• Thann@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    There is sufficient evidence to say he broke the law, but there is insufficient evidence to say he did it with malicious intent. I think it’s fair to say “he broke the law”, you just can’t say “he willfully broke the law”

    • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
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      5 months ago

      That makes no sense. The laws in question require willfulness. So if you can’t say there was willfulness, you can’t say the laws were broken.

      For instance, assault with a deadly requires willfulness, so if a baseball bat slips out of a baseball player’s hands and clobbers someone in the stands you wouldn’t say the player broke the law but lacked willfulness, you’d just say they didn’t break the law.

      • Thann@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        And who’s to decide if the baseball bat was willfully thrown? The jury! You could still be charged with assault because 1000 people saw your bat hit someone in the face, so its 100% plausible to say you broke the law.

        If the law says don’t cross the line, and you accidentally cross the line, you broke the law, regardless of willfulness. Its up to a jury to decide if youre guilty

        Its not like the police have an “accident detector” they roll up to the scene to determine if a law was broken.

        • ieatpillowtags
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          5 months ago

          The law includes willfulness as part of “the line to cross”, so again, no. Without the willfulness included, then there was not a broken law. This really isn’t hard to understand.