Man tricks his girlfriend into killing 6 week old fetus. What charges should he face?

[Velaniz]

Just one law that says "this is bad, so for the purposes of this specific thing, we're going to treat X as Y, to properly reflect how bad it is."

But X is NOT as bad as Y. X is a step up above aggravated assault, yet way below Y in terms of severity of magnitude. Why you would have a punishment that would suggest X is just as bad as Y is baffling.

Because that's the logical step up from "aggravated assault"

A logical step up does not have to be an illogical leap straight up to equating it to murder. You don't have to exaggerate its severity to elevate the punishment. Can you think of nothing in between? The major pitfall with this is that by esteeming this incident as first-degree murder, you are just paving the way for people to just murder the mother as well next time. Incentivising it, even. With the mother dead, the charge is the same if the killer gets caught, but he now has a chance at hiding her body and never letting it be known that anything happened at all.

[Tradewind]

I'm well aware laws allow this to be charged as murder. That's why I'm discussing this, because based on logic, and my own principles, a lot of which are also echoed in other parts of the law (which brings us to the incongruency we were discussing earlier), I don't think it ought to be.

You don't have to believe something to be a murder charge to deem it an unacceptable course of action. I think it's an unacceptable course of action because it's a violation of someone's bodily autonomy. Not so much because a fetus was murdered.

What if the death is unintentional? UVOVA really only applies to the intentional death of a fetus. In this case it's pretty obvious what his intentions were and he had the knowledge to carry it out. If the fetus was killed as a result of a car accident though, the driver at fault wouldn't be charged with murder. This goes back to the whole "malice aforethought" definition of murder I brought up before. So really, what do you call it? If we've already decided there is a distinction when it comes to bodily autonomy between the mother deciding versus the father/parents etc. forcing them to do it either by violence or coercion. What do we call it?

Prior to 2004, the guy wouldn't have been charged with anything at all relating to the fetus. Is that right?

[Endus]

But X is NOT as bad as Y. X is a step up above aggravated assault, yet way below Y in terms of severity of magnitude. Why you would have a punishment that would suggest X is just as bad as Y is baffling.

You haven't demonstrated this in any kind of quantitative manner, and plenty of others disagree, including all of those who created and voted for the bill that created such a law.

A logical step up does not have to be an illogical leap straight up to equating it to murder. You don't have to exaggerate its severity to elevate the punishment. Can you think of nothing in between?

There isn't really anything in between aggravated assault and murder, on the violent crime scale. And again; the severity is not being "exaggerated", it's deliberately scaled up to what was deemed appropriate.

The major pitfall with this is that by esteeming this incident as first-degree murder, you are just paving the way for people to just murder the mother as well next time. Incentivising it, even. With the mother dead, the charge is the same if the killer gets caught, but he now has a chance at hiding her body and never letting it be known that anything happened at all.

It doesn't "incentivise" anything; killing the mother would make it two murder charges, not one.

[n1ck301]

It doesn't "incentivise" anything; killing the mother would make it two murder charges, not one.

It's pretty much the same sentence regardless. At least they'd have a chance to escape with the crime.

[Eroginous]

100% irrelevant, since the point of the law is that this kind of assault is considered more egregious than a "regular" assault, hence the upgraded severity. You can't argue "but it's not murder", when there's a law outstanding that states that despite this not fitting the bill, it will be treated as such.

Then it should be 'egregious assault' charge instead of just 'assault.' Pretty sure it's illegal/unconstitutional to create a law that charges someone with a crime they didn't commit.

[Endus]

Then it should be 'egregious assault' charge instead of just 'assault.'

There's no such crime.

Pretty sure it's illegal/unconstitutional to create a law that charges someone with a crime they didn't commit.

Well, they did commit a crime, and the law clearly defines where it falls, under the UVOVA. So none of what you said there is, in fact, accurate at all. He did commit a criminal act, which under the UVOVA qualifies as murder.

The only thing in the Constitution you could be thinking of is the Eighth Amendment, in particular the part about "cruel and unusual punishment", but that's an incredibly hard bar to meet and there's no grounds whatsoever for that here.

[Eroginous]

There's no such crime.

There is if lawmakers stop being lazy and make it a crime.

Well, they did commit a crime, and the law clearly defines where it falls, under the UVOVA. So none of what you said there is, in fact, accurate at all. He did commit a criminal act, which under the UVOVA qualifies as murder.

The only thing in the Constitution you could be thinking of is the Eighth Amendment, in particular the part about "cruel and unusual punishment", but that's an incredibly hard bar to meet and there's no grounds whatsoever for that here.

He sure did commit a crime. But he did not commit the crime of murder. That's like charging someone who stole a car with murder (two completely unrelated crimes).

Really not sure how you can even begin to justify the legality of those laws.

[Endus]

He sure did commit a crime. But he did not commit the crime of murder.

According to the UVOVA, he did.

You can't declare that the law does not define legal terms that are only relevant within the law. You don't define what is and is not "murder", in the US; the US Law Code does, and according to the UVOVA, it's murder.

[Toxigen]

Shouldn't be murder, that's a joke.

[Daelak]

Here's a link straight to the article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3284959.html

So in a nutshell what happened was the man in question got his girlfriend pregnant, and he strongly urged her not to have the baby for reasons unknown. The woman, though, was dead set on going through with the pregnancy, and so what this man did was replace one of her various medicinal pills she'd been falsely administered with Cytotec, a drug which induces labour, and consequently killed the 6 week old fetus.

The oddest thing about this to me, is that the man faces first degree murder charges. Punishable by life in prison, and ironically in a state where abortion is very legal.

I certainly think that was a pretty foul thing he did, but to charge someone with murder and possibly imprison them for life? In my opinion the primary crime in question was tampering with someone's medicine to induce a process that is potentially dangerous to their physical well-being, i.e. basic assault charges. How the collateral damage that was the woman's emotional turmoil should be handled, I'm not sure. But even aggravated assault would be pushing it a tad far.

What do you personally think he ought to face?

Edit:
Definition of Aggravated Assault

Was the woman in danger of being over-dosed?

[Deleted]

Was the woman in danger of being over-dosed?

She was in danger of dying as cytotec can cause uterine rupture even at normal doses.

[Daelak]

She was in danger of dying as cytotec can cause uterine rupture even at normal doses.

I don't know if a small chance side-affect is enough to warrant a murder charge.

[Deleted]

I don't know if a small chance side-affect is enough to warrant a murder charge.

Depends on what you've had done before.

[Laize]

There's no such crime.


Well, they did commit a crime, and the law clearly defines where it falls, under the UVOVA. So none of what you said there is, in fact, accurate at all. He did commit a criminal act, which under the UVOVA qualifies as murder.

The only thing in the Constitution you could be thinking of is the Eighth Amendment, in particular the part about "cruel and unusual punishment", but that's an incredibly hard bar to meet and there's no grounds whatsoever for that here.

The UVOVA explicitly lists several crimes under which can be prosecuted if the child dies.

Is assault one of them?

[Tradewind]

The UVOVA explicitly lists several crimes under which can be prosecuted if the child dies.

Is assault one of them?

I assumed it was any felony. But yeah it does seem to have a list of them:

(1) Sections 36, 37, 43, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 229, 242, 245, 247, 248, 351, 831, 844 (d), (f), (h)(1), and (i), 924 (j), 930, 1111, 1112, 1113, 1114, 1116, 1118, 1119, 1120, 1121, 1153 (a), 1201 (a), 1203, 1365 (a), 1501, 1503, 1505, 1512, 1513, 1751, 1864, 1951, 1952 (a)(1)(B), (a)(2)(B), and (a)(3)(B), 1958, 1959, 1992, 2113, 2114, 2116, 2118, 2119, 2191, 2231, 2241 (a), 2245, 2261, 2261A, 2280, 2281, 2332, 2332a, 2332b, 2340A, and 2441 of this title.
(2) Section 408(e) of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (21 U.S.C. 848 (e)). (3) Section 202 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2283).

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1841 has links in it to most if not all of the crimes

1365 (a) is the drug tampering one.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1365#a

Can it be thread over time now?