DescentBB

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/27/helico ... index.html

In Phoenix, Arizona, two news helicopters collided. Both were following a car chase. Each helicopter's respective pilots and photographers perished in the crash.

The Phoenix police chief is now considering charging the pursued man, wanted for assault, theft, and other crimes, with the murder of the four individuals.

Question: Assuming for a moment that this isn't a threat to incite a confession or otherwise make the suspect plead guilty in light of murder charges, does the murder charge make sense? Why or why not?

some discussion here

perhaps they are thinking of the \"extreme recklessness\" aspect.

Ridiculous. It was the news copter pilots' own decision to follow the chase so intently that they didn't watch where they were going. If anyone should be charged, charge the news companies for not enforcing stricter precautions against this type of accident.

If a policeman had died, I would say yes, definitely charge the pursued man for murder. In that case it's in his attempt to evade the police (who are doing their duty) that they're killed. The media, on the other hand, voluntarily undertook a risky venture. Let me say this: if a paparazzi car chasing Princess Diana had crashed and killed someone, instead of her car crashing and killing her, should she have been charged for murder?

Wishmaster wrote: Let me say this: if a paparazzi car chasing Princess Diana had crashed and killed someone, instead of her car crashing and killing her, should she have been charged for murder?

Fantastic point.

These criminals are being used as scape goats.

They could wait for the NTSB investigation to wrap up first.

Direct physical proof of the suspect causing those copters to go down would be pretty hard at the moment.

Unless it can be demonstrated that the driver intentionally caused the helicopters to crash, then this is just another example of moral luck that has seeped into our legal system. When people evade the police, they are committing a crime in and of itself for which they should be punished. But, if by poor luck, an event outside of the driver's control occurs during the chase, like two helicopters colliding, should the driver be held responsible for having bad luck? I don't see any justice in that.

They definatley should be charged for the crashes. They were carelessly... polluting the atmosphere with their exhaust pipes... and... the smoke caused the two helicopters to crash...

I'm not a criminal law guy, but there's something called the \"felony murder rule\" that has existed for some time.

Reaching way back here, but my recollection is that if you are acting in the commission of a felony and someone dies as a result, then your intent is irrelevant. You are charged with homicide and down you go.

I think the more classic scenario is the getaway driver who gets into a car wreck and kill someone. Instead of negligent manslaughter it probably gets punished for second degree murder. This fellow may be charged with the deaths of the newsmen, too.

BD

My take: I'm not a lawyer, obviously, but I think the laws should be able to distinguish between an active participant in a chase versus an unwitting bystander. If the suspect in a car chase rams into a bystander - be it car, bike, or someone out on a leisurely stroll - I think they should be responsible for any crimes that come of it.

But consider a person who is an active participant in the chase. Say, a vigilante who is driving equally recklessly in order to stop the chase. A paparazzi. A news helicopter. Those people should be responsible for their own actions.

Kyouryuu wrote:My take: I'm not a lawyer, obviously, but I think the laws should be able to distinguish between an active participant in a chase versus an unwitting bystander. If the suspect in a car chase rams into a bystander - be it car, bike, or someone out on a leisurely stroll - I think they should be responsible for any crimes that come of it.

But consider a person who is an active participant in the chase. Say, a vigilante who is driving equally recklessly in order to stop the chase. A paparazzi. A news helicopter. Those people should be responsible for their own actions.

A policy choice, I think, which lays culpability at the feet of those who instigate the crime -- versus, say, a bystander who unwittingly walks into death while observing the crime. I'm not really offended by the idea, but I agree causation gets attenuated at the level of colliding newschoppers.

Tragic though.

Helicopter pilots gave a whole new meaning to \"Breaking News\".

My take: Cops chase people in cars all the time so another car chase is no news. All the helicopter news team was doing was getting filler footage for their nightly news program. Nothing worth getting involved with to the point where one loses situational awareness by focusing on the fleeing car. Tragic as it is, hopefully this will make news orginisations re-evaluate what is important enough to send their pilots out to investigate.

I think the only people culpable in this case are the two pilots. They should have known better but waived their safe pilot skills for something better left to stunt pilots on a hollywood back lot. I would think the passengers have cause to sue the pilots for willful neglegence.

I would think the passengers have cause to sue the pilots for willful neglegence.

... Both the passengers and the pilots are dead. I doubt anyone's suing anybody, unless via séance.

But that aside , I agree with you. All they needed to do was cover the rotten traffic like I'm sure they were sent there to do.

Here's a situation for you:

say a felon is in a high-speed pursuit, trying to get away from the cops. A vigilante steps in and also gives chase.

Then the vigilante has a collision with a bystander who, in his vehicle, came into the intersection at the wrong time and end up critically injured.

Now.. should the vigilante be charged with reckless driving, or should the felon be charged?

What is so hard about that, particularly for U.S. Americans? Everybody is responsible for his actions. Chasing a felon is no carte blanche for a vigilante. If he isn't careful enough not to hurt anybody (else), he is to be held responsible for it.

I find it ridiculous to charge the guy with murder that got pursued by the news choppers. Nobody forced the pilots to chase the guy. The driving force behind the chopper chase is greed (Hey! Let's show a cool car chase on TV, it will bring us a lot of money!). If the pilots are too dumb to watch their surroundings and crash into each other, then if anybody at all, the broadcasting companies should pay for it.

Btw, in Germany it is not illegal to flee from the police (the desire for freedom is rooted deep in human nature and must not be punished, says our law). You can only be punished for any criminal act you commit during your flight (speeding, stealing a car or a gun, carrying a gun illegally, using a gun ... you get the point).

As I am on it: It says everything about the nature of the news reporters taking part in such chases what I once saw in such a show: The guy who had fled had crashed his car (or was it a motorcycle) and had landed on the ground, got knocked unconcious, damaged or broken his spine, and the police jumped on him, put their arms around his neck, squeezed his throat, and the reporter falsely reported the (unconscious, massively injured felon) would be fighting back ... to justify the unnecessarily brutal action of the police officers who obviously gladly took the occasion to let out their lowest desires w/o having to fear any consequences. Criminals themselves.

Germany is such a good place to live.

Wishmaster wrote:

I would think the passengers have cause to sue the pilots for willful neglegence.

... Both the passengers and the pilots are dead. I doubt anyone's suing anybody, unless via séance.

But that aside , I agree with you. All they needed to do was cover the rotten traffic like I'm sure they were sent there to do.

Sorry, meant passengers family's.

Diedel wrote:Germany is such a good place to live.

Why ? You planning to commit any felonies ?

There's no way to judge if the cops were unesessary brutal, unless you stand right next to them. The guy was breaking a law by trying to evade and he knew it. In addition the cops have to assume he is armed -- sweet talking isn't the best way to avoid catching a bullet.

Well, the chief can try to charge him w/ murder, I doubt that it would hold tho. He didn't cause the accident after all, it was a piloting error.

Grendel,

the guy was lying on the ground completely motionless. He had been knocked unconscious. It turned out later that his spine had been severely injured, as I already wrote, and the police could have killed him with their unnecessary outburst of brutality.

You f'n know that I am right. I had that kind of foul excuses you are producing there. Reminds of my neighbour who was speeding past our house and when I asked him to drive slower just replied "How do you know I was too fast?" Sure, I don't have a built-in radar, but at a certain amount of speeding you can see it. The prick knew himself he was too fast, but he replied with so obvious a lie to talk himself out of it.

Grendel wrote:

Diedel wrote:Germany is such a good place to live.

Why ? You planning to commit any felonies ?

Germany is a way less violent and hard place to live. You hear much much more about police brutality from the U.S. than from Germany. The U.S. are developing a culture of hardness and brutality, so it seems (that's something you can even hear U.S. Americans say).

Diedel wrote:Germany is a way less violent and hard place to live.

I disagree. Violence is on the rising in all western big cities. Try Hamburg or Frankfurt in DE or Chicago in the US -- not much different. The german social system is falling apart. I get equal or even better medical benfits than I could get in DE ATM. I would get more unemployment money -- for a shorter period of time but OTOH it's easier for me to find a new job in the US.

Where I live now I have twice the money available and a fraction of the violence compared to the place I used to live in DE. People are more friendly and don't generaly try to have the last word all the time (I really started to get annoyed by that in germany), streets are safe.

Diedel wrote:You hear much much more about police brutality from the U.S. than from Germany.

Of course you hear more from the US -- compare the population size and area with DE. It's a lot more likely to get a statistical extrem here. Plus the baseline is different because of the gun laws.

Diedel wrote:The U.S. are developing a culture of hardness and brutality, so it seems (that's something you can even hear U.S. Americans say).

"So it seems" is the key -- bad information sources, heavily favoring negative news. I see the same thing in DE (and worldwide). The local situation is different tho -- what you read in the news doesn't tell you (or me) anything about the millions of peoples life around us.

Das sind doch alles an den Haaren herbeigezogene Scheiss-, Pardon, Scheinargumente.

Man, I don't know where you have lived in Germany.

If you compare crime numbers of the U.S. of A. to Germany, you will see a significant difference in favor of Germany. Btw, the \"Schützenvereine\" is the 2nd biggest club in Germany. Millions of people have guns here. But the control is better, and there's way less homicide due to gun use. Conclusion: Unlike the U.S. Rifle Assoc. says, you can have gun control and still have the fun.

Health care? Yeah, if you can pay for it. You can get work easily as you are highly qualified. Many people in the U.S. can't, or have to take two or three jobs to feed their families and because of that never be at home and parents for their children.

Btw, I am having a private health insurance, which is pretty cheap and has very good standards. And I bet you have a private one too, so don't talk about better health care for you. It's for the privileged only over there where you live as much as it is here. And I bet that our \"gesetzliche Krankenkasse\" is still better than your public health care.

Of course there are always Germans hating Germany just for it being Germany and believing that everything must be better than Germany.

Jaja, the U.S. is the promised land - for the wealthy and rich.

Diedel wrote:Das sind doch alles an den Haaren herbeigezogene Scheiss-, Pardon, Scheinargumente.

And how would you know that ? Did you live in the US for some years ?

Diedel wrote:Man, I don't know where you have lived in Germany.

Hamburg.

Diedel wrote:If you compare crime numbers of the U.S. of A. to Germany, you will see a significant difference in favor of Germany.

The total numbers are not very far off -- 80/1000 US, 76/1000 DE. The distribution is of course different. Matches my "felt" crime rate DE vs US tho.

Diedel wrote:Btw, the "Schützenvereine" is the 2nd biggest club in Germany. Millions of people have guns here. But the control is better, and there's way less homicide due to gun use. Conclusion: Unlike the U.S. Rifle Assoc. says, you can have gun control and still have the fun.

You can have no gun control and still feel safe walking on the streets. I don't know about you, but I know where I wouldn't walk on the streets at night, here or in DE. The likelyhood of me being the victim of a homicide didn't change after I moved.

Diedel wrote:Health care? Yeah, if you can pay for it.

Same in germany. There's very little difference in what the insurances pay for in DE or the US.

Diedel wrote:You can get work easily as you are highly qualified. Many people in the U.S. can't, or have to take two or three jobs to feed their families and because of that never be at home and parents for their children.

I have yet to meet anyone that was willing to work and wasn't able to find work -- highly qualified or not. DE has a higher unemployment rate than the US. Way higher in the long term unemployment section.

Diedel wrote:Btw, I am having a private health insurance, which is pretty cheap and has very good standards. And I bet you have a private one too, so don't talk about better health care for you. It's for the privileged only over there where you live as much as it is here. And I bet that our "gesetzliche Krankenkasse" is still better than your public health care.

Nope. The services in DE degraded massively the last few years. The costs for health insurance are very similar in the US & DE.

Diedel wrote:Of course there are always Germans hating Germany just for it being Germany and believing that everything must be better than Germany.

Jaja, the U.S. is the promised land - for the wealthy and rich.

And that applies here .. how ?

Overall, w/ my experiences so far I'd choose living in the US over living in DE any time for a lot of reasons. But I think we derailed the thread far enough. If you want to continue, I'd suggest a mod splits it.

Grendel wrote:

Diedel wrote:The U.S. are developing a culture of hardness and brutality, so it seems (that's something you can even hear U.S. Americans say).

"So it seems" is the key -- bad information sources, heavily favoring negative news. I see the same thing in DE (and worldwide). The local situation is different tho -- what you read in the news doesn't tell you (or me) anything about the millions of peoples life around us.

The U.S. American (I) agrees with Diedel. The millions of people will always be good people. The culture, though, is increasingly brutal. I speak particularly of the hip-hop "culture" - I wince to even apply to word "culture" there - that espouses gang violence and brutality in every possible way and is embraced by far too much of my generation.

I would say, though, that the development of that "culture" isn't rooted so much in more people living it as an increased societal acceptance of it. American marketing schemes are a prime indicator of this - look at McDonalds' recent attempt to be "hip". They know what's "cool", what's accepted, and they both feed off of it and feed it in return. Of course they don't endorse the violent aspects of the "culture", but until the violence is separated from the "culture", they will be helping it nonetheless.

IMO, the \"felony murder rule\" is generally a good one -- if you're not trying to kill someone, but you're trying to commit a felony and someone dies as a DIRECT result, you should be charged with homicide.

I would say \"direct\" is anything caused by:
1) you and your partners in crime (obviously)
2) the police/law enforcement people trying to stop you (because it's their job to stop you)
3) anyone else involuntarily caught in the crossfire (ex: a car swerving off the road to avoid a chase, only to hit a pedestrian.)

Anyone who voluntarily joins the chase should be liable for their own actions. This includes vigilantes, news helicopters, and the like. They didn't have to be involved; they CHOSE to be involved, so they should be held responsible. (Now, you can have \"split responsibility\" -- if a vigilante gets involved, and you ram them off the road into a pedestrian, both of you caused it.)