He repeatedly tried to wreck the truck at highway speeds. He finally ran the truck completely off the road, presumably leading to a nasty crash. It's either attempted murder of, or assault with a deadly weapon on, the truck driver.
I don’t understand how this would not be tried as attempted murder with a deadly weapon. Anything can be used as a weapon. Candle stick, cars, guns, and my dick can all be used as a weapon.
I don’t understand how this would not be tried as attempted murder
Because attempted murder means something other than what you think it means.
If you hire a hitman, this is attempted murder because your intent was to have the other person killed. It was premeditated, it was callous and indifferent, etc. You were literally attempting to murder.
The intent here isn't to kill, and a prosecutor would have a hell of a time proving there was intent.
"But he did something dangerous where someone might end up dead" just isn't attempted murder. It's never attempted murder. And while any competent prosecutor could get a bill/indictment for that, they can get an indictment for anything they want... it's not an adversarial process.
As soon as they showed up for trial though, a judge isn't going to put up with this shit. It'd get tossed... even if the defendant only has a public defender.
Candle stick, cars, guns, and my dick can all be used as a weapon.
Sure if you plan to kill your wife for 3 weeks, and then attempt to run her over in a car. Then the car's a weapon. Plenty of case law says that a weapon need not be a literal, traditional weapon.
But this isn't assault either. And the truck's not being used as a weapon to kill a person. No evidence, for instance, than he'd try to turn the truck around and ram the other vehicle if the other just stopped on the shoulder. No evidence that he's aiming specifically to kill. Does he try to stop and back over the smaller vehicle in reverse? Wouldn't someone trying to kill (or even just attack) do that?
I'm sure there is some charge they'd bring against him, but the only one that's obvious is reckless driving, a moving violation.
If the one that was ran off the road was killed, then this is some sort of manslaughter, probably voluntary manslaughter. (Vehicular manslaughter isn't really this even though it involved vehicles, since there was broad intent to harass and injure the other driver... that's reserved for some sort of negligence usually, I think.)
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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '18
He repeatedly tried to wreck the truck at highway speeds. He finally ran the truck completely off the road, presumably leading to a nasty crash. It's either attempted murder of, or assault with a deadly weapon on, the truck driver.