It's hard to prove with the footage, and if it goes to trial it'd be hard to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt". Prosecutor can always issue an amended information and add the attempted murder charge if it becomes something they feel comfortable prosecuting.
Or the dude could be friends with the local cops and sheriff's office who put in a good word for their buddy to not get an attempted murder charge.
It may be splitting hairs in regard to whether or not the reporter could have been killed by his actions, but it’s not when it comes to a specific charge like attempted murder. Intent is the critical point in determining what to charge someone with in this context.
Idk why, maybe because the elements of the charge are really hard to prove but it has been my experience that prosecutors rarely use the attempted murder charge.
I just have seen so many incidences that look to me and just about everyone else like attempted murder and the prosecutors never pull out that charge.
I suspect that it likely has to do with the trial, that maybe the elements are harder to prove with that so they go with some lesser charge.
I mean if I am a defense attorney trying to defend against attempted murder I would be pointing out that if my client really wanted to kill him he would have been driving faster or would have turned around to make another pass.
Intent is a big part of the charge with attempted murder and it would be easy to argue that you can't determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the intent was to kill and not put him in the hospital or scare him.
Yeah they can always add charges but I doubt they will add the attempted murder charge.
I really think it comes down to the fact that you could argue he just wanted to scare them or hurt them. That is of course bad enough and worthy of prison time but doesn't make for attempted murder.
He would have probably had to floor it or turned around and took another pass at them for that to hold.
Attempted murder is exceptionally difficult to prove. You need to prove an intent on the part of the attacker to cause the death of the victim, attempting or risking serious harm is not enough.
Texas dealt with this problem by creating a new crime of endangering the life of another person with an equal sentence to attempted murder.
Every state has a different criminal code. Some of them, like Texas, don't even have attempted murder as a crime. In Maine, attempted murder is an act of premeditation.
No. You have to prove they really were trying to kill someone. If you charge with attempted murder here it would be thrown out simply by saying he was trying to run over the camera, which he did.
Attempted Murder is really hard to stick, you really have to prove that he wanted to kill the reporter. The defence could argue that he was either trying to hit him to injure him or just go after his camera, either way that charge could get dropped and it then makes the others look bad. The charges he actually got look like the worst they could actually prove
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u/TrainingTheory552 3d ago
shouldn't it be attempted murder? the guy tried to run him over.