This is a continuation of a discussion on the Opera page:lulu wrote:calvert:
But that negligence still killed 50 people. I don't think the families of the dead really care one way or the other. Getting in a car while drunk is not negligent homicide but murder. Unless it's self defense, murder is murder. Whether it's by "negligent homicide" or deliberate, 50 people are still dead.
No, it is "negligent homicide." Just check out the criminal code of any state in the U.S. For example, here is Section 19.01 of the Texas Penal Code:
§ 19.01. TYPES OF CRIMINAL HOMICIDE. (a) A person
commits criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly,
recklessly, or with criminal negligence causes the death of an
individual.
(b) Criminal homicide is murder, capital murder,
manslaughter, or criminally negligent homicide.
As my criminal law professor said in my first year in law school, "Homicide just means producing a corpse." But "producing a corpse" - even a lot of them - is not necessarily
criminal homicide. (As my professor further observed, "Doctors are in the corpse-producing business, but we don't usually throw them in jail.") What distinguishes one corpse-production from another, criminally speaking, is the intent of the corpse-producer. For example, what you call "self-defense" the law calls "justifiable homicide." It is not a crime because the actor lacks
mens rea, or criminal intent. Similarly, the various degrees of homicide - 1st, 2nd, and 3rd (which includes manslaughter and negligent homicide) - all reflect differing degrees of criminal intent or culpability. "1st Degree Murder" is the most severely punished because it is committed with "malice aforethought," or advanced planning (or special circumstances like a homicide, whbether intentional or not, committed during the commission of a crime). That is why it is the only homicide offense that carries the death penalty. "2nd Degree Murder" involves intent to kill, but it is not premeditated: a "road rage" killing is an example of this, or the husband who finds his wife in bed with another man and shoots the man. "3rd Degree Murder" does not usually involve any criminal intent at all, but some lesser mental state, such as extreme negligence amounting to "conscious disregard" for human life, that is deemed sufficiently culpable to warrant criminal sanction. Causing death while DUI falls into this category. So does a mother who leaves her 1-year old baby unattended in the bathtub while she goes to the store for some cigarettes, and the baby drowns. (She's a lousy mother, but not "evil.")
The point of all this is not legal quibbling, but rather to address the more fundamental question - raised by your comments on Pinkerton - of what we call "evil." To me, "evil" is a term that should be reserved for really bad acts done deliberately and with the intent to injure. DUI does not fall into that category, IMO. It is bad, certainly, but not "evil." For the same reason, I do not regard Pinkerton as "evil." Throwing the term "evil" around lightly diminishes the concept and dilutes the meaning. (And the grief of the survivors, BTW, is irrelevant to the degree of the offense. Yes, "dead" is "dead," but how the deceased got dead makes all the difference in terms of the degree of moral culpability, or "evil.")
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