Consecutive sentences?

Originally posted by Barts
Why ? The difference between a drunk driver who kills 0, 1 or 3 persons is the amount of luck he has. Does a difference in luck make a person worse ?

One could kill someone by punching them. By your "logic", everyone who assaults another person deserves an equal punishment to a murderer.

Surely you can see how absurd the position you are taking is.

Originally posted by sh76
http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/mlb/news/story?id=5946234

Long story short, guy's on parole after a DUI conviction, gets stinking drunk, gets in a car, blows through a red light at 65 MPH and kills 3 people and severely injures a fourth.

Horrible guy? Sure.

Deserves to go to jail for a long time? You bet.

But I don't like the idea of giving hi e my family member who was killed), I don't think he's as bad as an intentional murderer.

Here's the question. Should a person be punished primarily on how bad the action was or primarily based on the result? Of course the result has to come into play to some extent; but is he inherently a worse or more irredeemable person because 3 people died as opposed to one.
I'd recast the question as:

Should a person be punished primarily on how bad the action was or primarily based on the result? Of course the result has to come into play to some extent; but is this person inherently a superior or more redeemable person because 1 person has died as opposed to three?

Killing them people might have been accidental, but actually getting into the car, aware that his drunken state would likely result in tragedy wasn't an accident. All questions about quality of life are moot for the people that died - the same should be true for those that take life through irresponsible actions or wickedness.

Originally posted by Agerg
[b]Here's the question. Should a person be punished primarily on how bad the action was or primarily based on the result? Of course the result has to come into play to some extent; but is he inherently a worse or more irredeemable person because 3 people died as opposed to one.
I'd recast the question as:

[/i]Should a person be punished primarily on ho ...[text shortened]... of life are moot for the people that died - the same should be true for those that take life.[/b]

It's hardly "likely" that someone driving drunk is going to kill anyone:

An estimated 17 million people have driven while drunk at least once on U.S. streets and highways in the course of a year, according to a government study released Wednesday.

A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration survey conducted in late 2008 found that 20 percent of those 16 and older reported driving within two hours of drinking alcohol.

Based on the survey results, NHTSA estimates that 8 percent of all drivers, or 17.2 million people, have driven at least once over the course of a year even though they thought they were drunk.

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/08/26/news/aa9drunks082610.txt

Originally posted by no1marauder
It's hardly "likely" that someone driving drunk is going to kill anyone:

An estimated 17 million people have driven while drunk at least once on U.S. streets and highways in the course of a year, according to a government study released Wednesday.

A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration survey conducted in late 2008 found that 20 percent ...[text shortened]... ht they were drunk.

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/08/26/news/aa9drunks082610.txt

Ok, I stand corrected on the "likely" point, especially given it's generality. But then are your figures representative of those who are three times over the limit?
I say that anyone who's prepared to drive a car in that state is aware that something bad could happen if someone gets in his way (whichever "way" that happens to be)

You might argue that since he was so p!ssed he didn't know what he was doing; I'd counter this with the claim that it is not so much his ability to know it was a dangerous thing as much as his ability to care.

Originally posted by Agerg
Ok, I stand corrected on the "likely" point, especially given it's generality. But then are your figures representative of those who are three times over the limit?
I say that anyone who's prepared to drive a car in that state is aware that something bad could happen if someone gets in his way (whichever "way" that happens to be)

You might argue that since ...[text shortened]... not so much his ability to know it was a dangerous thing as much as his ability to care.

I have no reason to believe that people in a more intoxicated state care any less than those who are in a less intoxicated state. The likelihood of a fatal accident is quite low, so automatically ascribing culpable moral states to people who have drank a bit more is extremely dubious.

Originally posted by no1marauder
One could kill someone by punching them. By your "logic", everyone who assaults another person deserves an equal punishment to a murderer.

Surely you can see how absurd the position you are taking is.

I'm not quite sure you understand my position, because that is not my position at all. All trough the thread I have been saying that if person A and person B take the same action, but those actions have different outcomes due to circumstance outside of the control of those persons, then they are equally good or bad persons and I believe they should be punished equally. A person punching someone and a person trying to kill someone else take vastly different actions and as such should be punished differently, even though the outcome could be the same.

Originally posted by no1marauder
I have no reason to believe that people in a more intoxicated state care any less than those who are in a less intoxicated state. The likelihood of a fatal accident is quite low, so automatically ascribing culpable moral states to people who have drank a bit more is extremely dubious.

Well given that people need to cross roads sometimes, and will tend to do so when they don't expect their path to coincide with a car travelling at 65mph; then surely the likelyhood of a fatal accident is higher if some driver decides to run a red light at that speed.

Caring less when intoxicated follows from the fact that alcohol serves to lessen a person's inhibitions. I'm not actually assigning a weight of morality based upon their drinking as much as I'm discussing their morality when unchecked by a sober and rational state of mind.
When I'm steaming I tend to make a tit of myself in an embarrassing way and then stagger/sing/vomit my way home...others start fights, start fires, or start their cars.

Originally posted by Barts
I'm not quite sure you understand my position, because that is not my position at all. All trough the thread I have been saying that if person A and person B take the same action, but those actions have different outcomes due to circumstance outside of the control of those persons, then they are equally good or bad persons and I believe they should be punished ...[text shortened]... actions and as such should be punished differently, even though the outcome could be the same.

A person punching someone is trying to do physical harm to someone else and the amount of harm they do is to a certain extent out of their control. There have been numerous cases where Actor A punched Actor B once and Actor B died. Therefore by the logic you have consistently used in this thread, Actor C who punched someone but they didn't die should be punished as severely as Actor A.

Originally posted by Agerg
Well given that people need to cross roads sometimes, and will tend to do so when they don't expect their path to coincide with a car travelling at 65mph; then surely the likelyhood of a fatal accident is higher if some driver decides to run a red light at that speed.

Caring less when intoxicated follows from the fact that alcohol serves to lessen a person' ...[text shortened]... hen stagger/sing/vomit my way home...others start fights, start fires, or start their cars.

The vast majority of people who run red lights aren't drunk. Which is the morally culpable offense: the running of the red light or the being drunk?

Originally posted by no1marauder
The vast majority of people who run red lights aren't drunk. Which is the morally culpable offense: the running of the red light or the being drunk?

I don't want to treat them both as independent. Neither would I want to consider the acts of pointing a gun in someones direction, and moving your index finger when next to a trigger as independent.

The guy was drunk, and he was drunk whilst racing through a red light (with the laser sharp reaction times afforded by an excess of alcohol), and people died, through no fault of their own, as a result.
The morally culpable offense I assign to their conjunction.

Originally posted by no1marauder
A person punching someone is trying to do physical harm to someone else and the amount of harm they do is to a certain extent out of their control. There have been numerous cases where Actor A punched Actor B once and Actor B died. Therefore by the logic you have consistently used in this thread, Actor C who punched someone but they didn't die should be punished as severely as Actor A.

I may be mistaken of course, but I thought that hitting someone without the intent to kill, but which results in death anyway, was considered manslaughter and not murder. If I'm correct in this, then that would mean that the scenario you put up in this post is different from the one in your previous post. The scenario in the first post does not fit my position, but in this post you've hit closer to the mark.

Originally posted by Agerg
I don't want to treat them both as independent. Neither would I want to consider the acts of pointing a gun in someones direction, and moving your index finger when next to a trigger as independent.

The guy was drunk, and he was drunk whilst racing through a red light (with the laser sharp reaction times afforded by an excess of alcohol), and people died, t ...[text shortened]... fault of their own, as a result.
The morally culpable offense I assign to their conjunction.

If someone who wasn't drunk drove through the red light at 65 MPH and killed 3 people you'd say he warranted less punishment then the person in the OP?

Originally posted by Barts
I may be mistaken of course, but I thought that hitting someone without the intent to kill, but which results in death anyway, was considered manslaughter and not murder. If I'm correct in this, then that would mean that the scenario you put up in this post is different from the one in your previous post. The scenario in the first post does not fit my position, but in this post you've hit closer to the mark.

To paraphrase your post from Page 2:

A person who makes the decision to [punch someone] and [doesn't kill them] is just as bad as someone who makes the same decision but doesn't have the good fortune of not [killing someone]. The only difference between the two is the amount of luck they have and that is not something by which I measure the worth of people.

Originally posted by no1marauder
If someone who wasn't drunk drove through the red light at 65 MPH and killed 3 people you'd say he warranted less punishment then the person in the OP?

It is my position that if there was no justifiable reason for travelling at that speed through a red light, drunk or sober then they warrant the same (harsh) punishment whether one person died or a dozen. That he was drunk (and so would be less capable of reacting favourably if someone got in his way) doesn't cheapen my position.



*no, I don't support the death penalty.

Originally posted by no1marauder
To paraphrase your post from Page 2:

A person who makes the decision to [punch someone] and [doesn't kill them] is just as bad as someone who makes the same decision but doesn't have the good fortune of not [killing someone]. The only difference between the two is the amount of luck they have and that is not something by which I measure the worth of people.

Yes and is that somehow inconsistent with my last posts ?