In case you haven’t been following along, there’s been a…well, let’s call it a legal edge case…right here in my…well, let’s call it “beloved, but less the emotional sense and more the ‘Toni Morrison penned book about a dead baby and the lingering effects of slavery’ sense’…of Missouri. I’ll spare you the gory details, but in short, people acted badly.
However, recently, people started acting better, at least from a legal sense. Of course, this has led to howls of outrage. The one I find sort of interesting is the debating of if Drew is guilty of manslaughter or second degree murder.
The general tenor seems to be that manslaughter is sort of “death by misadventure”; if you didn’t intend to kill someone but you did, then you…how do you verb that?…manslaughtered them? If you, however, knowingly inflict harm that leads or could lead to death, then it’s second degree murder. Many want Drew charged with second degree murder and are furious regarding Missouri’s choice not to prosecute Drew criminally at all while cheering on the Federal prosecutors who lost their legal shit and tried to ensconce MySpace ToS as federal law. To them, the situation seems very clear cut and Drew is guilty of second degree murder.
However, under Missouri Law it’s not, or at least, it’s not so clear cut.
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