To: SarahW
I'll still go with the manslaughter charge. Some people are very sensitive, to failure, to condemnation, to seeing everything they have worked for implode. Knowing that even if he is cleared, the taint will always follow him. Charge a few liars with time and alot of false accusers will find something else fun to do that won't cost them.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. That is one of the Ten that can land one in the pit. This story is a good example of why you don't bear false witness against your neighbor. It's such a bad thing to do that God thought it important enough to place in the ten commandments, it's so important that it carries a death sentence, so a charge of manslaughter for a teen seems a small price to pay to society for his crime against an innocent man.
To: MissAmericanPie
I'm not convinced that the child WASN'T disciplined as he claimed, based on the fellow's assurance that he was "ruined" before the investigation was over, and based on the child's parent's description of the child and their own reaction to physical restraint of the child.
In other words, they had him "recant" because they approved and didn't want the man punished.
But assume the child really did invent the shoving.
He isn't guilty of manslaughter, by any legal definition of the word. He did not cause the suicide.
(If he had on impulse, in response to the provocation of being shoved, whipped out a gun and shot the teacher who shoved him , he would have been guilty of manslaughter.)
The lying could be a crime. It is certainly a civil tort.
But it isn't the cause of the man's death.
216 posted on
02/16/2004 7:57:33 AM PST by
SarahW
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