To summarize (as I had considerable trouble wading through the huge, vague articles on this proceeding), hopefully accurately:
The logic is that she committed manslaughter by dragging the infant-to-be into a violent confrontation that she started, and which she escalated to the point that force was justified in defense against her (that part seems to be considered established). Like if you involved yourself in a high speed chase with an infant in the car, and that infant died in the proceedings, you would likely be guilty of manslaughter (in Alabama and some other places).
Shooting a pregnant woman out of defence can be justified only in the U.S. In any other country in the world you have to be extra careful with weapons.
You have to have a “reasonable belief that you’re in danger.” and "the level of force needs to be reasonable given the circumstances. "
In practice, prosecutors in Canada are quite likely to charge you with a crime no matter what to let the court decide rather than making that decision themselves. Once it hits court, juries are usually quite sympathetic to the self defense argument.
So when a pregnant woman puts somebody in mortal danger, it is somehow the victim's fault for meeting deadly force with deadly force? I don't think that would fly even here in Canada.
The law may differ on duty to retreat and other matters (though in this case the victim retreated after retaliating), but at the end of the day, there is a circumstance where use of deadly force is justified against a person, whether that person is a pregnant woman or not. You're not meant to simply roll over and die when attacked by a pregnant woman so as not to offend the sensibilities of some random HN commenter.
According to the article it was ,,a dispute with another woman over the father of the child''. Of course if it's mortal danger, things are different, but I think it's generally very hard for a pregnant woman to kill another woman without a gun. The death statistics of U.S. compared to other countries don't support the theory that guns are used only in mortal danger.
> ...but I think it's generally very hard for a pregnant woman to kill another woman without a gun
You are extremely wrong in that thought. One wrong bump on the head, and you are a goner. Don't get in a fight, don't start a fight, and don't stay in a fight you won't finish. Two average-build women fighting is perilous for the participants just like two average-build men fighting.
In the heat of an argument, one or the other is going to get the upper hand, and maybe today they don't choose a good time to stop pounding their opponent's head into the pavement. If you aren't willing to defend yourself, you can only hope that your opponent will show mercy when the time comes; I don't think it is really appropriate to ask the victim of an escalating battery to wait and see if they'll be killed once the situation is completely out of their control.
More details will probably become available, but there are circumstances that can be established, under which the charge discussed makes sense, and under which the person who fired the firearm is not guilty of an offence; such as if the pregnant woman is committing assault in the first or second degree.
> The death statistics of U.S. compared to other countries don't support the theory that guns are used only in mortal danger.
What kind of non-sequitur is that? Nobody is making that claim or any statement that could depend on it.
Depends on the degree of escalation and a tremendous number of other factors, but yes: my understanding is that in Alabama, you do not necessarily need to wait until somebody is obviously trying to kill you to respond with deadly force.
On a personal note, I agree with this. It is unjust to ask people to wait until they're dead to defend themselves, when another person has initiated force that could rapidly become deadly.
It is not uncommon that one pushes another over in anger, and that other is killed. That's not manslaughter, that's murder.
P.S: Be careful mixing up lethal with deadly, or either of those with fatal. There are subtle but important differences.
How does this make any sense? If they’re going to press charges for the shooting of an unborn baby (which isn’t new - the charge is manslaughter), the person who pulled the trigger ought to be the one charged.
The logic is that the person who shot her was acting in justified self defense, so the woman charged is the one who caused the child's death by creating the situation in which the other person justifiably defended herself.
It's a little convoluted and probably won't stand up in court.
The person who pulled the trigger was deamed to have acted in self defense and is not being charged. Getting a manslaughter charge when acting in self defense is what shouldn't make sense.
> Getting a manslaughter charge when acting in self defense is what shouldn't make sense.
The instant someone pulls a gun trigger, they assume legal responsibility for the path of the bullet, and everything it does along that path.
If I fire a shot in justified self-defense but miss and kill someone else, I can (and should) be charged with manslaughter. That makes good legal sense, as far as I can tell.
In some states if you rob a bank and cop shoots at you but misses and hits and kills a bystander, then YOU the robber who did NOT shoot anyone will be charged with manslaughter.
Wow, that strikes me as really unjust and backward.
So if a policeman is willfully negligent and doesn’t keep up his target practice, his own lack of skill could result in someone else being charged with manslaughter. I disagree: If anyone is charged, it should be him—though I do recognize the court would rightly not hold him responsible if a reasonably competent person couldn’t have been expected to do better.
If it worked that way, perhaps people would think twice more often before discharging a firearm - and fewer people would be harmed.
"The police have said she was culpable because she started the fight that led to the shooting and failed to remove herself from harm’s way."
The headline is shocking, but I can certainly imagine situations like this in which a negligent parent is responsible for putting their child/fetus at risk. Is there a precedent for a manslaughter charge for something like this?
I think the headline is accurate. The fact that the pregnant woman may have started the argument or threatened the person who shot her are certainly important details to how this situation arose. The fact is that the pregnant woman was shot, and was arrested for endangering her fetus. This has a chilling effect on other pregnant women. Sometimes people argue and have heated disagreements. The idea that as a pregnant person you can now be arrested specifically because it endangers the unborn is frightening.
I can't access this article. I've read another one about the case (Washington Post) and it doesn't really get into the cause of the fight.
But it sounds to me like the root cause is probably misogyny and what a lot of people would decry as "the evils of patriarchy."
As best I can infer, some guy got a woman pregnant that he wasn't married to. Before the baby is even born, he's keeping company with some other woman, probably de facto abandoning the pregnant woman and their child in the process. The two women fought. The fetus died.
He's not likely to ever be charged with anything. We are just going to argue about which woman he was screwing should be hung high.
Particularly given that your scenario includes no allegation of rape, it seems that you're draining these women of moral agency and responsibility for their actions. Such infantalization of women is hard to distinguish from misogyny.
The woman being charged is Black. How much agency do you think a poor Black woman living in a backwards Southern state should be expected to have in a world that increasingly wants to criminalize abortion, among other things?
Blacks and women: it's your fault your lives don't work. We don't want to talk about systemic issues, like how we think all men are entitled to sex and are not to be held responsible for the consequences of their actions. If your life gets ruined because he knocked you up and promptly bailed, well, bitch, it's your fault for spreading your legs, clearly.
The article says nothing about her economic status aside from stating that she successfully posted a $50,000 bond and was released. Assuming that she is poor because she is black is racist.
No, I'm not. I'm just not phrasing things very well.
If you look at the stats, in the aggregate, blacks in America have dramatically fewer resources than whites on a per capita basis. Generally speaking, this typically means that even those who do make good money have more needy relatives that they may feel some obligation towards.
Even if money is not an issue for this woman, she's still a black woman in America. No amount of money completely washes that off.
Here's a story about Oprah Winfrey being told no, we won't show you a $40k handbag because we think you can't afford it (yes, I'm aware the incident occurred in Zurich):
Laws are written by men, about men, for men. They do a poor job of addressing the realities of women.
When an abusive husband finally beats his wife to death after years of abusing her, he does less time on average than when an abused wife kills her abusive husband in self defense. He will probably beat her to death "in a fit of rage" with his bare hands. She will probably have to use some kind of equalizer and preplan it. He will be charged with a crime if passion, possibly only manslaughter because he didn't actually intend to kill her. She will be charged with premeditated murder.
Our laws are written as if two people of equal size, strength etc are up against each other. We don't have good mechanisms in place for accounting for substantial differences a both physically and socially between the sexes.
Most poor women in the US were solidly middle class until their spouse died, they got divorced or they turned up unexpectedly pregnant. Even if you make good money, being a single parent is burdensome.
Men routinely complain about being imposed upon for childcare expenses and alimony. Meanwhile, it's just taken as a given that women are supposed to take time off from their careers for their children. Some people even argue that there is no gender wage gap once you account for the fact that women tend to spend less time doing paid work than men.
Women tend to earn nearly as much as men, until there is a man or child in her life. Then a woman will tend to earn substantially less than a man. (My stats are a bit out of date, but it used to drop to 2/3s in average.)
So having kids suppresses the income of women, but women get treated like they just aren't ambitious enough and don't want a career badly enough. Meanwhile, the entire world defaults to holding women responsible for the care of children.
I hooked up with a guy during my divorce. He failed to supply the condom that he was informed in advance I expected him to supply. Because of that, I never wanted to see him again.
He was a moderator on a forum I belonged to. He raked me over the coals on that forum in a manner where the subtext was "Bitch, how dare you reject me over not supplying a condom!" I left the forum. I returned for a bit some years later. When I talked about that, they didn't investigate his abuse if his position of power on the forum (I was not the only female member of the forum he hooked up with -- he was treating it like his personal flesh pot). Instead, I was banned.
While getting divorced, I sometimes had men tell me they would like to have a threesome with me and another man. When I asked "And what happens if I turn up pregnant and we don't know who the baby is?" They never had a good answer for that and I know what the law/the world would say and it would not be good news for me.
I'm perfectly happy to take responsibility for my choices and my sexuality. But the biological realities involved in sex combined with the social and legal landscape has made it exceedingly, shockingly easy for me to just say no for more t...
30 comments
[ 26.3 ms ] story [ 1117 ms ] threadThe logic is that she committed manslaughter by dragging the infant-to-be into a violent confrontation that she started, and which she escalated to the point that force was justified in defense against her (that part seems to be considered established). Like if you involved yourself in a high speed chase with an infant in the car, and that infant died in the proceedings, you would likely be guilty of manslaughter (in Alabama and some other places).
In practice, prosecutors in Canada are quite likely to charge you with a crime no matter what to let the court decide rather than making that decision themselves. Once it hits court, juries are usually quite sympathetic to the self defense argument.
(Not a lawyer, this is all heresay).
The law may differ on duty to retreat and other matters (though in this case the victim retreated after retaliating), but at the end of the day, there is a circumstance where use of deadly force is justified against a person, whether that person is a pregnant woman or not. You're not meant to simply roll over and die when attacked by a pregnant woman so as not to offend the sensibilities of some random HN commenter.
You are extremely wrong in that thought. One wrong bump on the head, and you are a goner. Don't get in a fight, don't start a fight, and don't stay in a fight you won't finish. Two average-build women fighting is perilous for the participants just like two average-build men fighting.
In the heat of an argument, one or the other is going to get the upper hand, and maybe today they don't choose a good time to stop pounding their opponent's head into the pavement. If you aren't willing to defend yourself, you can only hope that your opponent will show mercy when the time comes; I don't think it is really appropriate to ask the victim of an escalating battery to wait and see if they'll be killed once the situation is completely out of their control.
More details will probably become available, but there are circumstances that can be established, under which the charge discussed makes sense, and under which the person who fired the firearm is not guilty of an offence; such as if the pregnant woman is committing assault in the first or second degree.
> The death statistics of U.S. compared to other countries don't support the theory that guns are used only in mortal danger.
What kind of non-sequitur is that? Nobody is making that claim or any statement that could depend on it.
On a personal note, I agree with this. It is unjust to ask people to wait until they're dead to defend themselves, when another person has initiated force that could rapidly become deadly.
It is not uncommon that one pushes another over in anger, and that other is killed. That's not manslaughter, that's murder.
P.S: Be careful mixing up lethal with deadly, or either of those with fatal. There are subtle but important differences.
What, like a cliff? No, I don't think "getting pushed over" is a statistically significant cause of death.
It's a little convoluted and probably won't stand up in court.
The instant someone pulls a gun trigger, they assume legal responsibility for the path of the bullet, and everything it does along that path.
If I fire a shot in justified self-defense but miss and kill someone else, I can (and should) be charged with manslaughter. That makes good legal sense, as far as I can tell.
In some states if you rob a bank and cop shoots at you but misses and hits and kills a bystander, then YOU the robber who did NOT shoot anyone will be charged with manslaughter.
that is sort of what is happening here.
So if a policeman is willfully negligent and doesn’t keep up his target practice, his own lack of skill could result in someone else being charged with manslaughter. I disagree: If anyone is charged, it should be him—though I do recognize the court would rightly not hold him responsible if a reasonably competent person couldn’t have been expected to do better.
If it worked that way, perhaps people would think twice more often before discharging a firearm - and fewer people would be harmed.
The headline is shocking, but I can certainly imagine situations like this in which a negligent parent is responsible for putting their child/fetus at risk. Is there a precedent for a manslaughter charge for something like this?
As of 2015 three states criminalize substance abuse particularly during pregnancy: Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee.
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/maternity-drug-poli...
But it sounds to me like the root cause is probably misogyny and what a lot of people would decry as "the evils of patriarchy."
As best I can infer, some guy got a woman pregnant that he wasn't married to. Before the baby is even born, he's keeping company with some other woman, probably de facto abandoning the pregnant woman and their child in the process. The two women fought. The fetus died.
He's not likely to ever be charged with anything. We are just going to argue about which woman he was screwing should be hung high.
Blacks and women: it's your fault your lives don't work. We don't want to talk about systemic issues, like how we think all men are entitled to sex and are not to be held responsible for the consequences of their actions. If your life gets ruined because he knocked you up and promptly bailed, well, bitch, it's your fault for spreading your legs, clearly.
Next!
If you look at the stats, in the aggregate, blacks in America have dramatically fewer resources than whites on a per capita basis. Generally speaking, this typically means that even those who do make good money have more needy relatives that they may feel some obligation towards.
Even if money is not an issue for this woman, she's still a black woman in America. No amount of money completely washes that off.
Here's a story about Oprah Winfrey being told no, we won't show you a $40k handbag because we think you can't afford it (yes, I'm aware the incident occurred in Zurich):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oprah-winfrey-says-racism-kept-...
Laws are written by men, about men, for men. They do a poor job of addressing the realities of women.
When an abusive husband finally beats his wife to death after years of abusing her, he does less time on average than when an abused wife kills her abusive husband in self defense. He will probably beat her to death "in a fit of rage" with his bare hands. She will probably have to use some kind of equalizer and preplan it. He will be charged with a crime if passion, possibly only manslaughter because he didn't actually intend to kill her. She will be charged with premeditated murder.
Our laws are written as if two people of equal size, strength etc are up against each other. We don't have good mechanisms in place for accounting for substantial differences a both physically and socially between the sexes.
Most poor women in the US were solidly middle class until their spouse died, they got divorced or they turned up unexpectedly pregnant. Even if you make good money, being a single parent is burdensome.
Men routinely complain about being imposed upon for childcare expenses and alimony. Meanwhile, it's just taken as a given that women are supposed to take time off from their careers for their children. Some people even argue that there is no gender wage gap once you account for the fact that women tend to spend less time doing paid work than men.
Women tend to earn nearly as much as men, until there is a man or child in her life. Then a woman will tend to earn substantially less than a man. (My stats are a bit out of date, but it used to drop to 2/3s in average.)
So having kids suppresses the income of women, but women get treated like they just aren't ambitious enough and don't want a career badly enough. Meanwhile, the entire world defaults to holding women responsible for the care of children.
I hooked up with a guy during my divorce. He failed to supply the condom that he was informed in advance I expected him to supply. Because of that, I never wanted to see him again.
He was a moderator on a forum I belonged to. He raked me over the coals on that forum in a manner where the subtext was "Bitch, how dare you reject me over not supplying a condom!" I left the forum. I returned for a bit some years later. When I talked about that, they didn't investigate his abuse if his position of power on the forum (I was not the only female member of the forum he hooked up with -- he was treating it like his personal flesh pot). Instead, I was banned.
While getting divorced, I sometimes had men tell me they would like to have a threesome with me and another man. When I asked "And what happens if I turn up pregnant and we don't know who the baby is?" They never had a good answer for that and I know what the law/the world would say and it would not be good news for me.
I'm perfectly happy to take responsibility for my choices and my sexuality. But the biological realities involved in sex combined with the social and legal landscape has made it exceedingly, shockingly easy for me to just say no for more t...