You don’t get a lesser drunk driving charge if you can prove you’re pretty good at driving drunk.
Uh… what? You do get a lesser charge if you avoid killing anybody. What’s more, you actually called attention to that fact before, and are trying to argue that it’s morally wrong! So, basically, one of your arguments against X relies on an incorrect assertion that not-X. I wanted to call this “begging the question”, but it’s probably the wrong nomenclature; the pattern of argument is just extremely weird.
I wanted to call this “begging the question”, but it’s probably the wrong nomenclature; the pattern of argument is just extremely weird.
I can see the confusion. Essentially I was pointing out that the law is blind to things like “I’m a good drunk driver,” except in the case of this moral luck issue.
For instance, there is (thankfully) a principle in force that you cannot, with a dead body at your feet, say “I was just trying to kidnap him.” So one crime committed accidentally in the course of another crime gets punished almost as severely as if it was intentional. But drunk driving is only punished severely in the special case where somebody happens to die? Where is the rationale?
Edit: Almost as severely, but not just as severely.
The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder in two ways. First, when an offender kills accidentally or without specific intent to kill in the course of an applicable felony, what might have been manslaughter is escalated to murder.
That is, in countries that have it, if you were attempting to commit a violent felony (like kidnapping), which results in a death, it’s upgraded to murder, even if accidental.
The article is saying that you can’t affect your sentence by showing skill at drunk driving, other than by using the (very indirect) evidence provided by showing that nobody died as a result.
I think it’s a sound point, given that the question is about identical behaviour giving different sentences.
If you’re told that two people have once driven over the limit, that A killed someone while B didn’t, and nothing more, what’s your level of credence that B is the more skilled drunk driver?
If you’re told that two people have once driven over the limit, that A killed someone while B didn’t, and nothing more, what’s your level of credence that B is the more skilled drunk driver?
Pretty high, actually. Drunkenness is a red herring here. Let’s put it another way: if you’re told that A once killed someone accidentally while B didn’t, what’s your credence that B is better at friggin’ not killing people accidentally? You seem to imply the credence should be low. Why on Earth? I say it’s pretty high, because A has demonstrated a very low level of said skill.
I am not sure. Let’s say that each person has h(is/er) own “killing rate” R, which tells the probability of killing somebody accidentally during a year, and characterising how good is (s)he at not killing people. We have some distribution P(R) in the population, which should be taken as the prior distribution for any person. Now, given that the person has killed (K) this year (and never before), h(is/er) posterior distribution is clearly P(R|K)=P(R)P(K|R)/P(K), where P(K|R)=R by definition and P(K) is the probability to kill with any rate, which is integral of P(K|R)P(R)dR, and that equals to R0, the population average killing rate. For the actual person’s posterior average we get R=(int R^2 P(R)dR)/R0, which is (V0+R0^2)/R0, where V0 is the variance of the prior distribution, so the change from the prior R0 is of order V0/R0.
Now, we can plug in some real data, which I can’t supply, but the point is that how strong evidence an accidental killing presents isn’t clear and depends strongly on the width of the distribution P(R). If all people were almost equally good at not killing accidentally, then the fact that a person has killed says almost nothing except (s)he, and more so the victim, had simply bad luck.
I have assumed that R are small and we can disregard multiple killings in a year and similar effects.
Well, I think your drunk-driving skill are only a factor to the extent that
you’re more likely not to get caught; but I doubt that if you had some kind of
evidence of being an excellent drunk-driver, it would help you to get a lower
sentence if you’d cause an accident anyhow.
Uh… what? You do get a lesser charge if you avoid killing anybody. What’s more, you actually called attention to that fact before, and are trying to argue that it’s morally wrong! So, basically, one of your arguments against X relies on an incorrect assertion that not-X. I wanted to call this “begging the question”, but it’s probably the wrong nomenclature; the pattern of argument is just extremely weird.
I can see the confusion. Essentially I was pointing out that the law is blind to things like “I’m a good drunk driver,” except in the case of this moral luck issue.
For instance, there is (thankfully) a principle in force that you cannot, with a dead body at your feet, say “I was just trying to kidnap him.” So one crime committed accidentally in the course of another crime gets punished almost as severely as if it was intentional. But drunk driving is only punished severely in the special case where somebody happens to die? Where is the rationale?
Edit: Almost as severely, but not just as severely.
Hmm—is that right? What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manslaughter …?
What about the felony murder rule?
That is, in countries that have it, if you were attempting to commit a violent felony (like kidnapping), which results in a death, it’s upgraded to murder, even if accidental.
Right you are. Edited.
The article is saying that you can’t affect your sentence by showing skill at drunk driving, other than by using the (very indirect) evidence provided by showing that nobody died as a result.
I think it’s a sound point, given that the question is about identical behaviour giving different sentences.
If you’re told that two people have once driven over the limit, that A killed someone while B didn’t, and nothing more, what’s your level of credence that B is the more skilled drunk driver?
Pretty high, actually. Drunkenness is a red herring here. Let’s put it another way: if you’re told that A once killed someone accidentally while B didn’t, what’s your credence that B is better at friggin’ not killing people accidentally? You seem to imply the credence should be low. Why on Earth? I say it’s pretty high, because A has demonstrated a very low level of said skill.
I am not sure. Let’s say that each person has h(is/er) own “killing rate” R, which tells the probability of killing somebody accidentally during a year, and characterising how good is (s)he at not killing people. We have some distribution P(R) in the population, which should be taken as the prior distribution for any person. Now, given that the person has killed (K) this year (and never before), h(is/er) posterior distribution is clearly P(R|K)=P(R)P(K|R)/P(K), where P(K|R)=R by definition and P(K) is the probability to kill with any rate, which is integral of P(K|R)P(R)dR, and that equals to R0, the population average killing rate. For the actual person’s posterior average we get R=(int R^2 P(R)dR)/R0, which is (V0+R0^2)/R0, where V0 is the variance of the prior distribution, so the change from the prior R0 is of order V0/R0.
Now, we can plug in some real data, which I can’t supply, but the point is that how strong evidence an accidental killing presents isn’t clear and depends strongly on the width of the distribution P(R). If all people were almost equally good at not killing accidentally, then the fact that a person has killed says almost nothing except (s)he, and more so the victim, had simply bad luck.
I have assumed that R are small and we can disregard multiple killings in a year and similar effects.
Edit: math corrected
Well, I think your drunk-driving skill are only a factor to the extent that you’re more likely not to get caught; but I doubt that if you had some kind of evidence of being an excellent drunk-driver, it would help you to get a lower sentence if you’d cause an accident anyhow.