Comments by "cchris874" (@cchris874) on "ABC News" channel.

  1. Well there was at least a little bit of justice. The petition to prosecute the parents failed. You have to be mentally unbalanced to sign a petition like that.
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  2.  @kalechips5972  I am grateful not everyone is a moron here. Could you imagine the sh-t we'd be in if Youtube ran society?
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  3. That is very true. However, I fear it's not the norm. Most people don't change very much once they become adults.
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  4. +Deven Appreciate your input, but here's my problem. Manslaughter has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I'd say it's NOT beyond reasonable doubt to declare that every single depressed or suicidal person is mentally unstable to the point they are deemed incompetent to make their own decisions. Would you also give Roy a pass on the basis of mental instability if Carter coaxed him into shooting another person? If not, I see a dangerous double standard. Tricky case though.
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  5. Ridiculous. A 3-year-old can slip away in seconds. Have you ever been a parent??? The primary cause was the zoo's negligence. Especially when you are operating a child-centered business, you have an obligation to make it safe. The zoo was negligent. Businesses have far more of an obligation to create a safe place. Because you are the paying customer.
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  6. I don't think society is served by calling a 3 year age difference rape.
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  7.  @elfamosoabraham5880  And the purpose of signing the petition, I suppose, is that even very conscientious parents could never ever lose track of their child, that only bad parents make mistakes. And every time someone behaves imperfectly, we should make a million assumptions about their motives, and rush to sign a petition. This is the dark side of humanity.
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  8.  @elfamosoabraham5880  The thing you seem to have terribly wrong is saying "she isn't watching her child." It doesn't follow that watching your son carefully means you are perfect, any more than being a great driver proves you cannot ever be responsible for an accident. In case you didn't know, careful people also make mistakes. Am I wrong?
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  9.  @elfamosoabraham5880  Well if there's dangerous creatures all over the place, why did the zoo have such defective enclosure? I would say that while I respect your position, the zoo, being a kid-oriented place, has an obligation to cover up the holes in its system. By contrast, a parent does not have an obligation to be perfect 100% all of the time, because that's the nature of kids. I hope you at least would agree that criminal charges are unwarranted here.  I would use an airplane analogy. If a child gets out of his seat while mom's back is turned, and then slips out through a hole in the plane, is that mommy negligence, or should the mom assume that a plane is safe from having holes in it?
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  10. Well I think they pretty much proved that. Her words and actions were lifted from a TV series of the same exact theme. That said, calls for life in prison are knee jerk reactions, or from people who lack discretion. Good thing our legal system is not run by the Youtube mob and all of their terrible judgement.
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  11. +Martin valles I agree with you, it's not so simple. That applies to many layers here. It's not so simple, for example, to prove beyond doubt that Roy was in fact forced to kill himself. If there's reasonable doubt, then the judge overstepped his bounds.
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  12. Yeah, like, he had teenage sex. What else is happening in the world?
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  13.  @guitarsz  Her tears are irrelevant. A conviction of manslaughter violates two basic things: the traditional distinction between ordinary negligence -- usually a civil matter, as in medical malpractice for example -- and gross recklessness. The second is the amputation of due process. It's inherently impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt she acted with extreme recklessness, or even ordinary negligence. That's what the research says: even the most experienced are not perfect in their ability to act under stress.
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  14. And traditionally we don't go for manslaughter under what might be termed "ordinary negligence." Unless you can prove it rises to gross recklessness, in the US at least, it's usually handled as a civil matter witness commercial airline crashes and medical malpractice. The idea we jail everyone for every single mistake they make under pressure is way off base IMHO. No matter how experienced, there's never a guarantee we can always avoid even big mistakes. It's this element of "proof beyond reasonable doubt" that's being amputated in this case. There's an inherent element of speculation when we assert she was careless or reckless. The research in heuristics (despite the fancy name, it just means decision making under stress) shows that even very experienced people can make such mistakes. The scary part is these mistakes often happen at an unconscious level, so we can't always detect them as they happen.
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  15. But in this case we have witnesses who saw the assault. So it's difficult to say she made it up. She even said initially she didn't want him to go to jail. The irony is that it was precisely the short sentence that ruined his life. Had it been, say, 2 years, no one would have heard of Brock Turner.
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  16.  @elfamosoabraham5880  Would you have still signed the petition if she hadn't been on the phone?
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  17. There are two things wrong here. One, Owen is a jerk, and "Senior Salute" is an affront to common decency. Two, statutory rape law is an injustice when the participants are both teens close in age. Many states now have this age-difference clause, as they recognize the absurdity of prosecuting teen sex between friends and school mates. There are far better uses of the legal system than to prosecute voluntary sex between teens 15 and older.
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  18. +Deven The key word is "convince." People have convinced me of doing things many many times. Does that prove I'm mentally unstable? "He got out of the truck because he was scared." Too open to interpretation for me. Analogy: I remember being afraid to do things, especially as a child - swallowing pills, diving into the swimming pool,for examples, but I was coaxed by adults to do them, partly because even as a child I recognized it was in my own interest. People hesitate and change their minds all the time out of fear, reluctance. "Scared" has reasonable doubt written all over it. Anyway, I welcome disagreement. It's healthy to debate this.
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  19. +Jeremy As I understand it, the case for manslaughter depends on Roy having no ability to defend himself against her texts. That in turn depends on proving Roy was defenseless. That's the way manslaughter usually works. Do we have (mental health community) a well-established procedure to determine that depressed and suicidal people are of necessity completely helpless? This judgement just strikes me as having proceeded too quickly with too many unproven assumptions.
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  20. Absolutely right, a totally overblown story that amounts to little more than teenage sex and an unproven rape charge.
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  21. ​ @ganondorf66  I wouldn't disagree. But who do you think has greater responsibility, the zoo building a child-proof enclosure, or a parent never making a mistake? Similarly, if a toddler is able to open an emergency door in flight, does that speak more to a parent, or to the airline? This is why I feel theses discussions are not prioritizing the hierarchy of responsibility.
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  22.  @jamgrl38  They were rightly found guilty. But one can certainly argue the harshness of the penalties, at least regarding Bryan.
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  23. It is true. But it doesn't get the father/son off the hook. By any reasonable standard, you have no right to subject a potentially innocent person to a 4 minute armed chase. With guns clearly on display. No presumed innocent person should be subjected to that level of stress/ fear. No way.
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  24. What a refreshing outcome. A judge who has the right combination of fairness and empathy to resist the political and racial hysteria that is the wellspring of support for a longer sentence.
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  25. Well I have to agree with that!
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  26. These two women are experts?
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  27. There's one element missing from your equation. In time sensitive and stressful situations, we all employ shortcut reasoning based on simplified assumptions because there's not enough time to consciously reason every detail out. The fancy term for this is heuristics if one wants to learn more about it. The problem is, behavior under stress is not always perfect and in some cases leads to big errors. But the key take away is that these errors are often completely unconscious, so the person committing them has no way to guard against them. This is precisely what could have happened here. Also, while not exactly the same, a Google image search shows that tasers and hand guns often look very similar, and have the same basic size and design. Similar enough that under stress, you might make such a mistake. I say give the benefit of the doubt to Potter. It's the same reason we don't lock up commercial pilots for their fatal errors. You can't expect perfection under stress. Period.
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  28. +Frank I would probably agree with your assessment as a general rule. However, not every clinically depressed or suicidal person lacks the ability to maintain mental competence and have the rational ability to resist orders or suggestions. So that to me constitutes reasonable doubt.
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  29. +Deven As an adult, I find myself changing my mind all the time based on input from others. Some other examples: whether to invest in a stock; choosing surgery as a treatment option; confronting someone you don't want to confront. As for fear, the same thing. A person may fear going on a plane, then be coaxed on the plane, then chicken out and walk off (one unlucky fearful flyer was talked back onto a plane which actually crashed!). These examples suffice for me to constitute reasonable doubt. I would have to be convinced that being depressed and suicidal proves beyond reasonable doubt that you don't have meaningful free will. If we aren't willing to make this generalization, then it seems to me the judge is playing God and assuming he knows for (reasonable) certain which depressed people have it and which don't. Too much grey for me = the verdict overstepped the legitimate boundary of the law. That said, I won't be crying for her when she's in jail.
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  30. +Andy I think she deserves punishment. But legally, or even just using common sense, I don't see this as fitting the definition of manslaughter without a proof that Roy had no control over the situation. That's where I feel there's reasonable doubt. Exactly what goes on inside the mind of a depressed suicidal person who's being texted these messages is impossible to know with any certainty. We hardly know anything about how the mind works; it's fantastically complex. So to me, it's playing God to say we know for sure she killed him.
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  31. +Andy I think we're on the same basic wave length. I feel she shouldn't get the max penalty, since it's so unlike most manslaughter cases, and she was under 18, and it's hard to know just how much of a danger she is to others except in the unusual circumstance of this case. I'll bet the judge will giver her not more than 5-10, if that.
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  32. And it was the zoo's fault. If we can make commercial flight virtually 100% safe, then there's no excuse for a hazardous gorilla exhibit. If a small child managed to open an airplane door in flight, would we blame the mom or the airline?
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  33.  @Freefs1  She did not "leave her child unattended." She momentarily lost track of him. Have you ever lost track of your kid even once? Have you ever even had kids? How is she supposed to know the zoo was a safety hazard? This is why sensible people prevailed. The DA explained that's why no charges were filed against the mom. Have you ever read an NTSB accident report? They don't blame the victim. Their probable cause would have been a hazardous exhibit. Hands downs.
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  34.  @a.l.m.o.  But you are making an unrealistic assumption. You are assuming absolute parental perfection at all times and places. Have you ever been a parent? You are holding someone liable for being human.
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  35.  @Risingofthephoenix  No, absolutely not. There wasn't enough evidence to convict him of forcible rape. Didn't you follow the trial?
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  36. A better way of putting it: "The minority of boys who do this need to..." rest same,
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  37. Tremendous pressure to avoid a violent reaction from the race-based hysteria that has overcome the US recently. What prosecutor could possibly resist this pressure? I don't think she deserves this.
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  38.  @bellalugosisrightnipple3719  I believe it was rape because she wrote a book on it. But at the trial, could the jury determine this beyond a reasonable doubt?
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  39. Don't expect it from anyone anytime soon. Especially the 911 Lie movement.
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  40. The zoo got the gorilla killed. It was responsible in creating a fool-proof enclosure, which it failed to do. With 5-year-olds all over a zoo, it's pure negligence.
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  41. @@chrislauricella "If someone points a gun at you and try and grab it. You are an idiot." In theory, I agree. But when under stress, people have been known to act quite irrationally and when terrified even more so. Like the mother in Cheshire who got back in the car with the robbers. In addition Arbery's mother mentioned he had mental illness. Could that have also affected his judgement?
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  42. I think we are in agreement, but I would still say they needed big jails sentences (maybe not Bryon) because they did indeed create a totally unacceptable reckless endangerment. I would have given Travis 20 years, Greg 15, and Bryan 5 or less. But these sentences lack any sense of proportionality. They say Travis is guilty of "malace murder." What, we can read the mind of Travis the moment he pulled the trigger? I'd say it was more likely a reflex reaction to being suddenly charged. I don't pretend to be the mind reader that everyone else claims.
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  43.  @jwhome9319  At least they didn't get carried away with wanting her to serve the full 15 years. I haven't looked yet at the other networks. I hope they have wiser and less biased commentators.
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  44.  @SpiceItUp_5150  Well, everyone fancies themselves an armchair psychologist. To me, her tears could go either way. The overriding flaw, IMHO, with this whole trial, is it's fundamentally misguided. Negligence resulting in death should be a civil matter, as is usually the case with medical malpractice, for example, or as I like to point out, with commercial airline pilots. We in the US at least, don't jail pilots for fatal errors under stress. Only when we get to gross recklessness or criminal intent, should we bring in manslaughter or worse. Just my opinion. Do we have that level of recklessness here? Not if we go by the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There's inherently speculation in saying she was too casual or not being as cautious as she might.
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  45. It's irrelevant. The Ms were in the wrong either way.
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  46. "The family should keep better watch of their child. " Not always realistic. The emphasis should be on the zoo. It's child centered. It needs to be fool-proofed. Zero-fault tolerance is a concept that should apply to a business at least as much as to a mother who loses track of her child for a brief moment. Here's an airplane analogy: if a child is able to wiggle out of his seat and open an emergency exit, would you blame the mother or the airline/manufacturer?
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  47. That's really under the heading of "speculation." The research in heuristics (fancy name for decision making under pressure) tends to confirm that when we employ such shortcut thinking, it's not a fool proof system. Even highly experienced people can make surprising mistakes. The reason is that these errors are often at an unconscious level, so they can't be detected as they happen. So I give her the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise we are simply playing god. Not a good idea given our principles of due process and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Just my to cents
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  48.  @Westberg246  "("I'm going to prison!") is not only a confession but also BENEATH THE DIGNITY" Me personally: I wouldn't put too much into a spontaneous comment under extreme emotional shock, what, 2 seconds later? Give her a break. It's not necessarily a confession either. It could be just a statement of, here's what I am likely to face, whether fair or not. Again, just my two cents. I am not saying you are wrong.
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  49. If this were true you would be able to walk into any university physics department and and get instant verification of your theory. I challenge you to prove your nonsense. Like most truthers, lifting a finger other than to click on CT sites is anathema. You don't do real research. If what you say were really true, the alleged US government conspirators would not have chosen to "violate basic physics." Because the whole world would have known within about 15 minutes. If you want to be a 9/11 skeptic, fine. But for goodness sakes can't you do it with more intelligence than the stupidity with which you accuse the government?
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  50.  @derekgreene2304  "Aluminium aeroplanes don't disappear into 4 and 6 foot steel H beams surrounded with concrete" Only if you're up for the challenge, I challenge you to support that statement with good old fashioned physics.
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