Are These Crimes?

I was watching 48 Hours in my Public Policy class. It was about 4 cases that can be crimes, but maybe not.

Case 1: A family has a pre-mature baby born that is very tiny. The family asked that the child not to be placed on life support. The doctors ignored the families request and put the child on life support. The family asked many times to remove life support. The father later asked to be alone with the child, and when he was, he turned off the the life support machine. The child was dead soon after. He was charged with 1st degree murder, and could serve 15yrs in jail.

Case 2: A highschool honor student learns that her father is dying of cancer. He's not expected live live beyond a year. She wants him to she her graduate, so she works extra hard to graduate early. One day, she and her friends have several shots of vodka. She then drives to school with her friends still drinking. At school, they are caught. She is suspended for one year, while the friends get two weeks suspensions. Is this a fair punishment? Should there be an execption for her?

Case 3: A mother has a child that is a danger to himself and to others. He has every anger problem known to man. He's on an insane amount of drugs. The county offers an ultimatum: Calm down the child or lose him. So the mother does some research and find that marijuana can be used to sedate the kid. She finds a doctor willing to try the treatment. (this is in California, so med marijuana is legal) After a short time, the results are clearly seen. The is no agression shown. Child Services has a problem with this. They say: stop giving the child pot or lose him. Now this lady is really screwed. Should she be aloud to give pot to her 8-year old?

Case 4: will come later, me too lazy to post it here

Feel free to discuss these three cases. If u have any q's, ask, as long as they're not about names, I don't know them.

1 - Is a crime.
2 - Is a crime, you know this already but what you are asking is should the sentence be more lenient!
3 - This is not a crime if these drugs are prescribed by a doctor, she should be able to beat any prosecutor on this

I agree with Corran. 😄

And as for 2, she shouldn't have gotten the shots. 😬

case 1 is a crime... but it was also presenting a moral dilemma to the parents.

case 2 was just unfair. as i see it, she should've been given the same sanctions as her friends.

case 3 had a legitimate loophole.

case 4 nobody has ever been arrested for being lazy.

For Case 2 she did not deserve the same sanctions if, as I understand it, she was the one driving and her friends were just passengers.

and from what i gather, only her friends continued dinking. this is an example of the importance of punctuation marks...

Originally posted by mc pee pants
and from what i gather, only her friends continued dinking. this is an example of the importance of punctuation marks...

which is about???

Punctuation, you will love it if you picked up on the importance of punctuation in the above statements.

i shall look it up.

have you ever read something without any commas and perioids? it seems taxing to me. not to mention you run out of breath.

my apologies for the off-topic -ness...

I completely agree with your, I hate the lack of punctuation; you will love this book; you will even remember to use semi-colons, as I have done. 😄
look at this http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1592400876/qid=1095635411/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-1122090-2631963?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

i just read an excerpt. it's funny.

Originally posted by mc pee pants
i just read an excerpt. it's funny.

absolutely. it might take me a couple of months to actually read it since i'm a workaholic, but i'll get around to it. i have a trip that requires a 15 hour plane trip. i'd say that's the perfect opportunity.

1. yes, if the doctor truly believes the baby can survive, then its his decision and responsibility to preserve life.

2. drink driving is a serious thing, if she cared so much she wouldnt have been so stupid. got what she deserved

3.as long as its proven to help the child, i believe its ok. no crime

1). I would need to know much more about the condition of the baby before I could comment !

2). The decision was rightly based on the fact that the person who was driving was punished the most. The rest of the story is incidental and of no influence whatsoever to the outcome.

3). I cannot believe that the number of modern drugs that are available for this type of condition were ineffectual but marijuana was.

4), The copy & paste technique takes little effort ! 🙂

1. Agree with Paps

2. It was fair, if she cared that much she shouldn't have gone out with her friends. She should have known what the conciquences would be.

3. Well, what she did technically wasn't a crime as it was prescribed by a doctor, but on the other hand, there is something else for this kind of condition: it's called rehab.

I can't really take a stand on this. Because in some countries the law is different. If I say those aren't crimes is most likely that a person from another country would not find those cases as criminal. Is the ol' "Law of the land" thingy for me. Now, I can discuss this in an ethical form....but that defeat the purpose of finding the cases criminal or not. Therefore, my best response is to say that whichever the country that those ppl are living in......is up to their own nations to apply the law.

Isn't the doctor breaking the law by not taking the child off of life support in the first place? It's not his job to make that sort of moral decision. If the parents say take the child off of life support, it's his job to do so.

i dont think case one is a crime....the doctor had no right going behind the parents back.....he has no right to play god!