Quote:
Originally Posted by Marsh.
Causing the death or injury of a child whether they "forgot" or not is a crime IMO.
It would be manslaughter would it not?
|
It has a very well defined psychological explanation and there's lots of precedent for it being considered diminished responsibility due to a type of temporary insanity (almost always triggered by stress).
It's a difficult one, for me. I understand why it happens and have studied the phenomenon a decent amount, it's difficult to say that someone should be considered criminally responsible for something that they genuinely had no intention of doing and never feasibly believed was possible. Manslaughter, generally, is when it's an accident but it can be reasonably proven that the person responsible knew that what they were doing carried risks (e.g. speeding, hitting or shoving someone without an intention to kill but a death occurring anyway, etc). In these cases, the parents didn't KNOWINGLY do anything risky. If they had known that the child was in the car but just "thought they would be fine" then that could be considered manslaughter.
On the other hand, I am completely against the notion that it can happen to "anyone", as I explained above. It happens because in the western worl, far too often, children are considered an inconvenience to be offloaded so that the grown ups can focus on "more important things" such as money, money, stressing about money, making money and spending money. Is this their fault? I don't know. It's pushed on people from birth SO heavily by society that it's not surprising that too many parents' minds are more firmly rooted in work than on their children. I don't know if that's the parent's fault. I just can't decide, and I'm not really comfortable judging, with the issue being so complicated.