Oops! I'm sorry. I thought you meant intent to kill. Nevertheless, intent is not always necessary to all crimes. For example, some states hold a parent criminally negligent if they get super high or drunk and forget their kid in a hot car. What do you think? No intent to harm so should they walk free?
Hmmm. Well, I will say that I don't think a person should be eligible for the death penalty if there was literally no intent to harm or intent to commit a crime in their action.
There are varying degrees of culpability in the law when it comes to intent. And that goes all the way from slightly poor judgement, horribly poor judgement, to full on intent to cause harm or death. It's a gradient.
As I read this case and these charges, it looks to me, that these charges that include the death penalty could be assessed to someone who had no intent whatsoever to do any harm at all and absolutely no intent to commit a crime and no chance at "poor judgement" as they had made no judgements at all.
So. This discussion is bigger than this one case. My point is, that in a situation where it's very clear to ALL involved that a parent literally forgot their child in the back seat of the car, they could lawfully be charged the way Harris is being charged, and they could lawfully receive the death penalty although all involved - prosecutor, defense, LE, judge, jury all agree the person literally had forgotten the child until the child had passed away.
I am really uncomfortable with that.
So as an analogy, imagine a parent getting out of the car to get their child, closing their door, coming around to the child's door and falling and bumping their heads. Lying there unconscious for 15 minutes and then rousing in a completely confused way, wandering in to work being disoriented and meanwhile the poor child expires in the car.
No one in this discussion would fault that parent, IMHO. I think it would be a very very rare person who wouldn't empathize and give that parent a pass. Why? Because everyone believes it. They believe that parent could have lost that memory through a concussion.
So is that the nitty gritty of it here? Those who are willing to be empathetic believe it could happen that Harris forgot this baby, and the others frankly just don't believe anyone could forget in his situation?
I think that's it. I would love to hear what people say who have very harsh feelings toward him. Do you simply NOT BELIEVE it's possible to forget a child in that situation, and so no amount of family support, friends support, a squeaky clean past, no evidence whatsoever from anyone anywhere that he was unhappy as a dad will get you past that core believe that it's simply impossible - unlike the head injured person - for Harris to have forgotten.
(An aside, I wake myself up naturally in the morning at any time I want to, even at the crack of dawn, I have a perfect internal alarm clock. I don't use an alarm clock and never have. So I always have little patience with people who "oversleep" and miss things. Because somewhere in my mind I'm faulting them for doing it on purpose. I never do it. Why do these people need technology of an alarm or someone to come remind them to wake up? Same thing to me. I get forgetting something out of routine, I don't get people who can't remember to wake up.)
Anyway, Gitana, interesting question.
