cross-posted from: https://hilariouschaos.com/post/12281799
A rising star boxer was killed after she was struck by an alleged road rage driver who deliberately reversed into her as she rode her bike along a Texas highway, police said.
Hannah Rapp, 26, who challenged for the WBC women’s featherweight championship last month, died Saturday morning after being struck by a car, according to a
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Rapp’s boyfriend said Medina accelerated backward before striking Rapp, causing her to hit her head on the rear window.
Medina, of Navasota, has a lengthy rap sheet and has been booked into the Brazos County Jail 13 times since 2012, according to online jail records obtained by KBTX.
Those include criminal mischief, theft, resisting arrest, assault, hit and run, escape from custody, deadly conduct, possession of a controlled substance, and multiple driving offenses.
In most legislations the qualifyer for more than that is premeditated action. And being a moron with low impulse control and a tendency for road rage sadly is the opposite.
The actual question is how someone like that is still allowed behind a wheel.
As I understand, it’s Mens Rea that determines whether it’s manslaughter or murder.
It’s hard to argue this person didn’t do it on purpose. Hence, murder, not manslaughter.
My understanding (not a lawyer) is the difference is intent to kill. Murder requires that the accused clearly intended to kill the victim, while manslaughter only requires that the accused intended to do the thing which resulted in the victim’s death.
“Hard to argue”, sure, but that’s not the standard of a legal trial. The prosecution would need to prove beyond doubt that the driver meant for Rapp to die, not just that he meant to hit her with his car.
It looks like this could go either way as a reasonable person would assume that intentionally hitting someone with your car poses a real possibility of killing them. Looks like the examples of negligent vehicular manslaughter are usually things like reckless driving or driving under the influence.
Personally (not a lawyer) I’d consider it murder if I was on a jury given the information I have. Hitting someone with a car on purpose is akin to hitting them with a club. Sure, you may not have thought it was likely to kill them, but you weren’t trying not to kill them.
That premeditation can be as short as a few seconds. People get convicted of murder when they get in a bar fight, leave the bar to grab a gun, then come back into the bar to continue the fight, resulting in an eventual shooting. If you kill someone in a random act of passion in a bar, it’s manslaughter. But just the short time to go and grab a weapon is enough time to meet the standard of premeditation. All that matters is you have a brief moment to think about it.