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life in prison for helping ducks on highway

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League_Girl
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22 Jun 2014, 9:40 pm

Why the heck did she stop in the middle of the road instead of pulling over?


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vermontsavant
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23 Jun 2014, 6:40 am

i saw a disabled motorcycle stopped in the left lane of I 89 north in lebonon,NH last week.the guys bike was hugging the left lane line,litteraly hugging the line.

he had 4 feet of breakdown lane plus another 4 feet of short grass before the tall grass started.but yet he still had the tires of his bike toughing the white line of the left lane.he could have easlily got that bike 6,8 feet off the highway.

crazy :roll:


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Jono
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23 Jun 2014, 9:53 am

visagrunt wrote:
Well, first of all she was not sentenced to life imprisonment, at this stage she has been convicted, but no sentencing hearings have been held yet.

And while the maximum penalty for dangerous driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death are, indeed, life imprisonment, the facts in this case do not come anywhere close to meriting a sentence like that.

I expect the Crown to seek something in the vicinity of 6 years. Since conditional discharge is not available (as the maximum sentence exceeds fourteen years) I expect the defence to seek two years less a day (so that she serves it in a provincial jail rather than a federal penetentiary).


Canada has a maximum penalty of of life imprisonment for criminal negligence? South Africa has a maximum sentence of only 15 years for that.



League_Girl
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23 Jun 2014, 5:08 pm

Life imprisonment does not mean being locked in there for the rest of your life. Susan Smith got life imprisonment but she won't be eligible for parole until 2024. It just means put away for a while.

The woman in the story is facing 14 years behind bars.


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23 Jun 2014, 5:58 pm

Her way of trying to save the ducks didn't seem very creative or planned.


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23 Jun 2014, 9:30 pm

Even though she did something stupid, I think jailtime makes no sense here. She did no this out of malice or selfishness. She has probably learned from this mistake and won't do it again. You keep violent criminals in jail to keep them from endangering the public for a while. They should give this woman a more creative punishment, something like this: take away her driver's license for a while and make her do a road safety course or something. Jail is completely over the top.



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23 Jun 2014, 9:37 pm

Raptor wrote:
trollcatman wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
khaoz wrote:
Really a sad, unfortunate story. I think the sentence extreme, bu this is a complicated one.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... crash.html


She was not in trouble with the law for helping ducks. She was in trouble for illegally stopping in the traffic stream on a busy highway and people died because of her poor judgement. If she had stopped and there were no ducks and the same people died she would have ended up in the same trouble.

However, a life sentence? That does seem a bit harsh.

ruveyn


What if she had done the same thing and no one died? Would she also be punished the same way? It doesnt make sense to me that people get sentences for something when people die when they would not be sentenced if they did the same thing without casualties.

It would have been a traffic citation, probably an expensive one, for just needlessly leaving the vehicle blocking highway traffic with no injuries or deaths as a result. Since people died, their deaths are directly attributable to her negligence and there lies the big difference. She's apparently a dimwit, to put it bluntly. There's nothing wrong with signalling then safely pulling over to help animals but just coming to a complete stop ON the highway makes me question her competence to operate a motor vehicle.


But I feel that people should be punished for their own actions, not the results.

Person A is drunk driving ---> all goes well ---> no punishment
Person B is drunk driving ---> kills someone---> jail

My problem with this is that Person A is just as irresponsible, but gets away with it. Person B is not more "evil" than Person A but he goes to jail anyway.



visagrunt
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24 Jun 2014, 11:12 am

Jono wrote:
Canada has a maximum penalty of of life imprisonment for criminal negligence? South Africa has a maximum sentence of only 15 years for that.


For criminal negligence causing death, (and for that matter, dangerous driving causing death). Criminal negligence causing bodily harm has a maximum penalty of ten years.


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24 Jun 2014, 12:42 pm

And yet carers at a care home that were mistreating an elderly patient with Alzheimer's got just 2 months in prison. :roll:


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24 Jun 2014, 1:38 pm

made me think of this song

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTZBeA139Rw[/youtube]