steven-simpson-gay-teen-burned-birthday

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Sorry, but I simply dont believe, that a grown up person didnt know that oil can burn. I mean you get to know this as 6 year old child, when your parents start to teach you about cooking and how to do an omelett. I think I got for being allowed to cook omeletts on my own a 30 minute description about that oil can start to burn in the pan, that oil cant be eased with fire, that oil needs to be separated from fresh air somehow, ending with the explanation, that if it ever happens that the oil in the pan starts to burn, I am told to use the gloves from the oven so I dont burn myself, to close the pan so no air comes to it, to open the window, and carefully throwing the pan in the garden so the firesource is out of the house....

Then I think every year the firework departement sent a guy to school, telling students how to act in case of various fires...

Then again in physics and chemie when you learn what processes lie behind "burning".

I mean people dont burn their farts because they dont know that they burn, they are doing it because they DO know that they burn. Thats what is burning farts is about. If farts wouldnt burn, people wouldnt do it. So if burning farts is the comparison, then people did know what happens when you give fire to a man that is wrapped in oil. There is no use to cry "Light it", "Light it", when you dont suppose that somethings special will happen when you do so. They sure didnt cry "Light it" because it was so dark, and they needed a candle to find their car keys in their bags.

Sorry, but absolutely no. This is no joke, this are no kids that are doing something because of not knowing. These are grown up people, responsible for someone dying because of being burnt alive.

Some days ago I posted in a forum, when discussing about how humanity goes forward, that 100 years ago people did not discuss if homosexuals should be allowed to marry, but instead if they should be burned or hanged. I simply cant believe it, that people really burnt a human in a western society. Dont know, for me this is as crazy as if people would start to stone others again. I thought we left such kind of violences behind and it makes me very sad.

A manslaughter charge fits the letter of the law since it cannot be proven he intended to light the victim on fire, and if he didn't mean to kill him then it can't be a "hate crime", at least as far as any charges related to the victim's death are concerned. Assault charges, had they been filed, might have been a different story. Whether having "hate crime" laws is a good idea is another thread for another time.

It figures that the gay community is out for blood in this incident, but the existing law does not fit a longer sentence and any changes made without the legislative process would be mob rule (and it's possible that new laws and sentencing guidelines would still not apply to the case).

The law of England & Wales--in common with most of the Common Law world--requires proof, beyond reasonable doubt, of two things in order to make out a conviction for any crime: the actus reus (the actions that constitute the elements of the crime) and the mens rea (the intention to commit the crime).

The actus reus seems abundantly clear, but that, alone, it not enough to convict without the accompanying intention. To further complicate things, murder is a specific intent offence (as opposed to a general intent offence)--not only must the accused have the intention to perform the acts that he did, he must also have had the intention to cause the death of the victim, or to have caused harm and been reckless as to whether or not death had ensued. One of the reasons that manslaughter exists as a general intent offence is so that it presents as an alternative verdict where specific intent has not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. To yet further complicate things even more, drunkenness may create circumstances in which an accused was incapable of forming a specific intent, meaning that the only possible conviction is a general intent offence.

There are centuries of common law jurisprudence, and over a century of judicial consideration of the statutory offenses involved. A court cannot disabuse itself of the legal restrictions upon it, and so a prosecutor must be mindful of it too. We may well impute intention, but a prosecutor must consider what a jury will accept as proof, beyond reasonable doubt, and that a judge will agree constitutes the mens rea required for the offence made out. Sometimes, a prosecutor has to take the practical decision that a guilty plea on a lesser, included offence better serves the public interest than the cost of a trial and an uncertain result.

You're uncritically comparing a sentence imposed in a particular case with a maximum sentence.

In Canada the maximum penalty for manslaughter is life imprisonment with a 25 year parole eligibility. But the reality is that no conviction for manslaughter has yet approached that sentencing maximum. If you are going to suggest that one system is "too punitive" you have to look not to the maximum sentences available to judges, but rather to the sentences that are actually imposed in comparable cases.