Accident or Crime?

Consider these events:

Joe is a young man, a college student, and by all accounts hard-working, honest, and just plain pleasant to be around. His several girlfriends adore him, and his fellow students tend to think Joe will be one of the class’s success stories.

Joe is a fun-loving guy, and this past July 4th he had a party at his house in a rural area just outside the town of Jamul. Right after he and his guests ate their all-American barbeque dinner, they went out on the patio and sang a rousing and heart-felt (though not very competent) rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Joe punctuated each stanza by firing his rifle into the air. Then Joe and his guests went back inside to watch a soccer game on TV.

A half mile from Joe’s house, Sam and Sophie live in a little bungalow with their two kids. Sophie was outside watering the patio plants, when a rifle bullet fell from the sky, penetrating her skull and killing her (and her unborn baby girl) instantly.

Police traced the bullet to Joe’s rifle.

The story above is fiction, but I wrote it as background for this question: how should Joe’s actions be thought of and treated — as an accident or as a crime? My fictional story deliberately avoided anything to do with cars, because somehow we seem to think about deaths and injuries involving cars differently than just about anything else.

To me, this is a no-brainer: Joe knew darned well that firing a gun is dangerous, and that injury or damage could result. But he made the choice to fire his gun anyway, despite knowing the danger of doing so — the epitome of reckless behavior. My own take would be that Joe should be held fully accountable for his criminal action that resulted in Sophie’s death — this was no accident.

Judging from the comments to my posts about the very similar issues that arise in the case of Jonny Dallo and Jodi Burnett (see here, here, here, and here), some of my readers hold a very different view. They would say that Joe is a good kid, that it makes no sense in such a tragic situation to ruin two lives, that Joe didn’t intend to kill Sophie — therefore Joe’s punishment should be much lighter than what I would advocate, possibly with no jail time at all.

But I wonder if these apologists for Jonny Dallo would actually apply the same logic to Joe’s actions that led to Sophie’s death. In particular, I wonder if their reactions to Jonny’s actions leading to Jodi’s death are colored by the fact that they know Jonny — in other words, that they are reacting emotionally, mainly in sympathy with Jonny, and their statements reflect that, rather than a general belief that reckless behavior shouldn’t be severely punished.

Here’s a thought experiment for the commenters who believe Jonny should not be severely punished: suppose you were Sam (Sophie’s husband), or Sam’s neighbor Sally. How would you feel about the death of Sophie and her baby? Would you think about it as an accident, or as a crime? Would you think it proper to punish Joe severely? Or would you say there’s no point to such punishment, and Joe should be punished lightly, or not at all?

I hope it’s true that even the Jonny Dallo apologists would agree that Joe should be held criminally accountable — this would restore some of my faith in my fellow citizens. It’s totally understandable that Jonny’s friends and family would want to stand up for him, and that they’d find it almost impossible to accept that severe punishment was what he deserved. But nobody knows my fictional Joe, Sam, or Sophie … so anyone thinking about this story should be able to do so without the bias of a pre-existing relationship.

So how about it, readers? Anyone willing to take the thought experiment, and comment on it?