Do you honestly think a mother is more deterred by prison than the death of their child?
You do understand that the vast majority of these cases are not accidents, right?
People commit crimes, even when they know it’s a crime, when they think a) they won’t be caught or b) they won’t be punished.
Some women are, honestly, more deterred by prison than by the death of a child. We’ve seen this demonstrated in all sorts of manner, including the death of a child in a similar manner as this case.
Now, thanks to the prosecutor and a few “sympathetic” people, we’ve got a whole new defense: “I forgot.”
“I forgot” is not a defense against negligence, but we’re on the fast track to making it so.
So, a personal story, and TRUE (if you believe it):
I was walking back to my college house in 1993, when I passed by a house with a frantic lady and a bunch of kids. They were all screaming about a lost child, about 8 months old. We searched all over the neighborhood before one of her sons opened the mini-van door and found the baby strapped inside. The kid was sleeping and completely fine.
The mother had just come back from the grocery store and forgot that she left the kid in the car while she was unloading. I cannot imagine how she’d forgotten, or what would have happened during a longer and/or hotter period.
Do I give here a pass because it was an accident? No. Still negligence.
Do I think she learned here lesson? I would have. But then again, I’ve never forgotten either of my two kids anywhere. Who knows? Mothers certainly get the short end of the stick when it comes to maintaining an attention span.