[teraflop]

Serious question: if the chance of evidence leading to a convistion is very very small, what would be the benefit of opening an investigation? Just to go through the motions on principle? And what would they even investigate?

[j-bos]

One benefit is demonstrating at least a facade of seeking justice. Also, obscuring a crime for personal benefit is itself a crime.

[knowitnone3]

so cops driving around is good enough, they don't have to actually catch criminals because it's it facade that really matters.

[happosai]

It's security theater, like airport security where red teams succeed in 95% cases

https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-fin...

[brianpan]

It's a cost-benefit analysis like many other things. There are limited resources, they should be spent on investigating cases that have a chance of getting closed.

Cold cases might get reopened because of advances in technology or other changes over time.

[cucumber3732842]

There is no potential "principal" here that is distinguishable from posturing and dick swinging.

Unless you find some unforeseeable smoking gun any conviction will necessarily be questionable at best. That doesn't really serve much of a purpose beyond saying "we're the prosecutor's office, look how bad ass we are, look how we somehow manage to convict someone decades later, fear us". Never mind the fact that dredging this stuff up is not likely to be good for the family and that odds are all of these deaths are purely accidental/negligent so it's not like you're going after a "real criminal".

[radiator_1451]

Investigating a murder is posturing? I really don't understand the "bad ass, fear us" language. Do you consider all criminal investigations to be as frivolous?

> odds are all of these deaths are purely accidental/negligent

How can you say that given that the article presents evidence that

> "... someone gave this baby crushed Tylenol-3,” likely mixed in breast milk or formula

Is that an accident according to you, or do you have any evidence that the article is wrong about that conclusion?

[cucumber3732842]

>Investigating a murder is posturing? I really don't understand the "bad ass, fear us" language. Do you consider all criminal investigations to be as frivolous?

>How can you say that given that the article presents evidence that

Take a freakin step back and look at the big picture. Someone lost their kid, their first kid FFS. Even if a crime was technically committed along the way call it time served.

On a technical level, this is almost certainly not chargeable as a murder. Evidince of intent is lacking and almost certainly does not exist. The best you might be able to do is some negligent wrongful death manslaughter type thing, exact details depending on how such things are defined in the jurisdiction. Just based on plausibility these cases are almost certainly accidents. Very few mothers or the people around them murder newborns in the jurisdictions we're talking about. So if you did find intent, like a text exchange or something, the best you're likely to do is prove intent in the exact opposite direction and that no harm was meant. So then you have to prove negligence or something, which is also likely to be uphill. And this all assumes you can pin it on one person.

No good purpose is served by this. You're not getting some hardened criminal off the streets or putting someone in jail for an act committed with a bad frame of mind. Best case you wind up punishing someone using some negligince wrongful death type statues that's written based on the assumption that the person who caused the death DGAF about the deceased. Even if you pull that off this person is probably the mother or father or a grandparent who already lost their kid or grandkid for it so there's a real tinge of double jeopardy to the whole thing. This serves no purpose other than a show of force by the prosecuting office. The "real" crime committed here is not accidentally giving one's infant the wrong pills (someone gave a kid Tylenol, it's not like it was Xanax or booze to shut them up or some other thing everyone knows you don't do), the facts are likely to stack up in a way that make that act a non-criminal accident. So what you're doing in practice is screwing up one or more people's lives, to much fanfare, because they failed to tell the whole truth to the state a decade or more ago. Now, I get that that might sound like a good thing to some people, but those people are bad people and their ideas are bad ideas.

>Is that an accident according to you, or do you have any evidence that the article is wrong about that conclusion?

Stop trying to re-frame my assertion as an issue with the article rather than a critique of the proposed action (prosecuting someone). I know you'd rather discuss that, because that's much more defensible than a hypothetical decision to prosecute, and I do not accept your slight of hand.

[radiator_1451]

Calm down. I'm not trying to re-frame anything, perhaps I misunderstood you because your reasons for not prosecuting are incomprehensible to me. Do I understand correctly that you think a murder (or involuntary manslaughter etc) is not "as bad" because the perpetrator was close to the victim?

> this person is probably the mother or father or a grandparent who already lost their kid or grandkid

Would you say the same about a man who (perhaps accidentally) killed his wife 20 years ago and covered it up? "He's already lost his wife, time served, no reason to investigate."

Speaking as a parent, giving a 12 days old infant Tylenol is clearly absurd and just as unreasonable as giving them booze.

[cucumber3732842]

>Would you say the same about a man who (perhaps accidentally) killed his wife 20 years ago and covered it up? "He's already lost his wife, time served, no reason to investigate."

There is a massive gulf of intent there and I think it speaks volumes that you cannot (or worse, decline to) identify it.

>Speaking as a parent,

And also speaking as a person who's been espousing the opinions you've been espousing thus far, that's more than just "parent"

>giving a 12 days old infant Tylenol is clearly absurd and just as unreasonable as giving them booze.

People are stupid. Shit happens. I know it seems wild now and everyone turns into a screeching moron about it now but the "suck on a finger dipped in booze" thing was not abnormal (note for said screeching morons: I did not say "considered tasteful") for decades. Doesn't surprise me that someone would give an infant a fraction of a pill of Tylenol as a sleep aid not knowing they have the opioid type and that the fraction they chose is enough to kill the kid one shot.

[radiator_1451]

> Doesn't surprise me that someone would give an infant a fraction of a pill of Tylenol as a sleep aid not knowing they have the opioid type and that the fraction they chose is enough to kill the kid one shot

Note that this is just a story you made up, we really don't know what happened. You're also leaving out that if somebody did this by accident, they also chose to keep quiet about it for 20 years. Doesn't that speak about "intent"?

Also, giving a 12 days old baby a "normal" Tylenol, say one with 500 mg acetaminophen, is a very bad idea. The normal dose for a 3 month old is 60 mg (for fever, not as a "sleep aid"). Doses above 200 mg/kg can cause acute toxicity, so for a slightly small baby of 2500 g, you're there already. Perhaps thinking that there's a "safe" type of Tylenol to give a baby as a "sleep aid" (what??) is a good example of "People are stupid".

With my example with the wife, I'm simply trying to establish why you seem to consider children (or rather babies) to be not worthy of the same justice as adults. How about an adult who accidentally kills their elderly parent, would you consider that worth investigating, or should it also not be investigated on the principle of "they lost their parent"? Or further, at what age do you no longer consider it morally justifiable to accidentally (or otherwise) kill one's child and cover it up? 5 years old, 10, 18?

To me, being stupid does not mean you're allowed to give your elderly father 10 Tylenols as a "sleep aid" and claim "shit happens" if he dies. I might want to call a person of that viewpoint a "bad person with bad ideas" or a "screeching moron", but I'd like to stay above such childish namecalling.