle under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life, he wantonly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person and thereby causes the death of another person.
....
....2. Under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person....
....b. Causes the death of another human being under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life;....
If someone is not getting something here, it's you. Murder is usually an intentional killing, but it can also mean causing a death through extreme negligence in roughly half the states. ("Extreme negligence" is my term; one common formulation is "recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life"; Model Penal Code, section 210.2(1)(b).) A sample of murder statutes across the nation:
Alaska (the jurisdiction in question:
AS 11.41.110. Murder in the Second Degree.
(a) A person commits the crime of murder in the second degree if
Alabama:
Section 13A-6-2
Murder.
(a) A person commits the crime of murder if:
Arizona has a clause almost the same as Alabama
California does not have a clause for recklessness (they are still using an old-style crimes code not based at all on the MPC); Georgia also does not have a clause for reckless murder (they do seem to be using a modern crimes code); Massachusetts also has no reckless murder; Nevada too;Missouri; Ohio; Texas
Maryland statutes don't define murder and use the English common law definition; I do not know if this includes reckless murder; Virginia too apparently
Wisconsin has no murder charge, and divides homicides up into intentional homicide and reckless homicide (and others)
Florida:
782.04 Murder.--
(2) The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, is murder in the second degree and constitutes a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment for a term of years not exceeding life or as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
Kentucky:
507.020 Murder.
(1) A person is guilty of murder when:
Maine 1. A person is guilty of murder if the person:
B. Engages in conduct that manifests a depraved indifference to the value of human life and that in fact causes the death of another human being
New Hampshire uses the MPC definition almost word-for-word, which includes recklessness
New York:
Section 125.25 Murder in the second degree
A person is guilty of murder in the second degree when:
North Dakota:
12.1-16-01. Murder.
1. A person is guilty of murder, a class AA felony, if the person:
To sum up: based on this hopefully representative sample, in roughly half the states, extreme negligence will suffice for a murder conviction; intent is not needed.
And I may be a sharpshooter and be able to shoot a gun through a crowded mall without hitting anyone, but that doesn't mean that I should not be charged with reckless endangerment.
Killing someone during the commission of a crime is regarded as murder, atleast in my jurisdiction.
Actually, killing someone during the commission of a felony is murder. (And not even all felonies.) Reckless driving is a misdemeanor in any juridiction I know of, and thus would result in the application of the misdemeanor-manslaughter rule, if it exists in your juridiction, rather than felony-murder.
Thus either "driving without due care and diligence" is a felony, you have a misdemeanor-murder rule, or you're wrong in this case. The first could be true, the second is almost certainly false if you're in a jurisdiction with laws based on English common law (e.g. essentially the entire US), so I tend toward the third view.
For example, two crooks rob a bank, the police kill one, the other one is automatically a murderer, because his pal was killed by police during their crime... (ok, prosecutors don't usually do this, but they have before)
Even under jurisdictions with felony-murder, such a conclusion is not widespread. Most follow the "agent" theory, which says that the perps are only responsible for crimes committed by their agents. The officer isn't an agent, and thus the felony-murder rule doesn't apply to killings by the officer.
(You very well may live in a jurisdiction that uses the "proximate cause" theory--as opposed to the agent theory--though, so the above paragraph is there for people's interest and information rather than as a correction.)
BTW: to your parent (my grandparent): murder implies intent OR extreme negligence; manslaughter implies gross negligence.
By degree of guilt, I meant that I am not sure he committed the crime he is being accused of. You are assuming that he is guilty of the crime he is accused of. Don't.
Please don't think that I'm jumping to the conclusion that he's guilty, as much as it appears so from my question. If I were put on the jury, I think I would give him a fair trial (though as I'll say in a sec, I'm not sure that I would be able to).
I've done a lot of legal reading lately, and am thus sorta used to what I hear are law school style hypotheticals where the professor says "this, this, and this happened; what, if anything, is the defendant guilty of?" and where the "this, this, and this" are undisputed as the events are described from a God-like, all-knowing point of view.
Also, I think the question "If someone is watching a movie as they are driving and they kill someone, is that recklessness of the degree required to support a murder conviction?" is a much more interesting question than "Do the facts in the Erwin Petterson case support that he was watching a movie?", and thus I was implicitly talking about the former question rather than the latter. I should have said "If he was watching a movie, I think this guy bears a very high degree of guilt..."
(It's this reason that makes me slightly wary about if I could give a fair trial, but I think in the context of a trial it wouldn't affect me. But maybe that's wishful thinking. I don't know.)
Sending someone to prison for 5 years for a crime with no intent would be unbelievably cruel, and also unbelievably wasteful of tax dollars. If you feel that this crime constitutes criminal negligence, then I would expect a higher burden of proof than has been exhibited in this case.
Drunk drivers routinely get sentenced to 5 years here in PA, and there's no intent there. The Model Penal Code authorizes sentences of up to 10 years for manslaughter (reckless killing of another--note the lack of intent), so I think my 5-10 years is about right. A bit on the upper end of the scale, but about right nonetheless. (The MPC doesn't have a special vehicular homicide charge, but if it did, it would likely be a second degree felony like manslaughter.)
As notasheep said, you can quite easily be responsible for murder without intent.
As an alternate definition, the American Law Institute defines murder in their Model Penal Code (off of which many state crimes codes and legal decisions are based) as a killing that is done purposely, knowingly, or recklessly under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life. The latter does not include intent.
I think this guy bears a very high degree of guilt. He was behaving at least very recklessly. Enough to support a murder charge, I don't know. Would have to actually see the trial. But it's close.
But also, prison serves as a deterrant. If someone else sees this guy get 30 years, maybe they will think twice about watching a movie while driving.
I would say parole the guy in maybe 5-10 years though. That won't get as much publicity, and would not decrease the deterrant significantly.
If he drives recklessly again though, throw the book at him...
I don't think making an example of someone definitely entails that it's unjust... I think that could as easily be seen as just saying that they should establish a precedent that behavior such as this is murder 2 (a crime more severe than one might think by just reading the statutes) and not a form of manslaugher or negligent homicide.
No, it wouldn't. It'd be second degree murder in jurisdictions that distinguish degrees (most or all of them).
The killing would be committed recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life (the ALI's language in the Model Penal Code), and would be murder.
Reckless killing without the indifference would be manslaughter.
(Recklessness appears to about correspond to gross negligence in some jurisdictions)