zlacker

>>YeGobl+(OP)
The most bonkers thing here to me is giving a man a death sentence because of a believed shaken baby death that he promptly took to the hospital.

>>jncfhn+Ze
That is in no way evidence against it being murder. Abusers do that kind of thing all the time.

>>flango+ep
Shaken baby syndrome is very unlikely to be the result of malicious abuse though. It’s almost always a deeply frustrated parent or caregiver who is desperate, trying to assert control over a screaming infant, and does not understand that this could kill them, or at least thinks they will not. It is child abuse, but hardly of the same nature as most people assume with the term.

Death sentence strikes me as an idiotic punishment.

>>jncfhn+dr
> It’s almost always a deeply frustrated parent or caregiver who is desperate, trying to assert control over a screaming infant,

That sounds like malicious abuse to me.

> and does not understand that this could kill them, or at least thinks they will not.

It would still be manslaughter at least, if not murder. And if shaking the baby was itself felonious abuse, then an accidental death resulting from that is probably felony murder in states with such statutes.

>>mcpack+iH
And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system? Congrats, you killed some undereducated, desperate parents who fucked up and lost their child.

>>jncfhn+FK
> And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system?

It suppresses the rate of vigilante justice. If the courts can generally do a better job than the vigilantes themselves, then society comes out ahead.

If we were to live in a society where parents can abuse their children to death and receive nothing more than a scolding from the state to be more careful in the future, then we'd have a lot more people killing each other in retribution. And once that starts in earnest, it often forms unending blood feuds. At the very least, imprisonment for manslaughter is warranted. For the state to mete out no punishment at all would be an abdication of their duty to deliver justice so that others don't have to seek it themselves.

>>mcpack+gQ
If blood feuds become that much of an intractable issue, why not target those regions for fentanyl-powered self-mollification?

That's obviously a galaxy brain argument, but what's to stop someone from going Tim McVeigh over a routine miscarriage of justice?

>>BeFlat+2S
What?

>>mcpack+Id1
When it's the government committing the unpunished crimes, what else do you think will happen?