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re the hockey incident that was discussed here a few weeks ago, the player involved has been arrested for manslaughter. they haven't released his name yet, but there's no one else it could realistically be. just yesterday he was getting a standing ovation; life comes at you fast sometimes.
from a legal perspective, it looks like they'll argue for gross negligence, since your skates should never be that high intentionally, and he wasn't violently blind-side hip checked. it's unfortunate that the races of the players involved is turning online discussion about it into a shitshow.
I was talking about this with some friends earlier tonight. My cousin's take is that he was trying to take a dive after the collision in the hope of drawing a penalty for interference and in the process he got his skate too high in the air. That being said, I doubt there was any intent to injured and charges seem a bit overwrought, regardless of what the actual legal standard is.
Yeah. My interpretation was that he was diving/trying for some moderate rough play and landed the proverbial critical hit.
I don't think there was any intent of it ending as it did, but he also clearly made an abnormal movement for the sport
If you were trying to kill someone it's definitely an absurd way to go about it. I'd expect 95% of the attempts using this method to fail, straight up, so yeah. The Natural 20 roll is the only way this results in the guy dying.
But that doesn't mean it wasn't an intentional attempt.
I could perhaps envision his state of mind as wanting to kill someone and realizing that if he keeps trying this particular method of attack then he might successfully do so and retain plausible deniability.
But unless there is evidence that he was out to get that guy in particular I can't think of any other real motive for it.
Tempers flare and the game is rough by nature, so there is going to be a base rate of actual 'accidents' or range-induced incidents that don't include intent to kill.
I’d think it more likely that he kept trying this particular method of attack because up until now, it hadn’t been fatal, so he assumed it wouldn’t be going forward. Most people don’t think “There’s a 5% chance of a bad outcome from my action; therefore, if I do it 20 times, the bad outcome is almost certain.” They think, “I’ve done this 19 times before without a bad outcome; this must be okay to do.”
Right, the innocent interpretation is that this gave him some small advantage (at the risk of hurting someone else) and it kept working for him so he either underestimated or didn't care about the risks.
But that pushes it more towards reckless disregard which is still a homicide-type crime.
If he is completely innocent then one has to believe that he didn't mean to swing his leg up there and indeed had no/few other options.
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