Very Harsh!

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Here's what happened:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05 ... ion-felony

And I like this article in her defense:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the ... m-science/

If this has already been posted elsewhere, sorry!

Executive summary?

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5372419.html

Took me a while to find it in the Computers section though, this subform would probably have been better suited

Thank you, hartzofspace.
Just read those outloud to my twelve year old son.

In order to secure a conviction for a criminal act, mens rea (intent to do evil) has to be established. If the explosion was an accident, at worst the kid (or her parents) might be sued to recover damages to school property. I do not see a criminal act here.

ruveyn

Exactly!

You misapprehend the nature of mens rea. It is the intention to perform the act, which also includes the natural consequences flowing from that act. Mens rea does not require the intention to do harm. The offence of ciriminal negligence is sufficient to disprove by counterexample.

In Canadian law, there are offences for which a "specific intent" must be demonstrated, as opposed to the lesser, "general intent." The best know example is murder, in which the accused must have intended to kill the victim, or to cause harm to the victim and to have been reckless as to whether or not death ensued. Anything short of this reduces murder to manslaughter, which is a general intent offence and requires no malice for conviction.

She intended to conduct the experiment, and she knew or ought to have known that the experiment was not authorized. These facts alone are sufficient to establish any general intent offence that would be made out by her actus reusp.

School administrators are not allowed to use rational thought. I hope and pray she will find a good lawyer and a judge with his/her brain still intact. The whole story is ludicrous.

I remember one discussion with a school teacher about ten years ago who I went to college with back in the mid 70s. It had to do with schools taking control of prescribed medications of students. In particular, one girl in Oregon had recently died at school from asthma while her asthma drugs were in the custody of a school employee, not her.

My argument was that the prescription of those medications was between the doctor and the student and that the school had no say in the matter. If the doctor feels that the student should carry those medications with them to school, the school has no business whatsoever making arbitrary changes to that doctor-patient relationship.

The teacher argued that if they didn't keep all students from holding onto their own prescription drugs, they couldn't keep drugs of any kind away from the students. I completely fail to see the logic of his argument. It's as if the school staff and employees are so incompetent that they are unable to make any kind of a judgement call.

Establishing negligence to have a degree that is criminal is very difficult. Especially with an underage person. A person under the age of 18 cannot be presumed to have the judgment avoid criminally negligent acts. I thin it was silly to bring criminal charges in this case. There was no criminal intent. At worst is was a case of property damage and that can be actionable as a tort, NOT a felony.

ruveyn

This case is an embarrassment to anyone with a brain. If you can't figure out the difference between a terrorist and a school-grader experimenting with science, you are in trouble. I imagine this will be thrown out of court, but I have to wonder about the people who made the charge in the first place. The world is a difficult enough place without teachers and police officers abandoning common sense in favour of fear.

Maybe I should show this article to my husband. It might change his attitude toward my desire to homeschool a degree or two.

I really feel as if we are headed toward living in The Giver. Headed?? As soon as we start euthanizing people the third time they make an honest mistake that causes people discomfort, we'll be there.

I felt safer in the environment I grew up in-- where I could be assaulted walking down the street just for being different-- than I think I would feel if I were sitting in a student's desk today. I felt safer then than I feel sending my kids to school today.

Gotta wonder if this young lady is going to be turned off to science for now on. That would be a pity.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I agree!

Au contraire, it's not difficult in the least. There is an entire corpus of the Common Law dedicated to the application of the principle that recklessness can be criminal.

As for her being a child of tender years, a child can be assessed against the conduct of a reasonably prudent child. The failure to obtain permission to conduct this experiment is potentially more reckless when undertaken by a child than by an adult, since children are more often required to seek permission and supervision for their activities than adults.

As for your claim that, "there was no criminal intent," you are most certainly wrong as a general principle. Criminal intent is not the conscious decision to commit a crime. Criminal intent is the intent to perform an act that happens to be criminal.

That act is not criminal. It's about as dangerous as shaking a can of Coke and opening it. I hope that isn't criminal.

The people responsible for arresting her however are criminals and should be dealt with as such.