Posted on 01/10/2014 11:08:53 AM PST by Titus-Maximus
I live in New Jersey and I'm very familiar with how that bridge is configured. I find it hard to believe that anyone would look to punish an elected official in one town (Fort Lee) by blocking traffic on the busiest segment of I-95 along its entire length from Maine to Florida.
If anything, whoever orchestrated this probably did a huge favor for the rest of the public that uses the bridge but does not access it from the local Fort Lee streets.
Oddly enough, most lawyers (even a lot of shady ones) would prefer to steer clear of a lawsuit in a case like this involving a person who was 91 years old at the time of the incident. The biggest problem a plaintiff's lawyer will face is that many of the standard measures of financial loss (loss of income, impairment or loss of life activities, etc.) don't add up to a lot of money when the person is that old, has no dependents, and is no longer working. And since the person in this case is dead, there's no real "suffering" victim to trot out in front of a jury.
Dersch is correct, and the posters here who fail to see that just don’t see the legal nuance here.
The difference here was this was not mere incompetence, it was recklessness. Recklessness is sufficient to make out criminal intent.
Based on the facts, there was no gray area here where the perps could make out a claim that they were using business judgment. They left an email trail that made it clear that their intent was to punish an entire population of people to hurt a political opponent.
So — the victim (you need one as a necessary element of the crime, of course) would be any citizen who was hurt, or killed, in a way that can tied causally to the traffic problem.
Its the classic case to describe recklessness — if you (without any other defense) fire a gun into a crowded room and someone is hit and dies, you have the criminal intent sufficient for homicide even if you didn’t specifically intend to kill the specific victim.
Now I’m not recommending any of this, it’s just that Dersch is correct that a line has been crossed here, under the facts.
“So every time someone shuts down a lane of traffic, you can get prosecuted for “willful negligence” if someone ends up being hurt by it and they can show you could have avoided shutting down the lane?”
“I’ve seen accidents caused by lane closures that clearly could have been scheduled for other hours. Are all those accidents the result of “willful negligence” that could be prosecuted?”
No, the difference here is the admission, on e-mail, that the intent was to harm people, and that that was the sole intent. Its the “means rea” required for a criminal charge.
So long as your intend is to hurt people (even if you say “just a little”), then you’re criminally responsible if one person gets hurt alot (ie, dies).
For clarity, per my earlier post, I’m talking about (at this point) the people under Christie who ordered the shut-down have potential criminal liability.
I know Dersch is taking it a step further and saying Christie could also be prosecuted. I don’t buy that until there is proof that he directed their actions — I will accept his position for now that he did not.
There are no impeachable offenses to charge the Communists empire with. <<
to do so would be racist!..its really that simple
That may apply to the government official who had the authority to order the shutdown of the lanes.
Not for the Governor being “negligent” in not paying appropriate attention to what the people who work for him was doing.
see my post 45. I agree, jury is still out on Christie until more facts emerge.
If there was a traffic study, the comments are an distant adjunct to it and really no evidence of a crime. One would have to prove that the interstate agency who called for the traffic study did it completely fraudulently - which is very hard to prove.
If there really wasn’t a traffic study, they have some explaining to do.
Meanwhile, Obama has put the FBI, IRS, ATF, and the EPA on a woman, destroyed her life, put her on a terrorist watch list, said her business was polluting and audited her, all because she founded a local tea party movement. Which is the worse crime, blocking traffic or using the FBI to destroy innocent lives because they do not agree with Obama politically? I’ll take the traffic. Has anyone even been investigated in IRS-Gate?
This whole swarming concern over abuse of power in the Bridge-ghazi thing is too much hypocrisy even for a political arena that is swimming in it. They strain on the gnat and swallow the camel.
He does not have direct power over the Port Authority, so it is a red herring. It would be embarrassing if he told them what to do, but since he cannot unilaterally command them to do something, he cannot be held accountable for what they do.
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