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In your opinion, which is worse?
Killing someone by accident. 19%  19%  [ 3 ]
Killing someone on purpose. 81%  81%  [ 13 ]
Total votes : 16
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 Post subject: Which is the worse crime?
PostPosted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:29 am 
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A lot of the time, people who kill other people get a lesser sentence if they can prove they didn't mean to, or weren't planning to kill the other person. (degrees of murder vs manslaughter, etc)

But why? Is it really better to snuff out the existence of another (allegedly) thinking being by mistake? Or should the taking of human life ALWAYS be carefully considered?

This has been floating around in my head for some time. What do YOU think?


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 Post subject: Re: Which is the worse crime?
PostPosted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 1:06 pm 
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Urban Wild Cat wrote:
Is it really better to snuff out the existence of another (allegedly) thinking being by mistake?

...Yes. This is a fairly simple question. Intent does indeed matter a lot.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 3:34 pm 
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Simple? Well, if someone was to kill you, would you prefer that they did it through carelessness or neglectfulness, or that they had a really good reason for it?

Personally, I find the thought of being killed accidentally to be far worse than something that has been carefully considered and planned. There's a level of care and service involved, y'know?

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 3:46 pm 
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Theres an enormous difference between:
a) A person who accidently drove a car into a person wearing a black T-shirt, and
b) A person who intentionally drove a card into a person because they were wearing a black T-shirt.

Just because it was carefully planned doesn't mean that the justification was entirely sane.

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:32 am 
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Ah, but there's another issue. If a person is insane, they also get a "lesser" sentence. I kinda think that taking pride in a person planning your death is a tad arrogant. No offence. I mean, it's one thing to say that your important enough to merit a hit. I know people who deal with such things. It's another thing to prefer to die from someone planning it. Dead is dead, ne pa?

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:41 am 
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The point is wether or not people are being punished, and they are. For both accidental and thought out murder. So there is some sembalance of justice.

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 3:45 pm 
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All I'm saying is that if a person is killed, it shouldn't be because "whoops, I wasn't paying attention". Human life, unique snowflake etc, and I think some thought and deliberation should go into the decision to destroy something unique.

The difference between "oops the safety wasn't on, your son is dead" and "your son is the next <s>antichrist</s> ForeverGrey and must be stopped"

Oh and Chaos? While I am an arrogant S.O.B (so no offence taken :wink: ), that's not what I meant. I meant that I'd like there to be a reason for my death beyond rando chance, or rampant stupidity.


Last edited by Urban Wild Cat on Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:56 pm 
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Macbeth Act V, Scene V wrote:
Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.


The fact that our daily lives and perspectives revolve around ourselves gives us a warped perspective of our own importance. To each of us, we're probably the most important person in the world. But to the world, we're a hunk of meat, a set of variables, an infinitesmal point on an infinitesmal point. Your death will almost certainly mean nothing, and asking for more is just plain old hubris.

I can't remember anything from before I was born, so I'm not really worried about what I'll be thinking about after I die.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:08 am 
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Eh. Personally, I'd just prefer to not die at all. But failing that, I would rather go out having made a difference.


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 10:55 pm 
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definently killing through intent.

after all, accidents happen at 100 mph on the freeway.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 11:37 pm 
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I'd prefer to be killed by intent. There's something embarrasing about being killed on accident (personally, that is).

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 Post subject: Re: Which is the worse crime?
PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:48 am 
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Urban Wild Cat wrote:
A lot of the time, people who kill other people get a lesser sentence if they can prove they didn't mean to, or weren't planning to kill the other person. (degrees of murder vs manslaughter, etc)

But why?


Let's say I was forced to press a button that would kill several thousand people -- i.e. I had absolutely no choice in the matter. Could I still be punished for a crime for which I could not be held responsible, no matter how horrible it was? Most people would say no, because it doesn't matter whether a person is the direct, objective cause of a criminal act, so much as whether they are responsible. It is this responsibility, rather than the objective nature of the act itself, that's the issue.

Killing someone accidentally is only a crime when it is the result of obvious negligence and irresponsibility. In this case, the killer can be blamed, and thus can be punished. However, having homocidal intentions is clearly worse than simply being irresponsible. The former is a case of not caring enough about others to take proper precautions; the latter is a case of not just not-caring, but actively wishing harm upon the victim.

Of course, one could object that if this is the case, why don't we punish people who have the desire to kill but are not in the position to fulfill their desires? Well, here's where things get complicated. Let's just say that once a crime is commited, intention becomes the main factor in determining how to punish the perpetrator of the crime.

...Not sure if everything I just said makes sense. I'm pretty tired right now and it could be all full of holes. But meh.


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:33 am 
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No, what you said makes sense.

While I will admit that someone with homicidal tendancies is more of a concern to the rest of us still living, I don't concede that their crime is any greater. At least they're HONEST.


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:09 am 
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another way of looking at this is do you want your cause of death to be from HOSTILITY or STUPIDITY

HOSTILITY will result in intentional murder
STUPIDITY will result in the "oops, i kilt them dead"

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:39 am 
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Blue Sun Missile wrote:
another way of looking at this is do you want your cause of death to be from HOSTILITY or STUPIDITY



Not at all. I would be quite content (after a long life, full of debauchery and decadence) to die in a glorious last stand against the implacable Burning Legion (copyright Blizzard Entertainment), and would much prefer meeting fate that way than by having some moron bump into me on the metro platform, tripping me onto the tracks just as the train comes.

However, a rushed businessman (though annoying) or a stressed mother, however careless, is not the ethical equivalent of the Scourge of Worlds.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:00 pm 
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The accidental or unintentional destruction of life is much more severe than that which is acheived through deliberation or planning.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:51 pm 
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Chaos wrote:
If a person is insane, they also get a "lesser" sentence.


I don't know if this makes any difference to the argument, but where I come from (Queensland, Australia), a person who is deemed to be legally insane at the time they committed a crime doesn't necessarily get a "lesser" sentence per se. They are in fact acquitted of the crime by reason of insanity but the court may order that they be detained indefinitely and the rest is left up to medical science to deal with. The idea is that the person should not be punished because they were not responsible for or able to control their actions. However the law allows that person to be held somewhere where they can cause no further harm. This could well mean that the person could be institutionalised for the rest of their life. I don't know much about the law pertaining to insanity pleas in other jurisdictions though.



And on the main topic of this thread...

I do think that a person should get a greater sentence if they kill somebody intentionally. The way I see it, there is a large difference between mere carelessness and having so little regard for human life one can kill a person deliberately. However, the matter is seldom so clear cut.

There is, I suppose, a kind of sliding scale of moral culpability and when the system works the way it is supposed to, this is reflected in the sentence a person receives. A person who displays such complete indifference to human life that they don't care whether their victim dies or not can still be charged with murder and (at least in Queensland) receive the maximum sentence for that crime. A person who kills intentionally can still get a lesser sentence because of mitigating circumstances (they can also have the charge reduced to manslaugher if they successfully plead provocation).

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 10:37 pm 
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What's the differance between a boyfriend finding out that his girlfriend has been cheating so he kills her later, or he finds out and in a fit of rage he kills her. On could claim temporary insanity but isn't it just as bad a crime.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:22 pm 
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Destroyer_of_ants wrote:
What's the differance between a boyfriend finding out that his girlfriend has been cheating so he kills her later, or he finds out and in a fit of rage he kills her. On could claim temporary insanity but isn't it just as bad a crime.


I think it is generally considered a worse thing to kill somebody in cold blood than in a fit of rage because the person has actually sat down and thought about it and presumably has had the opportunity to consider the magnitude of what they are going to do.

Incidentally, can anybody explain to me how the defence of 'temporary insanity' works? I hear it bandied about a lot, but I don't understand how it works or how it differs from straight out insanity.

In Queensland there is no such thing as a 'Temporary Insanity' plea as such. There is only an insanity plea. The question of whether the insanity is transient or not is only relevant to whether it existed at the time of the offence (and presumably the treatment the person would subsequently recieve at the hands of the medical profession).

An insanity plea would require that a person establish that at the relevant time they were: in such a state of mental disease or natural mental infirmity as to deprive the person of capacity to understand what the person is doing, or of capacity to control the person’s actions, or of capacity to know that the person ought not to do the act or make the omission. This would mean that he wasn't responsible for his actions. Just losing your temper probably wouldn't cut it and as far as I know, such a plea would probably require expert evidence from a psychiatrist.

I'd say the only other defences available to the individual in DOA's scenario would be provocation, which would require that he prove he was provoked to such a degree that an "ordinary person possessing ordinary power of self-control could not reasonably be expected to act otherwise" and would only allow him to reduce the charge to manslaughter anyway.

Or possibly non-insane automatism (I'm not sure if that exists under the Criminal Code or at Common Law), although I think that is normally reserved for people who suffer such disorders as somnamblism or epilepsy which deprive them of their ability to control their actions.

The person in question would at best be able to claim some extenuating circumstances and ask the judge to take it into consideration in sentencing.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:50 am 
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Sweet Sister Morphine wrote:
Destroyer_of_ants wrote:
What's the differance between a boyfriend finding out that his girlfriend has been cheating so he kills her later, or he finds out and in a fit of rage he kills her. On could claim temporary insanity but isn't it just as bad a crime.
Well thought out argument
Temporary insanity is usually "I blacked out, and when the next thing I remember is washing the blood off" I personally don't think that its that great off an argument because it's probably only true 1 out of 10 times.

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