Sunny's sentence

[RemPhase]

I know is not important for the story, but I had this tough foe a wile: what's the sentence for Sunny when he confess his crime. If someone ever studied law can tell me how this situation as to be treated, since Sunny is a minor and I don't think he can go to jail, it would be great to let me know

[Sbeve]

Opprinnelig skrevet av nxbxdy17:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Sbeve:

alright fine, i concede that if sunny were an adult, he would be charged with voluntary manslaughter. however i disagree that, as a 16 year old, he would be charged and sent to jail for the crimes.

Well it really depends in which state/country happened, since laws are different and ♥♥♥♥. Like I said, that is what it would happen if he is seen as an adult. At least that´s how it´ll happen in my coutry: he either would go to jail cause people thought "he though what he was doing" -because of how he disguised it as a suicide-, or he would go free because "it is unethical to sentence a teen for what he did as a child". Or maybe sent to reformatory instead of jail, yes.
Things like this are very difficult to know if our only source of information are some searches in google, since cases like this are very specific, same as the laws. If someone is willing to research for hours in the deepths of law pdfs in the internet we would have more information to work on. But I´ll pass for now lol

i've thought about this and it seems to me that sunny should be charged with involuntary manslaughter, and not voluntary manslaughter.
the main issue with labeling the incident as voluntary manslaughter is that sunny must have the intention to kill or seriously harm. this comes down to asking the question "did sunny want to kill his sister?"

now in my opinion the case is that he did not. involuntary manslaughter is defined as the killing of a human without intention, either expressed or implied. but i don't think that sunny would ever rationally want to kill his sister.
the only intention sunny had during the split second was to run away from the scene, and in doing so pushed mari, perhaps without realizing that she was standing on the very edge of the stairs.

[The Milk Man]

I think simplifying the crime might help. It seems like when Sunny threw his violin down the stairs it angered Mari, so the combination of Mari being very mad at him and her blocking Sunny could've overwhelmed Sunny, so he could've pushed her as a desperate attempt to get her away from him, but not with the intention to hurt or kill her.

For the framing part, Basil came up with the idea, but Sunny participated in it, so he's still guilty of framing it, just not coming up with it. So I think Sunny would be charged with involuntary manslaughter, since he didn't seem to have the intention to kill her. Although Sunny pushed her on purpose, so that could also suggest voluntary manslaughter.

The hard part is judging how much his mental state at the time would affect him. Sunny seems to show traits of autism, as he isn't very emotionally expressive and he isn't very quiet. His tendancy to get fascinated by things many other people wouldn't find fascinating (ex: the box Sunny's birthday gift was in in the real world photo album).

If he does have autism, this would also leave him vulnerable to being overwhelmed because of sensory overload, so it makes Sunny more likely to panic, and making poor split second decision choices. It could be argued that Sunny wouldn't've been able to think rationally in the situation, leading him to push Mari as a result of poor split second decision making.

Other more mild things that would also affect his decision includes his age, time between the crime and the trial, and his remourse. It would also depend on wether or not he was tried as an adult. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume he'll be tried as a teenager, since he was almost a teenager when the incident happened, and he's still a teenager by now.

Personally, I think 2-3 months of community service would be the most fair. This is not from a legal perspective, but rather a moral perspective.