Mother kills baby with methadone, gets 1 year

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Look at it this way...acetaminophen will kill a kid just as dead as methadone.  Both are pain killers, both are deadly.  That is why I said I doubt she was an educated middle-class person...or possibly not sober.  Granted, her use of methadone makes her more stupid, but not more 'evil' and deserving of punishment.  You  punish people with prison time for a reason.  If her intent was not to kill I imagine a year of prison combined with the death of her child gets the message across.

I don't see any benefit for punishing someone more harshly for no benefit.  YMMV.

Yes, acetaminophen can kill a baby, and like methadone, everyone knows not to feed babies lethal doses of the stuff. 

From my perspective she killed a baby and isn't being punished enough.  I don't see any benefit for punishing someone less harshly for no benefit.  In fact, I see harm for not punishing someone harshly enough for killing a baby.

[mellestad]

Yes, acetaminophen can kill a baby, and like methadone, everyone knows not to feed babies lethal doses of the stuff. 

From my perspective she killed a baby and isn't being punished enough.  I don't see any benefit for punishing someone less harshly for no benefit.  In fact, I see harm for not punishing someone harshly enough for killing a baby.

I think we understand one another.

[Balog]

Wow, stupidity is a valid excuse for negligent homicide these days? And a year in prison is too harsh for killing your own child? I would be astonished, but you mentioned that you're a liberal so it all makes sense now...

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Well, yes.  Except for that part of believing that killing a baby by deliberately feeding her lethal substances can be an accidental.

[MicroBalrog]

Wow, stupidity is a valid excuse for negligent homicide these days? And a year in prison is too harsh for killing your own child? I would be astonished, but you mentioned that you're a liberal so it all makes sense now...

"Excuse"?

Isn't the very definition of "negligent" homicide that it's created by stupidity?

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

"Negligence" implies some sort of failure to act properly, that something which clearly and obviously should have been done, somehow wasn't done.  That's not quite what happened here.  

This wasn't a case of someone failing to do something obviously important, it was a case of someone going out of her way to do something obviously harmful.

[mellestad]

"Negligence" implies some sort of failure to act properly, that something which clearly and obviously should have been done, somehow wasn't done.  That's not quite what happened here.  

This wasn't a case of someone failing to do something obviously important, it was a case of someone going out of her way to do something obviously harmful.

If it was obviously harmful (edit: obvious to the mother) it would be straight up murder.

Wow, stupidity is a valid excuse for negligent homicide these days? And a year in prison is too harsh for killing your own child? I would be astonished, but you mentioned that you're a liberal so it all makes sense now...

Actually, yes it is, and it has been throughout American legal history.  That is the difference between manslaughter, negligent homicide and murder.  Accidentally running someone over while you fiddle with your radio is not the same as stalking a person and murdering them on purpose.  Trying to make a long-standing legal idea into a partisan attack is dishonest on your part.  Not everything is about politics.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

If it was obviously harmful (edit: obvious to the mother) it would be straight up murder.

Agreed.  It should have been obvious to the mother, and it should have been treated as straight up murder.

[Balog]

You are being disingenuous. Or just ignorant, hard to tell. Negligent homicide and manslaughter are indeed different, although you seem unclear as to what they actually mean. And of course it's clouded by the fact that different jurisdictions have different names for the same concepts.

[Jamisjockey]

If it was obviously harmful (edit: obvious to the mother) it would be straight up murder.

Actually, yes it is, and it has been throughout American legal history.  That is the difference between manslaughter, negligent homicide and murder.  Accidentally running someone over while you fiddle with your radio is not the same as stalking a person and murdering them on purpose.  Trying to make a long-standing legal idea into a partisan attack is dishonest on your part.  Not everything is about politics.

How is it not obviously harmful to give a baby too much of something besides food, milk, water and sleep? 
some generations rubbed whiskey on a babies gums to help with teething.  But the average mouth breather knows it would kill a baby to fill up its bottle with Jack instead of formula.

[mellestad]

Agreed.  It should have been obvious to the mother, and it should have been treated as straight up murder.

We won't ever know unless someone pulls up the full case files.  I trust that the judge/jury had enough information to make in informed decision.

I'll post more tomorrow, have a good night!

[Firethorn]

Yes, acetaminophen can kill a baby, and like methadone, everyone knows not to feed babies lethal doses of the stuff. 

Yes, but assume that momma is both drug resistant and an idiot.

Not everyone knows, in other words.

Wow, stupidity is a valid excuse for negligent homicide these days? And a year in prison is too harsh for killing your own child? I would be astonished, but you mentioned that you're a liberal so it all makes sense now...

1.  No
2.  People have said it's 'pretty harsh', but not 'too harsh'

I think the responses came out when somebody called for harsher punishment, and people disagreed - there are plenty of babies dead from stuff just as stupid in hindsight, if not stupider, where the parents serve not one day in jail.

[MicroBalrog]

Yes, acetaminophen can kill a baby, and like methadone, everyone knows not to feed babies lethal doses of the stuff. 

And yet babies die every year because idiot parents attempt to use medicine on them that tey shouldn't be using.

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

Yes, acetaminophen can kill a baby, and like methadone, everyone knows not to feed babies lethal doses of the stuff. 

Wrong. Some people 'know better.'

[De Selby]

You don't punish people as harshly for negligence because, not being intentional, punishments don't tend to generate much in the way of deterrence.  The example you would set by giving this woman a life sentence wouldn't reach the target audience.  The people you want to target don't think of that crime they heard someone got 20 years for because...they don't intend to commit that crime; it's not on their radar.

The only way you could get deterrence out of a story like this is to give decades in punishment to anyone who administers medicines to a baby without a license - and if you don't enforce it against the tylenol users just as much as the methadone users, it isn't going to be that effective. 

With intentional crimes, retribution apart from deterrence is a lot more palatable.  So it makes sense to give a harsh punishment even where there is little or no deterrent factor.  But with negligent crimes, especially where the criminal lost her kid?  I'm not seeing a good basis for it.

[Monkeyleg]

Given the number of people in our prisons, I don't think that sentencing them to such is a deterrent to others. Sentencing people to prison or jail keeps them away from society for a while. If they keep screwing up, then they're kept from society for a long time.

A person can go to prison for all sorts of dumb things, including driving drunk multiple times. Talk to the drunk, and he'll almost certainly tell you he didn't think he was endangering anyone. This mother didn't think so, either, but she killed someone by her actions.

I'd say that she should be sterilized, but the outcry would be too great.

[Physics]

Is it not just as negligent to leave the pool gate open?  Would she be given a year sentence in the instance of the child drowning due to negligence? 

Conversely, any reasonable person should know not to give an infant methadone.  I have no problem, as mentioned above, with rubbing booze on an infants gums.  METHADONE though???  This is the stuff heroin addicts use to get rid of DT's.  Whoa.

[cordex]

The only way you could get deterrence out of a story like this is to give decades in punishment to anyone who administers medicines to a baby without a license - and if you don't enforce it against the tylenol users just as much as the methadone users, it isn't going to be that effective. 

How exactly does that follow?  You say on the one hand that deterrence won't be realized by punishing this woman, but on the other hand a deterrent effect would be present if we brought in some sort of government licensing scheme to regulate all medication of children.  Is that about right?

I'm not understanding how you're getting from point A to point B here.

[De Selby]

How exactly does that follow?  You say on the one hand that deterrence won't be realized by punishing this woman, but on the other hand a deterrent effect would be present if we brought in some sort of government licensing scheme to regulate all medication of children.  Is that about right?

I'm not understanding how you're getting from point A to point B here.

It's the difference between "it's a crime to do something stupid" and "it's a crime to do concrete thing x, no matter what you're thinking when you do it."

You get deterrence with the second type because then any time a person gives medicine to a child, they think "Hey, I'm breaking the law."

Making a law that factors in being careless/stupid/dangerous won't work because, while people do think "Hey, I'm giving this medicine to a baby", they will rarely think "I'm also an idiot and dangerous", and thus will not consider themselves to be doing something that amounts to a crime.

Monkeyleg has a good example: drunk driving.  They never think they endanger people - that's why the crime isn't "to drive dangerously while drunk", it's driving with a set amount of alcohol that makes the crime, negligence/intentions aside.   So now you have people thinking twice before they drink and drive, even if they don't believe they'd be dangerous on the road.

If you made the law something as vague as "it's illegal to drive and negligently cause risk to others", you would have zero effect on drunk drivers, because they don't think they're doing something dangerous for the most part...which is just like the mom in this case.

[Antibubba]

Conversely, any reasonable person should know not to give an infant methadone.  I have no problem, as mentioned above, with rubbing booze on an infants gums.  METHADONE though???  This is the stuff heroin addicts use to get rid of DT's.  Whoa.

One could argue that a person who NEEDS Methadone may not fall into the "reasonable person" category.  Or that someone who is taking methadone is, during a period after taking it, negligent in the same way that a drunk driver might be.  We also don't know about her remorse--perhaps the year in jail seems like nothing to her compared to the guilt she has felt since this happened. 

I wasn't there, so I couldn't say.

[Strings]

Wow... I have to side with the liberals here? Weird...

I had a roomie who was on methadone for back pain. When they first put her on it, it would leave her sitting and (literally) drooling on herself. I can see someone in a similar state thinking (dimly) that the drug would quiet a child, without actually having the neurons fire that methadone is a powerful narcotic...

[KD5NRH]

Actually, yes it is, and it has been throughout American legal history.  That is the difference between manslaughter, negligent homicide and murder.

I'm not going to go try to dig up the right state, but several are pretty similar to Texas on culpable mental states:

6.03. DEFINITIONS OF CULPABLE MENTAL STATES. 
 (a) A person acts intentionally, or with intent, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result.
 (b)  A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to circumstances surrounding his conduct when he is aware of the nature of his conduct or that the circumstances exist.  A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to a result of his conduct when he is aware that his conduct is reasonably certain to cause the result.
 (c)  A person acts recklessly, or is reckless, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur.  The risk must be of such a nature and degree that its disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.
 (d)  A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur.  The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.

Now, reckless is the standard for manslaughter in Texas.  I doubt any prosecutor worth his wingtips would be unable to convince a jury that the mother was aware that methadone could be toxic to an infant.  A charge of criminally negligent homicide would be an indication that the prosecution wasn't willing to put in the effort.

[De Selby]

KD5NRH, the problem is the "conscious disregard" part of that state of awareness.  You can't consciously disregard the possibility that methadone will kill the baby unless you're actually thinking at the time "eh, this might kill the kid, but I'm going to give it to him anyway."

If that thought isn't in your mind, you can't consciously disregard it. 

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Then lock her away for a decade because she failed to have that thought in her mind when she should have.

[mellestad]

Wow... I have to side with the liberals here? Weird...

I had a roomie who was on methadone for back pain. When they first put her on it, it would leave her sitting and (literally) drooling on herself. I can see someone in a similar state thinking (dimly) that the drug would quiet a child, without actually having the neurons fire that methadone is a powerful narcotic...

I don't think this is a partisan issue at all, honestly.  If you posted this on a liberal forum there would be plenty of people saying she should be given a larger sentence.