Not sure if this has been done here but the German courts have gone down hard on two boy racers. On the one hand it’s good that they have been handed custodial sentences However I can’t see how this was murder as they didn’t intend on killing the unfortunate victim [/url]story here

Different country, different laws and definitions perhaps?

Interesting about the conditional intent:

Prosecutors argued that the men had accepted their actions were potentially lethal, showing “conditional intent”.

Never heard of that before. Could be applied to many different scenarios I guess.

Judge Ralph Ehestadt at the Berlin regional court told him: “Of course you had no intent to kill. You did not want to kill Mr W in his jeep. But you were acting with conditional intent.”

I very much like the idea of a legal “conditional intent”

I guess it’s murder because they could reasonably see that their actions could lead to someone’s death. They chose to do it & chose to accept that they could kill someone so murder is the “closest” charge. It’s not manslaughter as it was effectively pre-meditated.

Throw away the key for me – 100mph down a busy street, deserve all they get IMO.

Looks like the key phrase here is ‘conditional intent’, referring to the fact that they were having an lillegal race at 100mph on a main shopping street and that by doing so they were intentionally putting other people’s lives at risk

Interesting concept. In theory if a drink driver gets in a car and then kills someone they could be done for ‘conditional intent’.

I’ve always thought it strange that this isn’t taken in to account in the UK.

Different country but

I think it’s pretty clear that if you are doing 100mph down a shopping street you are quite likely to kill someone.

IANAL but there is a legal principal in the Uk which says if you hit someone on the head you should know they may die. You may bot intend to kill them “just knock them out” but you should know you may kill them.

Prison sentences for causing deaths whilst driving are far too lenient imho.

In the UK that would possibly (but not definitely) be manslaughter rather than murder – but I applaud the german prosecutors

Normally, you are charge with an offence even if you didn;t mean to commit it, if you knew that the actions you took could potentially have the same result. E.g. if you throw a heavy concrete block off the top of a wall alongside a crowded pavement, you would be charge with GBH as you may reasonably expect that the block may hit a pedestrian and cause injury. You may not intend to cause injury, but the consequences of your actions could be seen, hence you are charge with the offence

The only exception to this is murder, which must show some premeditation. If someone dies as result of an unexpected consequence of your action, it’s considered manslaughter. you do need to consider the action – e,g, “I only punched him, I didn’t expect him to die” is not a valid reason to be considered for manslaughter rather than murder – edit, as jamba also says above

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/homicide_murder_and_manslaughter/

I think it’s pretty clear that if you are doing 100mph down a shopping street you are quite likely to kill someone.

😯

IANAL

*Relaxes*
Sounds fair, there has to be an acceptance that your actions, if everything goes pearshaped, will have catastrophic consequences. And you know this before you start,

Has anybody noticed the belt buckle worn by Marvin N in the second photo? Some kind of Nazi symbol? And the other defendant is named Hamdi H so, maybe the race was motivated by, er, race?

The judgement at the Berlin regional court is not yet legally binding, Deutsche Welle said.

Going by the last sentence, is it a fact that they are going down, or is there still more to come in this case?

Has anybody noticed the belt buckle worn by Marvin N in the second photo? Some kind of Nazi symbol? And the other defendant is named Hamdi H so, maybe the race was motivated by, er, race?

Would take a brave or stupid neo-nazi to wear a nazi symbol to court in country where such things are illegal would it not?

Think you’re overthinking this.

Interesting concept. In theory if a drink driver gets in a car and then kills someone they could be done for ‘conditional intent’.

Strangely, no… and yes…. But… If you were slightly over the limit and are aware of your actions, then yes. However if you are stinking rat-arsed and have no idea what you are doing then you cannot be held responsible for your actions….

I know someone who slapped a copper up and essentially got away with it. Quite high at the time on various drugs. He had to attend some MPU course (psychiatric and medical tests) and lost his license, only getting it back after the course. He found the course too much hassle as he wanted allowed to get high due to the blood testing. As such he now goes everywhere by taxi.

Schuldunfähigkeiten….

Germany has had a real struggle getting people not to drive on the motorway like they want to kill you. Recent clampdowns on tailgating have had some effect and it’s much less common to have someone going 70mph faster than you come up behind you, slam on the anchors at the last moment and give you the full beam treatment. Attrition rates on autobahns used to be twice that of Britain.
Maybe the sentence reflects new attitudes?

Has anybody noticed the belt buckle worn by Marvin N in the second photo? Some kind of Nazi symbol? And the other defendant is named Hamdi H so, maybe the race was motivated by, er, race?

Not even close, it’s a sort of stylised ‘S’ split in two inside a circle with a black background.
I’m interested in symbols and such, part of my print and design background, always looking for ideas to rip-off use for inspiration, and I’ve never seen anything like that used by ultra right-wing groups.
Most use variations or modifications of the runic ‘S’, like the SS, or swastika, or the triskele in black white and red.
Really overthinking it.

@captain how much more likely do you think it is you’ll kill someone driving down a shopping street at 100mph vs 30 ?