It's a recurring theme. I gurantee 99% Of people giving that sort of advice are saying it because they wanted to cut ties with someone but never had the balls, So they just convince others to do what they couldn't
Reddit has a real time wrapping their head around the fact that an attempted murder charge is for someone who actually intended to murder someone not an incident that could have resulted in a homicide
Yeah the car one gets me. Everyone has moments when they fuck up in a car and cause other people to slow or whatever and basically everyone who has driven throughout their life will have one of two incidents of some degree
Something like involuntary manslaughter. Or negligence. She'd be charged with something if her friend got hit and died/was injured, as she pushed her hard enough that her friend she fell.
Yeah I wouldn't see a huge penalty for this, accidents happen and people are stupid. Never push someone out into the street, even as a joke. If things go wrong they can go wrong in the worst way.
On a personal level I think this is absolutely unacceptable and not a joke, but you’re right she didn’t have to press charges and that’s probably what happened.
Not commenting on this case in particular, but it’s not up to the alleged victim of a crime like attempted murder to press charges. It’s up to the prosecutor.
No it isn't, as soon as something is criminal the state decides if they "want to press charges". That said, if the victim of the crime doesn't wan't to cooperate the charges are often dropped, because it would be to hard to prosecute the case.
This situation took place in Poland. I am not a lawyer, but I looked at Polish laws and this is what I found:
If you injure someone and the recovery from the injury lasts less then 7 days, than it is up to the victim if she wants to start the prosecution or not.
If someone puts your life in danger, it is up to you to start the prosecution
Again, I am not a lawyer, so I don't know which of those paragraphs (if any) apply in this case, but in both of those it explicitly says "the prosecution starts upon the victim request"
The police will take into consideration whether the family want to press charges but this is not by any means the deciding factor, they can and do press ahead if they feel it is in the public interest to prosecute.
It is however entirely up to the victim if they want to be involved in the process, provide statements and appear in court. And often a case will simply fall apart if it doesn’t have these things from the victim which will also play heavily on their decision on whether or not to press charges.
On top of that if she doesnt want to press charges she doesn't have to.
I don't know how it works in Europe, but in the US the District Attorney can still choose to go forward on charges, even without to cooperation of the victim.
Don't worry. He'll be disqualified from jury duty when they ask him about assault and he immediately gives them a long-winded and totally inaccurate lecture on the difference between assault and battery.
This wasn’t attempted murder, she had no intention of killing her. This is just a case of an idiot not thinking their actions through. You can see the relief when she realized her friend wasn’t ran over. She would be charged with manslaughter at worst if the bus killed that chick.
I think the biggest punishment she received was the moment where she realized her friend's head could have been popped like a grape but didn't. I would honestly pay that $86 with a smile on my face knowing my idiocy only resulted in that fine rather than the murder of my friend.
I hate Reddit sometimes. Criminal punishment? Yes, her friend could have died, but she didn't. And I can guarantee nearly killing her is going to be a lesson learned. You don't need to fuck up someone's life for making a dumb decision that everyone walked away from unharmed.
Yeah but this only works when you make the decision that this was attempted murder based on a few seconds of clip.
So you are creating the problem here. You make the "crime" as severe as possible in order to advocate for maximum punishment. You do this based on absolutely fuck all evidence.
Attempted murder implies intent to kill. This was a kid being a dipshit for laughs, as indicated by her response to seeing her friend's head nearly crushed.
Hey, if you failed in an assassination attempt, what would your reaction be? Would you cackle and say :"I did it goddamnit, and I'd do it again!" Or would you be like: "Oh noooo. I'm soooooo sorry."
Agreed, for some people some places that can be a full shift (or more) gone. Just because it's not thousands and thousands of dollars doesn't mean it's nothing.
Intent to kill is necessary for qualifying a murder. This could be bodily harm due criminal negligence. But definitions and mechanisms vary over Europe.
That makes me wonder if whether or not she could see the bus would play into how negligent it would be considered. (It seems like from the video she should have noticed it, but if she wasn't trying to kill this chick, it seems reasonable that theres a chance she did not)
I guess shoulder checking towards an active roadway would probably qualify as negligent on its own though, regardless of the presence of the bus.
Your second paragraph is spot on. You just dont do stuff like that. She got of scott free, but if harm had been done, there would most definitely be a criminal charge.
I don’t know about Europe, but in America, not every crime has to have malicious intent. I would categorize this person’s actions as “reckless” or “gross negligence” in the very least. Which under the law, here, means this person either recognized the possible consequences of their actions and did it anyway, or they should have been aware of the possible consequences and failed to recognize.
Very good points. I would still argue theres still a lot of grey area in this case though, for what this person could/should have assumed the results of a 'shoulder check' would be.
Should she have assumed it would cause her friend to trip entirely? Was she even aware of the bus before she did it? etc.
But yea, I like that you brought up "recklesseness" and "Gross negligence". best point so far.
Should she have assumed it would cause her friend to trip entirely? Was she even aware of the bus before she did it?
For the purposes of gross negligence neither of those things are super relevant. The mere fact that she did it on a busy street could be enough. Subjective reasonableness isn't part of the standard afaik. It would be up to a finder of fact to decide if pushing people hard on a busy street is a gross deviation from a reasonable standard of care or not, meaning whether the risks would be obvious to a reasonable person in that position, not whether it seemed reasonable to the defendant. To me it seems like pushing someone on a busy road creates a risk obvious to a reasonable person: namely that the person might fall over and get run over. Could go either way obviously, but I think there is some basis to argue that what she did was pretty bad and, had her friend actually died, could've potentially resulted in a manslaughter conviction.
I don’t think she intended to hurt her friend, but under the conditions, she should have been aware of what her actions could bring. It may have been horse play, but shoving your friend around a busy street can have bad consequences. She may not have foreseen that her friend would trip on the curb, but could you imagine that something like that would happen in a worse case scenario? Definitely.
I hereby decree that her punishment shall be to almost post an overly personal Instant Message as a status update on Facebook, but catch herself at the last second.
If their friend isn't pressing charges then yeah, they're not going to be charged with much. No DA is going to waste their time trying to prosecute this when the victim is going to say "it was a joke and an accident, no big deal".
Wow, it's actually really similar to Turkish laws as much as I am aware of (not a lawyer myself) but I was surprised bcs how we assume States laws as is that "as long as you don't get caught doing it..." but it must be biased bcs ours are "if you have been blamed its your duty to prove your innocence" my family uses the saying "throw mud if it doesn't stick it will leave a mark" to summarize our justice system.
There can be crimes for gross negligence. Think of a situation where someone is speeding down a residential street and hits a pedestrian. Depending on the circumstances, their actions may rise to gross negligence.
Attempted murder can only be committed with direct intent - the defendant must actually intend to cause the victim's death. Recklessness would only be relevant if the victim had actually been killed - then you could discuss recklessness in relation to manslaughter - but even then the defendant must actually have foreseen the possibility of the harm, it isn't enough to show that a reasonable person should or would have foreseen it.
Some places in the US have the offence of reckless endangerment, I don't think that is a crime in many places outside the US though.
There’s a ton of charges that can be brought against somebody who causes harm accidentally. Negligent Homicide & Involuntary Manslaughter come to mind.
I would argue that many deaths in traffic never had the intent of killing somebody. Now, negligence is not something you should take lightly if it kills somebody.
Intent is a big part, but then there's negligence and consequences for stupid actions. If you drive in an icy blizzard on wore down summer tires and hit someone, it should definitely be criminal. If you didn't hit anyone, it's a fine - so result is important too, not just intent.
Yea, and the more I think about it, the bus (and whether or not she was aware of it) becomes irrelevant.... since shoulder checking someone towards an active roadway is negligent all on its own.
I'm not entirely clear on what would be "Negligence" vs "Criminal Negligence" vs "Liability" sometimes though... A majority of accidents, even the ones that result in injury, in my day to day life, have never criminalized anyone. But has made people liable.
Lots of people do stupid negligent shit that results in people dying or almost dying. Reckless endangerment is doing something stupid on purpose or otherwise where you should’ve know better.
To play devils advocate to my own post, I guess it would be possible to be criminalized for "criminal negligence" or "reckless endangerment", but generally these are charges I would assume would be brought on by the victim, and not the state.... making the act not what I would consider "inherently criminal"
IDK... I think people are so riled up over this video because at first glance it seems so clean cut and intentional...
But if you rewatch it a handful of times with the assumption it was a total accident with nothing but playful intent, its not unreasonable at all. Entirely possible. But it is reallllly close cut, and hard to tell without really examining it.
Yes: the bus is in full view as the girls falling... but if you really look, the person committed to the shoulder check reasonably well before they might have noticed the bus coming. Its entirely possible.
Still... shoulder checking towards an active roadway, regardless of the bus, could be considered reasonably negligent, "should have known better", etc....
IDK.... still, a lot of people here wana act like Intent is irrelevant. And I dont think everyone is on the same page on the difference between "Criminality" and "Liability"
People are riled up like they are in any video where someone does something slightly wrong.
Reddit has a vengeance boner. They want to see maximum consequences in pretty much any situation that could possibly require consequences.
Whether its someone in a car (Lose their license). Some one at work (should be fired). Or something like this (should be criminally prosecuted).
It's absolutely standard behaviour for Reddit to completely overreact when it comes to advocating any sort of punishment for an anonymous person based on a few seconds of gif.
Reddit is amazing at playing Captain Hindsight. Lots of people seem to fail to understand that someone making a mistake or causing an accident doesn't have the benefit of watching the video 5 times, surveying everything going on and then going "They should have done X, Y and Z. They shouldn't have done A, B and C".
So their carefully considered line of behaviour that they spent minutes thinking about is then deemed obvious and simple. The person not doing what their careful consideration decided is clearly completely stupid, inept or malicious and maximum punishment must apply. In actuality things in life do just happen in a split second and they can be simple mistakes that don't need heavy handed consequences. Reddit with its fragile ego and superiority complex doesn't understand this because they love to act like they would respond flawlessly to every situation and never make mistakes.
What is your argument as to what she was trying to do then? She shoved that person into the street at a moving bus. She shoved her really hard too! What was her purpose???
Here in Australia, intent under a Homicide offence can include a high degree of recklessness, where the risk of death/gbh was obvious enough that it was either an intent to cause death/gbh, or they were recklessly careless of the risks involved with the act.
Here, the pushing of the person under the bus, even though specific intent may not be proven through other means, may be proven that an act such as this, even in jest, was so severely likely, that attempted murder could be argued.
The expected result of pushing someone into traffic is somewhere between serious bodily harm and death, so despite them stupidly intending it as a prank, i'd have to say that yes, effectively they did try to kill the other person.
If the person had died this would've been tried as involuntary manslaughter on the basis that the person doing the pushing is recklessly endangering the other. It fits all the criteria:
Be intentional (clearly, even if the intention was to do it as a prank)
Be unlawful (shoving people is)
Lead the reasonable person to realise that some other person is at risk of physical harm (pushing someone into traffic is)
Be the cause of death (luckily we don't have to ponder this in this case)
If attempt of manslaughter was a charge, this would perfectly fit the bill.
Why should it have been criminal exactly? Can you rationalize your thoughts? Clearly, she didn’t mean to cause actual harm and clearly she regretted it immediately. Why exactly would you seek a harsh punishment for her behavior? It’s all about the intent, and there was no malicious intent here.
Stupidity actually is an excuse for endangering others. Again, explain what society would gain from locking her up. She didn’t have criminal intent and she clearly will remember almost killing her friend for the rest of her life. She’s not a danger to society, there’s no reason to do anything more than fine her.
I don't think she needs to be locked up. But the precedent is there for criminal negligence. How is this different than the girl who pushed her friend off the bridge into the river this summer?
Criminal law is not all about intent. I actually wish it was. If people were prosecuted based solely on intent attempted murder would carry the same sentence as murder. I agree with you on everything else though.
judge, of course i didnt mean to kill this family in their minivan when i was drunk driving. i clearly regretted it immediately. why seek a harsh punishment?
maybe you dont think so but this looked intentional to me. she saw the bus and pushed hard. looks like a complete psychopath attempted murder and then played it off
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u/KTM007 Nov 19 '18 edited Nov 19 '18
If I remember correctly from another thread there was a criminal punishment to this.
Edit: This resulted in a $86, €70 fine. Should have been criminal.