Father who left his child in car, charged with murder, no bond

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It's NORMAL? This is not the same as forgetting to take a pill in the morning before work. This is someone not realizing that they didn't drive their child to daycare in the morning, dropping the child off and then going to work. That's quite a big thing to just forget. I'm sorry I don't think it's normal at all dude.

Did you even read the article in the OP? Please do so before replying again. It's perfectly normal to go to work and not stress over if you dropped your kid off or not throughout the day because your brain thinks you already done and the task is completed. Think about your normal work day and think about all the stuff you never give a second thought to that happened before you got to work.
 
What the fuck does this even mean? And why not?

Fatigue is a reason to forget your wallet or miss a turn. It's not justification for you to forget you have another living breathing human being who depends on you for everything in the car with you.

How is this difficult?
 
So, can someone explain why the tired parent whose mistake kills their kid shouldn't go to jail, but the tired truck driver who falls asleep for a second and kills another driver should? Because that's what happens now. If you make the mistake of falling asleep and killing someone, you're going to be charged with some form of manslaughter.

Or, what if it had been a neighbor's kidin the back seat? Still no prison? It's the exact same mistake, but I suspect if it were someone else's kid, this might be a very different thread?

Or, what if the parent forgets to put their gun away and a kid shoots themselves? Still a mistake, still already punished by losing a child.

I'm torn on whether prison makes sense here, but largely unconvinced by the argument that is was a mistake or that he's been punished enough. Those certainly aren't the normal criteria we use to determine whether someone should be charged.

Frankly, it seems to me that we're more forgiving in this case because we can imagine ourselves in the place of the father. That seems like an unusual way decide justice -- what's easy for us to empathize with.
I think the difference is the expectation of potential harm. If you are driving and are tired enough to fall asleep, you are aware that there is a risk you are taking. Likewise having a gun in your house you are aware that it is a potential risk and not making sure it is safe makes you culpable.
I think it is a grey area - like a co-sleeping parent whose kid suffocates or a breast feeding mother who falls asleep and drops the baby on their head or a thousand other accidents that were preventable but are not really culpable as murder.
 
So, can someone explain why the tired parent whose mistake kills their kid shouldn't go to jail, but the tired truck driver who falls asleep for a second and kills another driver should? Because that's what happens now. If you make the mistake of falling asleep and killing someone, you're going to be charged with some form of manslaughter.
The nature of the error is different. Error, according to Donald A. Norman and James Reason, comes in two different forms, slips and mistakes. A slip is when the goal is correct, but not all the necessary actions are done so the process fails; the execution is imperfect. A mistake is when the goal or plan itself is wrong, leading to failure. Slips and mistakes are further divided into subcategories based on their causes.

A parent forgetting their child in their car commits a slip. Their routine is the same every day, but they miss one vital step, taking the child out of the car, and winds up killing their child. It is the same as opening a fridge, taking out a jug of milk, getting a cup, and putting the jug back into the fridge. Your plan was right, but you forgot to pour the milk. This is called a memory-lapse slip.

A driver falling asleep at the wheel, however, is a mistake. The driver's responsibility is to know whether or not they're in a good enough condition to drive. Faulty evaluation of their ability to stay awake while driving is either a knowledge-based mistake or a rules-based mistake. It's a knowledge-based mistake if the driver did not correctly gauge their own ability to stay awake. It is a rules-based mistake if the driver realizes that they are in no condition to drive, but decides to drive anyway when the correct course of action (the rule) would be to sleep.

Generally speaking, mistakes are preventable, but slips are a fact of human consciousness. They are a consequence of our inborn ability to complete an oft-repeated sequence of actions without conscious thought. They happen because our subconscious messed up somewhere.

Or, what if it had been a neighbor's kidin the back seat? Still no prison? It's the exact same mistake, but I suspect if it were someone else's kid, this might be a very different thread?
This would've been a different thread, I imagine, with significantly more indignation, but I don't believe the neighbor should go to prison if the circumstances were identical. That is, no malicious intent, no history of neglect, good record of responsibility up until the point of the error, and, most of all, that this was common routine, which is the crux of the issue.

Or, what if the parent forgets to put their gun away and a kid shoots themselves? Still a mistake, still already punished by losing a child.
This is more neglect, and should be treated differently, and further complicated by arms control debates and laws and cultures. Moreover, not only is it preventable in a legal, systematic way, but something like that happening is by its very nature isolated to those who own firearms. That discrimination does not exist here, at least, not in the same way, because cars are an important infrastructural component, whereas guns are luxury.

Frankly, it seems to me that we're more forgiving in this case because we can imagine ourselves in the place of the father. That seems like an unusual way decide justice -- what's easy for us to empathize with.
Quite the opposite, this is a difficult situation to empathize with and for this very reason, the article everyone refers to is extremely important. It shows that this kind of error is not the same kind made by the sleeping truck driver or the negligent parent who doesn't lock away their guns, that it doesn't discriminate between what kind of person you are, your upbringing, your views, your quality as a parent. It's an inevitability of our modernized life, because humans simply weren't made to multitask so many things at once, and that we are all equally likely to commit such an error, unless we voluntary remove ourselves from modern life.

The point of the article is to not judge him based on gut reaction. The situation is far more nuanced than that.
 
I'm not exactly comfortable with adding unnecessary strain on an already traumatized parent(s) and society at large by enforcing meaningless felony charges just to prosecute a very small minority.

Well.. leaving a child in a car can easily cause them to die. The behavior is negligent to me no matter how it occurred.

I can feel sorrow for someone charged with a crime while still recognizing that they were negligent.

edit: I'm not totally against the idea of not punishing them either.. it's just not as black and white as "well they feel terrible loss and sorrow, they don't need to be punished any more than that." Many people have caused people's deaths and feel just as much sorrow and are put in prison and most don't argue against it.
 
Putting him in prison as a strong message to other parents not to lock their kids in their car?

Putting murderers in jail has sure reduced the numbers of murders in this country!
 
Putting him in prison as a strong message to other parents not to lock their kids in their car?

Putting murderers in jail has sure reduced the numbers of murders in this country!

"Your average parent" doesn't have the mindset of your average murderer.

You aren't really comparing like things.

But I do think it's probably enough of a reminder just to hear the awful stories of the children dying; at the very least the stories should be spread far and wide as a reminder to parents to check for their kids and to take driving a child somewhere more seriously in general.
 
Fatigue is a reason to forget your wallet or miss a turn. It's not justification for you to forget you have another living breathing human being who depends on you for everything in the car with you.

How is this difficult?
Its not a justification, it's the reason. I don't think anyone thinks these parents are justified in leaving their kids. But they did do it - these were children they cared about deeply and they were attentive to their care - except for that one morning when they left them in the car. What is your explanation? They never really cared about their kids all other evidence to the contrary? They were fuck-ups even thought a lot were very successful and capable?
 
I haven't read the whole thread, but doesn't Murder mean the suspect purposely caused the loss of life? Don't they have to prove the father planned and purposely killed his child?

Murder requires intent. What the hell ?

Do you not need intent for murder in the states?

Here are the Georgia laws under which the dude is being charged:

O.C.G.A. § 16-5-1. Murder; felony murder said:
(a) A person commits the offense of murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being.

(b) Express malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take the life of another human being which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof. Malice shall be implied where no considerable provocation appears and where all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.

(c) A person also commits the offense of murder when, in the commission of a felony, he causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice.

(d) A person convicted of the offense of murder shall be punished by death, by imprisonment for life without parole, or by imprisonment for life.

A "felony" is defined as "a crime punishable by death, by imprisonment for life, or by imprisonment for more than 12 months." O.C.G.A. § 16-1-3(5).

O.C.G.A. § 16-5-70. Cruelty to children said:
(a) A parent, guardian, or other person supervising the welfare of or having immediate charge or custody of a child under the age of 18 commits the offense of cruelty to children in the first degree when such person willfully deprives the child of necessary sustenance to the extent that the child's health or well-being is jeopardized.

(b) Any person commits the offense of cruelty to children in the first degree when such person maliciously causes a child under the age of 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain.

(c) Any person commits the offense of cruelty to children in the second degree when such person with criminal negligence causes a child under the age of 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain.

(d) Any person commits the offense of cruelty to children in the third degree when:

(1) Such person, who is the primary aggressor, intentionally allows a child under the age of 18 to witness the commission of a forcible felony, battery, or family violence battery; or

(2) Such person, who is the primary aggressor, having knowledge that a child under the age of 18 is present and sees or hears the act, commits a forcible felony, battery, or family violence battery.​

(e)

(1) A person convicted of the offense of cruelty to children in the first degree as provided in this Code section shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than five nor more than 20 years.

(2) A person convicted of the offense of cruelty to children in the second degree shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than ten years.

(3) A person convicted of the offense of cruelty to children in the third degree shall be punished as for a misdemeanor upon the first or second conviction. Upon conviction of a third or subsequent offense of cruelty to children in the third degree, the defendant shall be guilty of a felony and shall be sentenced to a fine not less than $1,000.00 nor more than $5,000.00 or imprisonment for not less than one year nor more than three years or shall be sentenced to both fine and imprisonment.​

The Supreme Court of Georgia, in turn, has stated that the "mental state of a defendant required to be established to prove cruelty to children [i.e., "maliciously"] is 'the absence of all elements of justification or excuse and the presence of an actual intent to cause the particular harm, or the wanton and wilful doing of an act with an awareness of a plain and strong likelihood that such harm might result.'" Kennedy v. State, 592 S.E.2d 830, 832 (Ga. 2004).

Unless the prosecutor in this case has some evidence justifying the charges, I think this is a clear case of over-charging to induce a plea bargain.

EDIT: I'm not sure if I can link to specific statutes, but you can see the Georgia statutes I quote above, here.
 
How the hell do you forget a whole work day that you left your kid in the car ? Was he dropping him off at day care why was he in the car in the first place ?

While I myself could never imagine leaving my child all day in a car, I can understand how this would happen.

Life is not slow anymore. It moves fast, especially if you have multiple children, job pressures, financial problems, or any number of serious things you have to deal with as a middle aged, or close to middle aged adult. I just turned 40 and over the last couple of years, I have become absent minded on several things....because I've got a lot of synapses firing off in my brain at once and I am trying to prioritize three kids, a house, big stacks of bills, jobs, and sometimes its so overwhelming you just forget everything except for whats directly in front of you that needs taken care of at the moment.

I'm really not trying to make excuses for this guy or make light of what happened. And I don't know exactly what was going on in his life, but I do know many middle aged adults, who are completely overwhelmed dealing with a lot of mental stress at this stage of their lives. Sometimes you break down. Sometimes you forget things.
 
Fatigue is a reason to forget your wallet or miss a turn. It's not justification for you to forget you have another living breathing human being who depends on you for everything in the car with you.

How is this difficult?

Did you read the article? Memory can just plain fail as a result of how our brains are built. We are biologically fallible. You're assumption is based on a faulty understanding of how people actually think and process information.
 
Well.. leaving a child in a car can easily cause them to die. The behavior is negligent to me no matter how it occurred.

I can feel sorrow for someone charged with a crime while still recognizing that they were negligent.

Emotional perspectives aside, what exactly would a criminal charge address? A dead child is enough impetus for the parent to seriously change their behavior to prevent another occurrence, so another penalty is superfluous for the defendant. Society at large already is aware that leaving children in harmful situations are things to avoid, and in most situations the cause is an unconscious memory lapse. I doubt that putting more parents into jail will drive the population to develop absolutely perfect present awareness, so there's nothing to benefit taxpayers either.

What tangible benefits are there for penalizing these people?

edit: I'm not totally against the idea of not punishing them either.. it's just not as black and white as "well they feel terrible loss and sorrow, they don't need to be punished any more than that." Many people have caused people's deaths and feel just as much sorrow and are put in prison and most don't argue against it.

Putting them into prison just because that's how it's handled for other situations sounds more willfully negligent than what these parents have done.
 
EDIT: I'm not sure if I can link to specific statutes, but you can see the Georgia statutes I quote above, here.

Good point.

The murder charge hinges on the first degree cruelty charge; which does require malice.

Way too harsh unless they have some evidence or witnesses that suggest it was done purposefully.

Still seams like some sort of negligence; not a felony maybe and no murder.
 
Imho, these parents have already been given the worst sentence possible: they will have to live the rest of their lives knowing that they were responsible for the death of their child. Any other punishment is basically superfluous.

I would have to agree with you as well. I have a two year old daughter, and if some how I left her in the car and she died I would be absolutely devastated. As others have said I wonder if there is additional information that we haven't been told at this time, because being charged for murder does seem a little ridiculous to me.
 
Emotional perspectives aside, what exactly would a criminal charge address? A dead child is enough impetus for the parent to seriously change their behavior to prevent another occurrence, so another penalty is superfluous for the defendant. Society at large already is aware that leaving children in harmful situations are things to avoid, and in most situations the cause is an unconscious memory lapse. I doubt that putting more parents into jail will drive the population to develop absolutely perfect present awareness, so there's nothing to benefit taxpayers either.

What tangible benefits are there for penalizing these people?

I agree overall with this method for determining punishments or whether something is a crime in the first place.

But relative to how we generally handle things here in the US, it would be an anomaly to legally forgive parents who cause the death of their children. So perhaps despite my own desire to have a more thoughtful criminal system, it's hard for me to look past this considering I was raised in this society.
 
The parent's responsibility is to be aware of where their children are. Period.
This is wishful thinking, not a meaningful description of reality.

Do you know, at this very moment, where all the most important things in your life are? Keys? Wallet? The very next moment? The next? After that? Do you know all the deadlines that are coming up for you, tasks, doctor's visits, medication? How often per day do you go through this mental check list? Is it enough? Have you never forgotten an appointment before? Forgot to take a pill when you needed to?

There comes a point where you need to devote your mental energies to actual cognition, rather than going through every single facet of your life in order of importance. That's how humans work. Once something becomes "routine", it takes a backseat in our mind in order to give us room to think. This is where slips happen.
 
How the hell do you forget a whole work day that you left your kid in the car ? Was he dropping him off at day care why was he in the car in the first place ?

The same way you leave a stove on after finishing breakfast or leave a curling iron engaged while sitting on the counter: you forget. It's quite easy to forget even major things if you've got enough shit going on in your life.
 
If not making an example of them, then preventing someone whose intent is to kill their child from doing it under the guise of "absent-mindedness".

Good to know you're thinking about the hypothetical murderers.

And "making an example of them" is an abhorrent thing to do. Education is important, but torturing them because of their loss is victim blaming.
 
Really feel bad for the guy, but its clear he needs to be charged with manslaughter at the very least. Thats a charge which acknowledges that this was likely unintended, but still holds him accountable. Letting him go just because he clearly feels bad not only would undermine all the other convictions for manslaughter where the convicted felt regret, it would undermine the social contract that underpins the law. Being responsible for a child means taking responsibility when you fuck up, and there is no bigger fuck up than letting your child die needlessly under your care. If society is going to place the protection of children at its foundation, then cases like this need to be dealt with firmly in a court of law. When you raise a child, you're taking on the responsibility of welfare, and if you fuck up you should be held accountable.
 
Everyone should read this article before commenting:

Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?

Imho, these parents have already been given the worst sentence possible: they will have to live the rest of their lives knowing that they were responsible for the death of their child. Any other punishment is basically superfluous.

Damn, I should not have read that. I'm a grown man getting teary eyed at work now. That was a heartbreaking read ( ´_ゝ`)
 
If not making an example of them, then preventing someone whose intent is to kill their child from doing it under the guise of "absent-mindedness".

If the potential consequences of a full-on murder charge doesn't deter these people, then I don't see how a far less impactful consequence of criminal negligence would.
 
Good to know you're thinking about the hypothetical murderers.

And "making an example of them" is an abhorrent thing to do. Education is important, but torturing them because of their loss is victim blaming.

Are we pretending prison time isn't a form of deterrence now?

We're talking about an alternative of anyone whose child dies "by absent-mindedness" or "accidentally" receives no jail time. If that was the case, they would not hesitate to try.
 
You really think the reason people don't kill their kids is because of the legal system?

Not what he's saying.

There are people who do murder their children, by every definition of the word (purposefully.)

Undoubtedly if it were basically "legal" to forget your child in a car; considering how difficult it would be to prove intent, there would be people who would take advantage of that.

I'm sure it's already happened.

Whether you think it's relevant enough to place harsh penalties on this action is another story.
 
If the potential consequences of a full-on murder charge doesn't deter these people, then I don't see how a far less impactful consequence of criminal negligence would.

It's very common for people who murder their children to attempt to cover it up as a mistake.

I'd say more often than not in child murder cases that is the case.

Being able to leave a child in a hot car and claim they forgot would certainly make it much easier on the sick fucks.

(not that I believe that's a great reason to punish the act harshly, it's just "the truth" or my opnion of what "the truth" is at least)
 
It's very common for people who murder their children to attempt to cover it up as a mistake.

I'd say more often than not in child murder cases that is the case.

Being able to leave a child in a hot car and claim they forgot would certainly make it much easier on the sick fucks.

(not that I believe that's a great reason to punish the act harshly, it's just "the truth" or my opnion of what "the truth" is at least)

Not a good enough reason.

The onus is on the state to prove that that is what happened, not to jail anyone who does so by accident on the off-chance that they did so maliciously.
 
Seriously asking, how many cases out there have there been where a parent has intentionally tried or did kill their child by leaving them in a hot car and tried to play it off as an accident?
 
It's very common for people to murder their children and attempt to cover it up as a mistake.

I'd say more often than not in child murder cases that is the case.

Being able to leave a child in a hot car and claim they forgot would certainly make it much easier on the sick fucks.

(not that I believe that's a great reason to punish the act harshly, it's just "the truth" or my opnion of what "the truth" is at least)

Protecting society from a perceived threat does not justify enforcing unreasonable burden on society. NSA reads our emails to protect us for possible terrorists, so we give them shit for that. I don't see why this principle is not applicable here.
 
Seriously asking, how many cases out there have there been where a parent has intentionally tried or did kill their child by leaving them in a hot car and tried to play it off as an accident?
the closest thing i've ever heard of is susan smith, but she rolled her car into a lake and blamed a black dude.
 
I say this completely truthfully - as a father, the best punishment you could give me would be a death sentence to release me from the torment of living a life knowing what I had done. I'd far rather be dead than have to wake up every day and deal with the repercussions. Not sure jail is the best course of action here.
 
Seriously asking, how many cases out there have there been where a parent has intentionally tried or did kill their child by leaving them in a hot car and tried to play it off as an accident?

How would anyone know?

There was a major case where it was suspected; I'll try to find it.. IIRC it was in Utah.
 
Protecting society from a perceived threat does not justify enforcing unreasonable burden on society. NSA reads our emails to protect us for possible terrorists, so we give them shit for that. I don't see why this principle is not applicable here.

An odd thing to relate. (I get the correlation, but it's still fairly different lol)

When you cause your child to die because you forgot about them it's hard for many people not to see it as your fault.

It really just boils down to that. Beyond that the nuanced view of crime and punishment of looking at "how it benefits society as a whole" is not very common in this country.
 
So weird. When my wife was pregnant, this was one of the things you wonder about: "man,I can't forget my child in the car!"

My son is almost 3 now, and never once have I forgot that he was in the back seat. Ever. Seems like a silly thing to worry about in hindsight. I still don't understand how it could happen, I talk to my boy all the time in the car.

Tragic.
 
If we have to ask this question, then we probably should ask first if it's worth doing in the first place.

Beat me to it. This is what I was trying to question.

What does a law or punishment do to stop people from trying to do it and cover it up if you can't prove it to begin with?

An odd thing to relate. (I get the correlation, but it's still fairly different lol)

When you cause your child to die because you forgot about them it's hard for many people not to see it as your fault.

It really just boils down to that. Beyond that the nuanced view of crime and punishment of looking at "how it benefits society as a whole" is not very common in this country.

Nobody is saying he's not at fault. I'm sure the father isn't even denying he's at fault.
 
I'd consider it manslaughter, not murder. Anyone who has lived in the 20th or 21st century knows if you close your car and turn the AC off in the summer, it is going to get 20-30 degrees celsius hotter in a matter of minutes.
 
Beat me to it. This is what I was trying to question.

What does a law or punishment do to stop people from trying to do it and cover it up if you can't prove it to begin with?

Because if you consider it negligence, then even covering up you'd still face harsh consequences. I don't understand what is so complicated about understanding this.

A potential murderer isn't going to look at taking a child endangerment charge, they'd look elsewhere for an excuse.. but if you give them such an easy route to legal acquittal, they'll take it.
 
So weird. When my wife was pregnant, this was one of the things you wonder about: "man,I can't forget my child in the car!"

My son is almost 3 now, and never once have I forgot that he was in the back seat. Ever. Seems like a silly thing to worry about in hindsight. I still don't understand how it could happen, I talk to my boy all the time in the car.

Tragic.

Your kid never falls asleep in the car? Babies facing backwards and sleeping can be like they're not even there.
 
It really just boils down to that. Beyond that the nuanced view of crime and punishment of looking at "how it benefits society as a whole" is not very common in this country.
On the contrary, this is a well known phenomena (in certain circles), and rarely is the offending parent ever charged, as the ARTICLE WHICH SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR THIS THREAD shows clearly.

If you want to dismiss the entirety of the justice system with "lol 'merica", fine, but you're just wasting everybody's time and it behooves you not to muddle the thread with this kind of reductionism anymore than it already is. This is an important conversation to have, because it reveals a lot about humans beings and their place in a modernized, mechanized world, and understanding why these cases ar] complex is crucial to broadening your empathy for your fellow person.

If you don't want a part of this process, that's okay, but don't ruin it for others by being a distraction.
 
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