Yeah, but if they do get 'em, they'll probably just get a year in jail, plus have their liscence suspended. I don't know, I'm just judging from life in Canada. I mean, A guy in my country was busted, what 8 times? for driving under the influence, 5 times causing death, and he's still out there!!!
What galls me is that it seems that we are giving theives a longer jail sentence than muderers and rapists. It just doesn't add up! in fact, might as well call the justice system: the INjustice system.
[edit] Your town has the highest Unsolved murder rate in the country?!? I would NOT feel safe there!!!
(sigh) This world is so insane...
zoraking wrote:I doubt it, our police force is filled with corruption and scandals. In fact, my town has the highest unsolved murder rate per capita in the nation.
While that may be true it has little to do with the reasons why their sentence would be light.
First and foremost the pranksters could well be minors. This would lighten any sentence.
Second, the articles given do not claim anyone has died. This can't even escalate to an involuntary manslaughter case without a corpse.
Third, the defense would likely bring forth the point that the defendant(s) had no intentions of causing death and did not understand the full depth of the consequences of their prank. If the jury is sufficiently convinced, sympathy for the defendant(s) as "poor kids in trouble for a simple prank" could outweigh sympathy for the poor kids in the hospital because of the completely irresponsible actions of otehrs. In this case, the jury will request a lightened sentence or simply rule not guilty to save the poor, misrepresented defendants.
The third reason is why I got so miffed at the "Oh it was just a prank" attitude. If all members of the jury viewed this as a prank gone wrong, then all that will happen is the injured parties will have to pay court costs on top of their hospital bills. It is my opinion that ignorance of consequences is a pretty inapplicable defense in this case since "car + obstacle in road" is an equation that is easy to evaluate to "accident", but that is not the opinion of everyone.
The worse in all this is that those who did that probably left right after putting the false deer and then just imagined the "hilarous" situation. It would be like to put salt where sugar is supposed to be in a restaurant and then think about people who'll get disgusted when drinking their coffee ... if you're not even there, there is no point of doing it ... not even for fun