Actually I agree with the "criminal intent" concept.
But nevertheless, the "reckless endangermant" concept should have sharper claws.
I saw some sad jerk of a chronic alcoholic being interviewed after about his tenth drunk driving conviction. (How many did he get away with?)
Finally a judge got tired of seeing him, and sentenced him to a long licence suspension after a personal injury incident (he had been driving drunk).
The guy is looking into the camera after sentencing, all innocent and confused, asking "Why? Why? It was an accident! I didn't set out to (main, kill, whatever)."
There was a worse case. A guy's girlfriend disappears. The usual. History of domestic violence. A couple of years later, the body is found and the guy linked to it.
His story was that she had accidentally died and he had buried her body in a shallow grave because he was afraid people would think he did it.
Yeah, right. And the Green River dude just had a really, really bad string of bad luck. He kept 'dating' these really sickly women, at death's door, actually, except poor naive fool, he never realized it until it was too late, and he had no choice but to hide their bodies. Just a victim of circumstance, really.
And remember, we're the idiots who protected Charles Ng for six years from those nasty bullies who wanted to extradite him back to the U.S. where along with Leonard Lake he had tortured and killed six men, five women, and two infants. It was only when an American pointed out that when Ng would be released from his shoplifting conviction in Canada, he would be free to prey on Canadians, (and further, that Canada would become a haven for the most vicious murderers on earth, those who would be sure to get the death penalty in their own nations) that the supreme court decided to hand him over.
Um, that needed to be
explained to them?
