🚀 go-pugleaf

Carr, an interesting point, but not the one the poster was making -- I
believe
he was arguing that drinking and choosing to drive is a deliberate act
(certainly
a defensible proposition) and that doing so presupposes the willingness to
put the lives of others at risk (likewise defensible).

There's a world of difference between going about one's business -- with
distractions -- and inadvertently causing a disaster (let's say by answering
a phone call while going the limit on the beltway, getting carried away in
the conversation and inadvertently causing a crash) and setting out to
conduct
one's self in a dangerous manner.

In fact, it's like the difference between accidentally frightening someone
to
death and closing your eyes while committing an armed robbery and
pulling the trigger.  If you've been drinking and you get behind the wheel
of a car,
you've got the equivalent of the loaded gun (the car's the bullet from hell,
a ton and
a half of steel) and you're not looking.  And, if you're driving drunk,
you're already
committing a felony.  Causing a death in the process of committing a felony
...
sure sounds like murder to me!


John F Carr wrote in message <38e4b19a$0$2939@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>...
>In article <0a1F4.1995$HG1.56739@nnrp1.uunet.ca>,
>mred <mred@netrover.com> wrote:
>
>>I believe that by drinking and driving the intent to murder is there, just
>>by the fact that you have been drinking and know you shouldn`t be driving,
>>Drinking is a willful act, and so is driving afterwards.
>
>You are saying that the crime of manslaughter should be abolished and all
>deaths resulting from negligence should be prosecuted as murder.  If a
>death resulting from a dangerous act is murder, there is nothing left to
>be called manslaughter.
>
>--
>    John Carr (jfc@mit.edu)