Another epic LA police chase, wherein a woman flees in a stolen work truck. The money shots happen between 40:00 and 44:00 mark, when she backs into a police car twice, escapes being boxed in within a parking lot by getting through two trees over a curb while an officer smashes directly into one of the trees, then through a chainlink fence down the freeway embankment against the flow of traffic for a short distance before the damaged truck gives up. She then does a Frogger Run across the other side of the freeway, missing getting struck by full speed traffic numerous times by inches, then with shoes and wig falling off as she runs, disappears inside a Dennys so effectively that nobody can find her for a time. Show is over at this point and she is finally led out in handcuffs 20 minutes later.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5pkpt-nlfi

@lurkerhasarisen

That argument fails for a couple of reasons.

Lots of crimes are punished differently based on what the offender knew or should have known... not just what happened. The victim of a killing is just as dead if the killer committed 1st degree murder, 2nd degree murder, 3rd degree murder, felony murder, manslaughter, or negligent homicide, but those are not equally punished. If the law didn't differentiate between them there would be no reason to have different crimes: all unlawful deaths could just be prosecuted under a generic "Murder" charge. Just because someone is dead doesn't mean that the person who did the killing is assumed to have known in advance that the action that resulted in death was both likely to result in death and that the death was not legally justified. Motive often matters in the law, and that usually hinges on what you know or should have known.

That is NOT the case with "statutory rape." Even if it can be proved that a girl who looks like an adult - in a place where minors are not legally allowed - used a fake ID that is indistinguishable from a real one, the man is held to the same standard as a man who deliberately raped a child.

It's interesting that you bring up the break-in-and-murder example, because we had such a case here a couple of years ago. An off-duty woman cop who had been drinking went to the wrong apartment in her building. When she entered, the occupant stood up and she shot him dead. She got some prison time, but she wasn't charged with the some generic "murder" charge: she was charged with a specific crime that took all the factors into consideration. It wasn't a hit... it was a very negligent mistake. FWIW, I think she got off a lot easier than she deserved (10 years), but that's how the system works.

Refusing to differentiate between a fully-developed 17-year-old with a fake ID that was good enough to fool the door man at the club, and a prepubesent girl with pigtails skipping across a playground is absurd.

If you point a realistic toy gun at a cop, he's not going to be convicted of murder if he shoots you, and cops are formally trained with guns. You can't expect men to be omniscient.

Are you referring to this shooting in which former Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger murdered accountant Botham Jean in his living room apartment just upstairs of her own?