Doubting Didymus

Thankyou for clearing that up.

Okay, Legally she could be charged with murder. Lets talk morals, being in the moral foundations forum after all. Should she be charged with murder? I, for reasons stated in previous posts, believe that if anything can be called manslaughter, this can.

abe smith

ummm. Unfortunately there probably are citizens among us who have qualified for driving license and e.g. for other nominally-"normal" privileges & participations in ordinary everyday behaviours common to us all-here who, yet, are just too plain dumb-IGNORANT to understand the consequences of some of their own choices/acts. I read about these in the paper every day; and altho the dumb perps are often the Mothers, because it's they who usually take care of the kids, & of other people generally,.... it's obvious that ANY not-too-bright person can "arrange" unwittingly to injure or kill another incompetent person for whom they are expected to be responsible. There ARE not-too-bright people out-here, ja know; (And where is that Big Bright All-loving GORD of theirs, and those Gardeen Anchels when little kids need them?) Human STUPIDITY appears to be boundless; and legislating agin it probably isn't too effective. --- Beyond this of course there is the strong likelihood that there *are* people who WANT BAD THINGS TO HAPPEN to those for whom they are responsible/ The perps just want to get rid of the hassle. Some parents DO desire the death of their children, their spice, their dependent oldsters; and some people DO arrange for these to happen. Unfortunately, unless "we the people" arrange for safe dropping-off sites for the unwanted (old,newborns, little kids, incompetents of one sort & another) there's probably not any way to lessen the incidence of these brutal injurings & murders..... Part of alas the consequences of human freedom.

The Other Michael

Hi Abe,

I've heard that the Republican Party is full of compassionate people, so dropping off the unwanted at the local GOP headquarters is probably a good plan.

cheers,
Michael

Keith Russell

Greetings:

Theists often seem to equate a religious standard with an absolute, when it is in fact no such thing.

The only 'absolute' is existence/reality itself. Therefore, an objective system of morality would have to be based on observed reality, not on dogmatic or 'intrinsic' religious beliefs.

This woman's actions were wrong/improper/incorrect/bad/evil/immoral not because 'God said so', but because her children have the same right to life as all human beings. As their mother, she bears the responsibility for the care of those children until they are legally recognized as being able to care for themselves.

Her abdication of that responsibility led to the deaths of two human beings. Her actions (or inaction) prove that she is a danger, and the rest of us (society) have the right to curtail her freedom (to what degree and for what duration is not the problem of ethics, but of politics) based not on what a book said God said, but on what she actually did: the objective, demonstrable results of her behaviour.

'God' could have said or decreed anything, and throughout history various Gods (or interpretations of God) have disagreed about what constitutes moral human behaviour.

Yet, the truth of human existence has remained. Human beings are specific types of creatures, with very specific needs. A weapon that could harm a person in 5,000 BC could still harm a person today.

Moral values should not be based on the arbitrary words of 'God', but on the objective facts of our nature as human beings.

By that standard, what this woman did was demonstrably--objectively--morally and criminally negligent, wrong, and evil.

Leaving moral judgments to 'God' do not allow us to really understand WHY something is wrong or not. When someone says or writes that 'God' simply says 'this is wrong', there really isn't a 'why' involvled.

Again, 'faith vs. reason'. I would rather embrace a system that allows me to figure out the answer, than one which demands that I 'memorize the rules' without understanding.

And I would trust someone far more if they figure out the correct answer themselves, than those who are willing to blindly follow any rules.

Keith.

Mochaloca

I, for one, don't think there's enough information provided by the one newspaper article to make an accurate determination.

Of course, the prosecutor is quoted as saying that the murder charge will be pursued, but I usually take the prosecution's statements with a grain of salt, as a lot of prosecutors are elected officals & usually run on a "tough on crime" platform. Also, some prosecutor's offices have a "charging" policies they have to comply with to keep their jobs. Some simply overcharge in order to make their plea bargaining position stronger.

In this case, AFAIK, we don't know the mother's age, her intelligence level, or even whether the "alleged" facts (yes, I am a defense attorney!) in the newspaper account are completely accurate. I think the thing that looks bad for her is the report that she drove around for a while, trying to think of a plausible story to account for the deaths. While on the face of it, this implies a guilty mind, it could just be that she panicked. I have run across many cases where defendants made their cases substantially worse by trying to cover their "mistakes."

Morally speaking, the purpose of defining conduct that results in death differently means that society recognizes that not all such conduct merits the same punishment. IOW, not all killings should result in the perpetrator getting the death penalty. In one of the previous posts someone very clearly, and I believe accurately, defined the reported conduct of the mother as criminal negligence. It seems to me that the statute of manslaughter was established for just such cases as this. I don't see any purpose in trying to turn this into a murder case.

Just my opinion,

M.

Doubting Didymus

I agree completely.

In fact, could it be said that (assuming that manslaughter is in fact the crime), increasing the sentence to murder is immoral in itself?

DRFseven

Well, according to today's news, the judge has reduced the charges to involuntary manslaughter due to an investigative detective's written statement that the woman in question was "too stupid" to know that leaving the children in the car would harm them. And I have to say, that was pretty obvious; a mother intending to kill her children would not have done it while having her hair done unless she had mental problems. It was evident that she was surprised and taken aback to find them dead.

Believe it or not, there have been massive public service campaigns regarding children and pets being left in closed cars. When I was a child, in suburban neighborhoods, everybody left children in cars all the time, but usually the windows were open because no one was very concerned with car theft/abduction. Even now, I often see children alone in cars in large shopping area parking lots, though it's usually in cooler weather. It's the same thing with other hazards, such as handguns in unsafe places in the home, bad dogs, second-hand smoke; it takes an incredible amount of repetitious publicity to raise the general public awareness of some seemingly obvious dangers.

abe smith

LOve your solution Other Michael! as for public service announcements in newspapers and on TV & radio {someone-else here mentions]: chances are people as stupid [as this Mother appears to be] almost-certainly DON"T READ; and DON"T understand public service announcements;; are probably not much more verbal {in any form} than your cat, if that. There probably isn't ANY solution to prevent events of this sort we're considering ; as, in our democracy, we consider it immoral to sterilize those who lack the intelligence to care for children & their safety. Meanwhile what about all the children in Sub-Saharan Africa who will be orphaned when their parents die of AIDS?