Horrible teanagers

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http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/201 ... f=obinsite

I vote that the kids should be busted under the "abortion law" for the same crime that a doctor would be charged with if he/she performed an abortion on a woman without her consent. I know that in the UK a section of the abortion law was used when some low life beat his girlfreind (9 months pregnant) in the lower torso which resulted in her losing her unborn child. The crime in the UK is termed "Child destruction" and attracts a lengthy jail sentance.

Intent is incredibly important in criminal matters. Some of the students at this school sound like an unpleasant lot, and there are criminal offences here, but it sounds like they did not intentionally cause the loss of the teachers baby. I can't think of an appropriate charge in England right now, in Scotland I'd suggest Culpable and Reckless Conduct, which can carry a lengthy prison sentence.

It's very sad a minor dispute about nothing has ended like this.

I say the UK should follow the US and go for the idea of "felony murder", I first heard about it when watching Dr Kildare. The idea of this US law is that if you kill someone accidently during the commision of a felony then you are automatically guilty of manslaughter. So if while robbing a old lady of her handbag you scare her to death then you get busted for it.

Or if while robbing a bank you accidently kill one of your fellow felons by dropping a money bag on him, imagine you drop it on his foot and he has a freak reaction to it. then you are guilty of felony murder. While if you were both law abiding bakers and one of you drops a sack of flour on the other persons foot, and he has a freak fatal reaction the police would treat it as a tragic freak workplace accident.

In America two teenagers went to rob a store. The storekeeper pulled a gun and shot one of them dead.
The other teenager was convicted of felony murder because a death occurred during a felony.
That doesn't seem fair to me.

If an unborn child is killed is it murder? No because it is not a "person" at that stage.

But what if an unborn child is injured in a car accident? Should they have the right to sue for damages after they are born?

Felony murder laws are a terrible idea; they allow prosecutors far too much leverage in over charging people in order to secure plea deals, and are not a part of American justice that should be emulated.

This sounds like a freak accident, I could see charging it as a reckless assault or something to that effect, but I fail to see the point in locking anyone up for this; it's not as if by getting into a fight at school either of the young men planned to injure the teacher or her unborn child. Compensation would be fair, but again I fail to see the societal benefit of incarceration.

So what if you kill a woman that had sex 7 days prior? Is that a double homicide? She might have gotten pregnant, since her boyfriend didn't wear a condom. Or maybe it would be a triple homicide, since she could have been carrying twins. What if someone had killed Octomom?

Seems very fair to me, if you rob a shop in a part of the world where guns are legal and the use of deadly force to protect property is lawful then getting shot is an occupational hazard for robbers. While I think that for robbery that the death sentance is too harsh the real question is about free will.

I would say that the two teenagers made a choice (a bad choice) to rob the shop, while I think that shooting dead teenagers is sad their choice put in motion a course of events which lead to the death of one of them during the commision of a felony. Sadly for the boy who escaped with his life he has been held responsible for the death of the other robber, but if he had chosen to have no involvement in the robbery then the other robber would either be alive (the robbery might not have happened without the second boy) or he would not be guilty of any crime as he would have had no involvement with the felony.

ediited once to remove a typo