A woman who tied a plastic bag around her newborn son’s head until he died gets a conditional sentence that includes 18 months of house arrest. A man guilty of leaving an elderly man with Parkinson’s in his own feces while spending his money just got 12 months in prison.
Why? I do not in any way want to suggest that elder abuse is not criminal and serious. But isn’t killing a newborn baby worse?
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Rebecca is a cynic: Seniors can vote.
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Brigitte is not to be outdone: Actually, I was thinking that many judges are awfully close to being seniors themselves.
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Seems simple enough to me. The judge considered the circumstances for the first murder, decided that it was attributable to a moment of panic in exceptional circumstances, and thus that the woman posed no further danger to society and could be considered to have diminished responsibility. Thus, short sentence. The latter case was of sustained abuse over a long period, and thus no such defence applies.
Seems to me like murder is murder. If each human life is of equally immeasurable dignity, then why should it be worse to murder a very young person than to murder a very old one or one that is 25? Unless, of course, you take the functionalist view of human life which provides the logical basis for such ideas as abortion and euthanasia – which i don’t think you do.