So you have to kill someone, without actually trying to intentionally kill them?  





The fuck is that?





I hope Canada doesn't have a stupid law like that.  



Edit:  We don't.  






 

Comes from British common law -  bet you do



Think of it as like First Degree Aggravated Manslaughter

That right there, sir, is the result of lawyers being legislatures.  

Gotta punish dem bad guys, you see.

Its 2nd Degree murder.




You're angry at someone "depraved heart" and do something that ends up killing them, even though you didn't mean to.




 



ETA, my guess is that the DA thinks the van driver hated criminals so he decided to drive recklessly in an attempt to hurt him by throwing him around, then accidentally killing him. The depraved heart is the hating part.




 

Interesting.  



 

Depraved indifference is pretty much standard in every legal system.

It's bs they should never have been charged, the prosecutor has family ties to gray what a joke.

already covered.

So are drunk drivers that crash-out and kill the passenger, but the drunk survives, ever charged with this?



That's about the only situation I can imagine this being relevant.  



But I'm not a lawyer.  Not even close.  
 

This really just boils down to the state having to prove that the officer's actions were so reckless and wanton that it goes above the level of criminally negligent homicide.

This isn't a case of a guard who forgot to check on a suspect in a cell and the suspect died as a result of choking on vomit or something.

Here, the state is saying (by charging under depraved heart murder) that the officer's knew the suspect was injured and/or needed medical help immediately and they failed to render aid and ignored his request for help.

I'm not saying I believe it, just my quick summation.

Depraved colon murder is a more serious charge.

No, they catch Vehicular Homicide.

 
Drunk drivers don't have a depraved heart against the other drivers.

I was going to say it is from a liberal prosecutor in a liberal town with a liberal mayor that wants to punish police....

In United States law, depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is an action where a defendant acts with a "depraved indifference" to human life and where such act results in a death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depraved-heart_murder

In the Baltimore case, the driver kept going despite the prisoner was begging for help, and even unconscious, never once offering aid.

If it makes a libfuck *FEEL GOOD*, it's a good charge.

Couldn't find the jury instructions after a quick search, but I did find this.

In Maryland, depraved heart murder is "the killing of another person while acting with an extreme disregard for human life."

John Jay College of Justice Professor Delores Jones-Brown, the author of "Race, Crime and Punishment," told 48 Hours' Crimesider that the charge indicates an "extreme form of recklessness."

Hypothetical:

Throwing a rock off a bridge where you don't expect someone to be and you kill someone = negligence or man slaughter
Throwing a bowling ball off the Empire State building where you know there are people below = intentionally reckless, much worse than negligence = depraved heart


Big question is whether or not putting someone in shackles in the back of a transport was more than negligence. I believe they overcharged the fuck out of this case...


Elections have consequences

 
I guess that sounds better than my explation

I do too.  However, I think the state is going to focus more on them failing to get him medical care and/or ignoring his requests for help.

But the defense is going to try and rebut that by having experts testify about how common it is for suspects to fake injuries, ask for aid, just about anything of that nature, all the time.

And defense will lose.
You have to take care of people in your custody.

It sounded good to the mob, which is all that mattered yesterday.

It's Baltimore.



Do you even Edgar Allen Poe, Bro?

So why the other perp wasn't hurt in the van?

For example, you know there is a school bus stop down the street.  You put on a blindfold and gun your car towards the sound of children laughing.  The inevitable happens.

The state could not prove that you intended to kill anyone.  You didn't know any of the children, and because of the blindfold, the state couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you knew there were children at the bus stop.

The indifference to life is so great that it was thought to warrant a murder charge.

That is the justification for the common law rule.  I don't see the facts here, scant as they are, to warrant the charge, much less sufficient to sustain a conviction.  From all accounts, the driver was very concerned with the well-being of the prisoner.  That concern may have been incomplete, but it was not criminal.

In the civil law there is the doctrine of res ipsa loquitor, the thing speaks for itself.  When an instrumentality is under the sole control of the defendant and nothing else intervenes, and that instrumentality causes injury, the defendant is liable.  I think people are trying to graft that doctrine onto the criminal law, and it doesn't work.

He didn't have neck surgery a week prior.

If they are focusing in on the driver of the van then why charge the other 5? Only one guy can be driving. They have to be charging the 5 in hopes of getting someone to roll on the driver

Depraved heart actions.?

Watering your lawn
Driving a 1 ton pickup
Having a pool
CCW
Eating meat
Being a republican
Being a conservative
Hell, just being white and not repentant.

Mens rea is the mental state or intent of the person acting or failing to act.

Purposefully - You intended to kill someone.

Knowingly - You realize that your action would reasonably result in someones death, but acted anyway.

Recklessly - You forsee that your action is could cause death, but you proceed with that action, not concerned about the results.

Criminally negligent - You didn't forsee that your action was likely to cause death, but a reasonable person, in similar circumstance would.

The names and punishments that get attached to these various combinations of homicide and mental state vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but most jurisdictions that base there laws on the English Common Law recognize each of these as a crime.

Ohio calls them murder, voluntary manslaughter, reckless homicide and negligent homicide respectively.  If you add prior calculation and design (aka malice aforethought) to murder, you get aggravated murder.  We also have involuntary manslaughter, a step below voluntary homicide and a step above reckless homicide, which is a causing the death of another as a proximate result of committing  some other crime, most often DUI.

I bet that you'll find that the laws Canada are similar, they just have different names for the same crimes.

As for the charges in the Gray case, in Ohio, the charge would be voluntary manslaughter.

ETA:  It could be bumped up to straight murder, if there is evidence that there was no intent to kill, but there was an intent to cause serious bodily injury and the victim died as a result.

We always used the "throwing lit sticks of dynamite at the park" example as our model for explaining mens rea.  

Was thinking this. Just different legal language for the same concept.

Maryland law seems to have a lot of English Common law still in it.  For instance, one of the grounds for divorce is infidelity.  But if the injured spouse sleeps with the adulterer after they know about the infidelity, it is considered forgiven and ceases to be a grounds.  When I was doing research for my divorce, I swear I saw references to decisions in the English courts going back to the 13th century.

Oddly enough the court system in Maryland has sometimes used that for our benefit.  For instance, MD has no statutory Castle Doctrine, nor statutory state preemption of local firearms laws.  But the courts have ruled that those principles exist regardless of whether they are spelled out in statute.  The only problem is that the laws still remain on the books, occasionally with a footnote about a court case voiding it.  So even though the courts ruled that Montgomery County's mail order ammo ban is illegal, it's still on the books, so a lot of vendors won't ship there.

Yeah, depraved heart is just an old term, other jurisdictions use more updated terminology fr the mens rea.

'
VS I was racing lady crossing the crosswalk, I tried to stop in time but couldn't, I didn't hate her. is simply manslaughter, but depraved heart is if I paint a small lady with walker on my front right fender next to the baby carriage and child chasing soccer ball.