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  • TEN YEAR OLD CHARGED WITH MURDER FOR ALLEGEDLY SHAKING A BABY TO DEATH

    Posted on May 2nd, 2011 zshapiro No comments

    A ten year 1 old Pennsylvania girl has been charged with third degree murder of an eleven month old child. The girl is accused of shaking the child to death.

    Murder is the intentional killing of a person or committing an act knowing that it is likely to kill another.

    Under Pennsylvania law first degree murder is the illegal intentional murder of a person. Second degree murder is the killing of someone while the killer is committing a felony. Any other murder 2 is third degree murder.

    The children’s babysitter has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child for not seeking medical help for the child.

    For the girl to be guilty of murder she must have either intended to kill the child or have known that shaking a child would likely result in the child’s death. 3 If a nine year old shoots a child, having seen enough police shows on TV, to know that the child is likely to be killed, perhaps she could be guilty of murder. But it is highly unlikely that any nine year old either planned to kill the child by shaking the child or even knew that the child would be killed if he is shaken.

    To expect any nine year old to shake a child 4 with either the intent to kill the child or knowing that shaking a child is likely to result in the child’s death is beyond comprehension. 5

    Notes:

    1. The girl was nine years old at the time of the killing. ↩
    2. Of course murder does not include manslaughter ↩
    3. There is also the question of a 10 year old’s competency to stand trial. That she understands the proceedings and is she capable of making the many decisions a defendant in a criminal trial must make. ↩
    4. There is a question within the scientific community about whether anyone can shake a child sufficiently to cause so called Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) but we won’t cover that in this posting ↩
    5. Even if it is true that when an adult shakes a child the child is likely to die is the same true for a nine year old who is not as powerful. ↩
    Homicide, Murder , , , Leave a Reply

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