Legal quibbling

[bunsen_h]

Mark Hutt has been found guilty of first-degree murder. The jury didn't accept his claim that he didn't intend his wife to die, and that he was really guilty only of criminal negligence causing death.

As it happens, I believe his claim.  I don't think he wanted his wife to die; I think he wanted her to stay alive so he could keep hurting her.

If he'd said that in court, I think they'd have believed him.  I'm not sure it would have helped his case.  It might have led to a conviction of second-degree murder or manslaughter, and classification as a dangerous offender, so in practise he'd never have been released unless he could convince the review panels that he'd been rehabilitated.  As it is, I think that his charge is technically inappropriate, but appropriate in practise.  He intended to continue performing activities that would inevitably have led to Donna Jones's death.

In general, I'm against the death penalty.  Often there's some doubt about the identification of the criminals responsible for the crime; witnesses are unreliable, evidence is shaky; police and prosecutors are more interested in convicting someone than in making sure they've got the right person.  And it would be much better that the criminal be rehabilitated and try to make some restitution to the victims, their families, and/or society in general.  And human life has great value.

This is one of the exceptions.  There's no question of Hutt's identity as the killer.  And I don't think there's any chance of him being rehabilitated or doing anything to make up for what he's done.  His best value to society is as parts for transplant.  A quiet painless termination would be appropriate, I think.
 

Comments

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

It isn't an exception to me; I remain opposed to Capital Punishment, though for much the same reasons you use.

He deserves the sentence he gets, which probably will be [literal] life in prison. Let him rot -- just like Paul Bernardo and (recently deceased) Clifford Olson.

He and others would make good denizens for asteroids in solutions such as George Zebrowski's Brute Orbits (https://www.librarything.com/work/48200).

The problem I have with your solution is that it makes *us* no better than the Communist Chinese. Think about it.

May the Bard forgive my paraphrase

[dewline.livejournal.com]

"Painted upon a pole as our rarer monsters are, and underwrit...here may you see the torturer."

I'm with duncanmac here. Besides, he probably hasn't taken sufficient care of himself to be useful as a transplant donor in the manner of the "Gil the ARM" stories' villains.

[henrytroup.livejournal.com]

I had a close call with being on that jury. Estimated duration and lack of employer financial support led to getting excused. I was paying fairly close attention as a result. Thursday's charge to the jury opened the door to a first degree conviction under (I believe) the doctrine that if you commit a felony and as a result someone dies, that's murder. The felony being repeated assualts. We'll see if they appeal.

I tend to agree that like rabid dogs, such persons are simply too dangerous to leave alive.

[con-girl.livejournal.com]

For more legal quibbling,
229. Culpable homicide is murder
(a) where the person who causes the death of a human being
(i) means to cause his death, or
(ii) means to cause him bodily harm that he knows is likely to cause his death, and is reckless whether death ensues or not;
Now it would appear that he might fail to fall under this because he might really not have understood that all of those things he did might cause death.
(b) omitted because it relates to killing someone other than the one you meant to hurt

but that doesn't save him from (c):

(c) where a person, for an unlawful object, does anything that he knows or ought to know is likely to cause death, and thereby causes death to a human being, notwithstanding that he desires to effect his object without causing death or bodily harm to any human being.

(c) isn't just about what he understood - it's about what we as society think is reasonable. I think it would be hard for him to fall outside this - which is why the only debate for me is whether it's first or second degree murder.

First degree can be found it was found to be planned or deliberate (so if you planned to beat someone up in the alley and they died that would be 1st degree but if you got involved in an alley fight and they died that would be 2nd). There are other types of first degree murder - most people know that killing a peace officer is one such, however, murder in connection with sexual assault or criminal harassment (which might have been implicated in this case) are others. I didn't follow the case closely enough to know whether any of these three possibilities applied. Certainly possible that they did or did not. If they didn't apply then the default is 2nd degree murder.

Murder reduced to manslaughter - is murder in the heat of passion due to sudden provocation and was not something applicable in this trial (it has a million qualifiers

manslaughter - that would only happen if 229 (a) or (c) wasn't the case - and I don't know how you'd win that argument. It also wasn't apparently an option.

The defence was arguing for 220 criminal negligence causing death. Which basically is that he failed as her spouse to look after her and she died. There were too many documented instances of intentional harmful acts for me to buy that. 2nd degree - possible.