[Shaun]

I kinda have a personal connection to unjustly short sentences: my cousin was stabbed and killed in a drunken brawl back in 2004 and the perpetrator only served 5 years for it.

I think manslaughter is a difficult crime to judge: there are obviously accidental deaths (eg. hit and runs, although...without the running/reckless driving lol) and I don't really think they should be punished...

But I think if you intentionally, drunk or not, carry a knife, or set fire to someone, or get in a fight, and you take someone's life out of recklessness and sudden idiocy, then you should get full voluntary manslaughter charges. The average for that is 142 months, so just over 11 years. I think that's a fair charge. Obviously in cases of mental illness that should be carried in institutionalisation rather than imprisonment, but still.

It's just obviously difficult because looking at a crime impassively and neutrally is all very easy until it happens to you, but I think emotion shouldn't have any influence over the sentencing. Unfortunately that's almost never going to be the case because a jury is human and going to be indirectly swayed by emotional pleas and testimony. I wouldn't like trying to sleep at night as a lawyer or judge.