Newsgroups: tor.general
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.ai.toronto.edu!lamy
From: lamy@ai.utoronto.ca (Jean-Francois Lamy)
Subject: Re: Toronto Police
Message-ID: <89Jan22.092537est.38021@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <157@aimed.UUCP> <4674@hcr.UUCP> <1989Jan20.201648.20385@lsuc.uucp>
Distribution: tor
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 89 09:25:30 EST

I was a jury member in a trial for assault where citizen A punched citizen B
and injury resulted.  Citizen A was acquited, but there was a trial.  When
citizen A pulls a trigger and citizen B dies (which I don't is not what is
being disputed here) my gut feeling is that there should be a trial as soon as
there is reasonable evidence that citizen A did pull the trigger.

What I would like to know is under what circumstances it would have been
possible for a) a person admitting to pulling the trigger to a gun that killed
not to be charged at all and b) the same for a policeman on duty, if they are
any different.  The only charge "weaker" than manslaughter I can see applying
to cases where death results is criminal negligence, which I don't think would
apply here (does it even apply to hunting accidents and the like?).

So what is being disputed here?
- that charges were laid?  (I see that as hard to avoid)
- that too strong a charge was laid? (how could a weaker one be laid?)
- that it took too long to lay the charge?
- that charges would not have been laid save for political manipulations?

Jean-Francois Lamy               lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy
AI Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4