A New York judge sentenced a woman who pleaded guilty to fatally shoving an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk to six months more in prison than the eight years that had been previously reached in a plea deal.
A New York judge sentenced a woman who pleaded guilty to fatally shoving an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk to six months more in prison than the eight years that had been previously reached in a plea deal.
What’s actually being punished? Would she have been sentenced to 8.5 years in prison if she pushed an 87 year old who was slightly less frail and instead of dying sustained major injuries? Would she have been sentenced if she pushed an extraordinarily healthy 87 year old who knew how to gracefully fall and sustained no serious injuries?
It seems that the act of pushing alone isn’t enough to sentence a person to nearly a decade in prison. There was likely no intention to kill, though that was the outcome. What if she sneezed on the 87 year old, and in a fit of panic the 87 year old fell over and died? Again, no intention to kill, though that would still be the outcome.
I think it’s clear this should be punished more intensely than sneezing, pushing an old person would very commonly result in serious injury, so this is definitely assault.
For cases where injury was sustained there is legal doctrine know as the Eggshell skull rule
What an odd rule! Thank you for the explanation.
I think the idea is the actual damages aren’t going to go down just because the person was frail. Someone with prexisting medical problems aren’t going to need less physical therapy compared to someone who is average.
This wasn’t a tort case.
This is a simple case of assault in which someone unintentionally died. It’s textbook manslaughter.
Sure sure, but 87 year olds are expected to be frail. It’s what they normally do.
No it wouldn’t, you have to prove intention to kill for a murder charge. This is manslaughter, a lesser but still very serious charge. Killing someone on accident is still a crime, shocker, I know.
Unless you do it with a car. Then you have a 90% chance of getting off Scott free.
So a car is a good way to go then for all of your manslaughtering needs
This is why she’s being punished. You cannot assault an 87 year old without expecting serious injury or death. Just like you can grab a 20 year old and shake them by the shoulders and they’ll be fine, but if you do the same to an infant they’re probably going to die.
I direct you to comments below, detailing the circumstances. She got drunk, became increasingly belligerent and violent… then took out her rage on this random old woman viciously. She showed no remorse, to the point of sociopathy.
https://feddit.uk/comment/3105205
Edit: In hindsight, I’m unclear if you’re suggesting she should see a longer or shorter sentence.
She was out celebrating 100 days until she got married, why does every mundane thing have to be celebrated? Just go out and have a good time with your fiancé. You don’t need an excuse.
we just have an alcohol epidemic. people feel the need to make an excuse to binge drink as much as possible.
Celebrating…100 days till marriage? That is fucking stupid.
Suuure… that is the real highlight of this story, the worst thing she did that night. >.>’
Holy fuck, what an unhinged person. Bad person right from reacting to “we close at 11” with aggression, but then just escalates it irrationally from there. Throws her food on her fiance (I’m guessing maybe he had the gall to tell her to chill out, or maybe he was just there and she thought he was a safe target), and then goes out and attacks an elderly woman because she “thought she might say something”. Then later meets up with her fiance again and blames him for “ruining the night” when it was all her own insane reaction to being told a place was closing and they’d have to hurry up.
Is she the avatar of the shitty entitled aggressive consumer who blames everyone else for their problems? Fuck her and everything about her.
Her sentence might only be 8.5 years but with her anger management skills, it’ll probably get increased. Though she’ll be locked up with a bunch of people who aren’t on their 80s, so she might not survive her next tantrum.
Well… from the descriptions of her actions, it seems like she has undiagnosed and untreated mental health issues. Which is kind of an even sadder indictment of society.
This is the problem of moral luck. We often want to punish people more because factors outside of the perpetrator’s control turned out badly. Either we should punish everybody harshly when they push an elderly person, whether or not it injures them, or someone like this should get a pretty light sentence. Yet we have an irrational pull to treat the cases differently.
So you’re saying that you don’t understand what manslaughter is. You ask a lot of questions, but I get the feeling that you’re not the type of person that is actually looking for answers
No, they’re just saying that instead of manslaughter being a more severe charge than assault, maybe it should be lessened to be equivalent. Similarly, maybe attempted murder should carry a charge equivalent to actual murder.
Muder is murder. Manslaughter is manslaughter. Intention, knowledge, negligence, does not matter for manslaughter, unless the intention was to kill, which upgrades it to muder instead.
Sneezing on someone? No crime.
Pushing someone? Crime.
This is why you’re not a lawyer and should never have any say in legal proceedings.
Stay in your lemmy fantasy world with the rest of the mentally ill.
You don’t have to be a dick about it Bob.