Significance of &quot;up to 364 days&quot; In a comment to another question, the following law text was quoted: "Every person convicted of a gross misdemeanor defined in Title 9A RCW shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for a maximum term fixed by the court of up to three hundred sixty-four days, or by a fine in an amount fixed by the court of not more than five thousand dollars, or by both such imprisonment and fine." Is there, in the USA, some significant difference between 364 days in jail and say 367 days, other than the three days? Or is there a different reason for this strange number?
There is a note attached to the relevant section of the Revised Code of Washington. It used to be &quot;not more than one year&quot;, but in 2011, Substitute Senate Bill 5168 changed this and many similar instances to &quot;up to 364 days&quot;. They explained their purpose in the first section of the bill: The legislature finds that a maximum sentence by a court in the state of Washington for a gross misdemeanor can, under federal law, result in the automatic deportation of a person who has lawfully immigrated to the United States, is a victim of domestic violence or a political refugee, even when all or part of the sentence to total confinement is suspended. The legislature further finds that this is a disproportionate outcome, when compared to a person who has been convicted of certain felonies which, under the state's determinate sentencing law, must be sentenced to less than one year and, hence, either have no impact on that person's residency status or will provide that person an opportunity to be heard in immigration proceedings where the court will determine whether deportation is appropriate. Therefore, it is the intent of the legislature to cure this inequity by reducing the maximum sentence for a gross misdemeanor by one day. In federal law, 8 USC 1227 (2) (A) (I) provides that: Any alien who— (I) is convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude committed within five years (or 10 years in the case of an alien provided lawful permanent resident status under section 1255(j) of this title) after the date of admission, and (II) is convicted of a crime for which a sentence of one year or longer may be imposed, is deportable. The Washington State legislature didn't think that deportation was an appropriate punishment for an alien who committed a gross misdemeanor. Therefore, they reduced the maximum sentence by one day so as not to trigger deportation under 8 USC 1227 (2) (A) (I).
The official clause in question is here: Pecandu Narkotika yang telah cukup umur sebagaimana dimaksud dalam Pasal 55 ayat (2) yang sedang menjalani rehabilitasi medis 2 (dua) kali masa perawatan dokter di rumah sakit dan/atau lembaga rehabilitasi medis yang ditunjuk oleh pemerintah tidak dituntut pidana which unofficially says Narcotics addicts who are old enough as referred to in Article 55 paragraph (2) who are undergoing medical rehabilitation with at least two treatments by doctors in hospitals and / or medical rehabilitation institutions designated by the government shall not be not criminally prosecuted where the italicized part involves some interpolation – a professional legal translator could have a better English rendition. The point is that you have to actually be getting treatment, and it has to be at a facility that is approved (ditunjuk) by the government. Such addicts are not criminally "dituntut", which could cover being charged, indicted, prosecuted or sued, a minor ambiguity resolved by the fact that the prosecutor is the "penuntut umum" (same root word). Under the law, it is not sufficient to just register (report yourself), you have to actually be receiving treatment. The part about "was not sentenced" is just a mistake.
Technically, yes: Whoever willfully or maliciously injures, tears down or destroys any letter box or other receptacle intended or used for the receipt or delivery of mail on any mail route, or breaks open the same or willfully or maliciously injures, defaces or destroys any mail deposited therein, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. That said, just because it's technically a felony punishable by up to 3 years in federal prison, doesn't mean you'll actually be punished that way. The Department of Justice's Criminal Resource Manual has a section on misdemeanor offenses that apply to postal crime: Among the misdemeanor dispositions available are: 18 U.S.C. § 1701 (obstruction of mails generally); 18 U.S.C. § 1703(b) (opening,destroying, or detaining mail without authority); 18 U.S.C. § 1707 (theft of property used by postal service); and 18 U.S.C. § 1711 (misappropriation of postal funds). When the charge might best lie under 18 U.S.C. § 1705 (destruction of letter boxes or mail) or 18 U.S.C. § 1706 (injury to mail bags) and in other appropriate circumstances, an applicable misdemeanor may be found in 18 U.S.C. § 641 (theft of government property); or 18 U.S.C. § 1361 (destruction of government property). That suggests (at least to me) that federal prosecutors are supposed to at least consider misdemeanor instead of felony charges for minor cases of mailbox destruction. Under normal circumstances, destruction of federal property only becomes a felony if the damage (or attempted damage) is more than $1,000. This is a pretty good example of how US laws are written with prosecutorial discretion in mind. In other systems, the law about destruction of mail or mailboxes would lay out when it's a serious crime and when it's minor. In the US, it's always considered a serious crime because the assumption is that prosecutors won't charge it in minor cases (in fact, official guidance to prosecutors lays out ways they can charge it without charging the felony). It's also possible to be prosecuted at the state level for this, and if you're actually a juvenile that's much more likely than federal prosecution. The feds don't really like handling juvenile cases; they normally leave those up to the states unless there's some good reason not to. Even if you're an adult, the feds may well leave the issue up to the state for prosecution. At the state level, the threshold for felony vs. misdemeanor vandalism would depend on the state. Whether you're prosecuted at the state or federal levels, there's a decent chance you wind up with at least a misdemeanor on your record. Vandalism is illegal, after all.
In the UK, s28(4) Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 states that Where a person is convicted (whether on the same occasion or not) of two or more offences committed on the same occasion and involving obligatory endorsement, the total number of penalty points to be attributed to them is the number or highest number that would be attributed on a conviction of one of them (so that if the convictions are on different occasions the number of penalty points to be attributed to the offences on the later occasion or occasions shall be restricted accordingly). In other words, if you commit two or more offences 'on the same occasion', a court will only award penalty points attributable to the offence attracting the most points. 'On the same occasion' is interpreted by the court. I'm not aware of any case law on this point, so a court will be able to apply its discretion. Note that this only applies to the penalty point aspect of the sentence: the convictions will all stand, and any fines awarded as a result are not subject to the same rule. Of course the police may use their own discretion and charge a subset of the offences actually detected. A short glossary endorsement means that the offender's licence will be 'endorsed' with a number of penalty points. penalty points are recorded on the driver's record at DVSA and expire after a number of years, depending on why they were awarded. A minor speeding offence will normally attract three points which last four years. Receiving twelve points within three years normally results in an automatic twelve-month ban; newly licensed drivers can have their licence revoked on reaching six points.
When it is a mistake of memory, and not intentional (as this question is asking), there are no clear standards, and it is largely up to prosecutorial discretion. This means that whatever factors affect prosecutorial discretion (such as the prosecutor knowing who they have to work with on other days) can become significant in the determination. A prosecutor who announced this decision also specifically noted that it's up to the prosecutor to decide each case separately, with no guidance on fact patterns that could influence the decision either way. The Washington Post Magazine covered this question somewhat in depth several years ago, arriving at that conclusion. This was a surprise to me, but the article seems like a good resource on this - the question turns out to be more interesting and less resolved than it first appeared to be.
This is manslaughter of the vehicular variety Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice. It is of three kinds:... (c) Vehicular— (1) ... driving a vehicle in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, and with gross negligence. This is what they call a wobbler, and could be charged as a felony or a misdemeanor. In the latter case, the maximum penalty is a year in county jail and in the former it is six years in state prison. If the cause was ordinary negligence, it is just a misdemeanor. The details of gross negligence are set forth in the jury instruction CALCRIM 592 A person acts with gross negligence when: He or she acts in a reckless way that creates a high risk of death or great bodily injury; AND A reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk. In other words, a person acts with gross negligence when the way he or she acts is so different from how an ordinarily careful person would act in the same situation that his or her act amounts to disregard for human life or indifference to the consequences of that act. The "absent-mindedness" defense seems a bit far fetched, but still not everybody who drives inattentively is prosecuted for a felony, or even a misdemeanor. However, it is really hard to imagine not being acutely aware of the fact that people drive on the right side of the road here. Without a more-detailed story, I don't see a basis for deciding what level of negligence a prosecutor is likely to argue for, and what the prosecutor's agenda is: somewhere between no prosecution, and (most likely) misdemeanor manslaughter.
The distinction is a question of culpability, not just the harm caused. The law, at least in the criminal law context, is not fundamentally consequentialist in its philosophy. The end consequence of an act for which someone is at fault in some way isn't the only thing that matters in criminal law. Instead, there is basically a two dimensional grid. On one axis is the seriousness of the harm caused on the "eye for an eye" theory of proportionality between punishment and the harm caused. Thus, homicide is more serious than causing serious bodily injury or raping someone, which is more serious than causing bodily injury that is not serious or sexual in nature. Grand theft is more serious than shoplifting. It doesn't make economic sense to spend $70,000 a year to incarcerate someone for many years to prevent people from stealing $15 items, unless very extreme aspects of the person's criminal history suggest that this seemingly minor incident demonstrates a high risk of future offenses that are far more serious because it proves that a hardened criminal hasn't reformed himself or herself. On the other axis is basically a measure of how evil and malicious someone would have to be to do such a thing which is called culpability. At once extreme, first degree murder, for example, is calculated, premeditated harm to another. At the other extremes are completely non-culpable conduct (either due to lack of any fault-worthy conduct or because someone is mentally incapable in the eyes of society of engaging in culpable conduct like a baby or someone with dementia or someone having hallucinations relevant to the conduct that kills someone, ordinarily negligent conduct that kills someone, and criminally negligent conduct that kills someone. In between the extremes is conduct that is reckless or is impulsive or carried out in the heat of passion or by someone with diminished capacity. Only moderately culpable conduct is punishable only by a civil lawsuit for compensatory damages, and non-culpable conduct isn't even punishable in a civil lawsuit in the absence of special circumstances in which strict liability is imposed in lieu of proof of culpability. Less culpable conduct commands less serious sentences, and more culpable conduct commands more serious sentences. Why single out culpability? Basically, this is a crude way a predicting, based upon someone's past actions, the risk that the pose in the future. (Our evaluation of culpability is further refined and adjusted by factors related to the individual defendant and not the particular offense involved, like a criminal defendant's status as a juvenile or adult, and the individuals history of prior criminal convictions.) Conduct that constitutes first degree murder corresponds more or less to psychopathy, an incurable psychiatric condition in which someone lacks all empathy and takes selfish delight in harming others out of boredom or for personal gain. Psychopathy is a technical term that is modern abnormal psychology's closest synonym to saying that someone is unredeemable and evil, and conduct for which the death penalty is available, mostly in conduct that is most highly diagnostic of psychopathy, since the usual goal of incarceration, to return someone to the community once they are no longer an appreciably elevated threat to it, can never be achieved in the case of someone who is unredeemable and evil, because their condition is an incurable part of who they are as a person and their lack of empathy makes them incapable of emotionally distinguishing between right and wrong or feeling guilt. This intuition bears out. The more culpable an offense is, the more likely it is that the offender scores high on standardized measures of the extent to which someone displays signs of psychopathy that are exemplified in serial killers and the worst con men. Intermediate levels of liability correspond more or less to impulsivity that can turn violent (which is associated with a variety of incurable psychiatric conditions and also with the developmental states of adolescence and young adulthood and with instances of excessive intoxicant consumption, especially in men), in which someone knows what they are doing is wrong but lacks sufficient self-control to prevent themselves from acting until it is too late and they have calmed down, at least until they "age out" or or take steps to treat the symptoms of the conditions or addictions or intoxicated excesses. Their lack of self-control makes them a potential risk to others even though they empathize and feel guilt, but not like the risk associated with a psychopath who just doesn't care at all if they are doing something that violates intuitive moral codes of conduct. Negligence, i.e. inattentiveness and carelessness pose even less of a threat to the community and while it could be due to something like attention deficit disorder, could also be due to extenuating circumstances like sleep deprivation or being overwhelmed with too much at once to keep track of everything at once. Negligence harm generally isn't even momentarily malicious due to loss of control and the person who harms someone negligently will often immediately regret the harm that they caused and will try to refrain from doing so again and will try to make things right. Such a person is far less of a future threat to society, but still more of a threat than someone who doesn't harm others in the first place in any manner in which they are at fault. Who decides? Reasonable people (and even reasonable judges) can and do have differences of opinion on the relative importance of seriousness of harm and culpability in determining a sentence for a conviction of a particular course of illegal conduct. The difficulty in balancing the apples and oranges factors of seriousness of harm (which, in part, reflects a person's capacity to inflict serious harm in the future and also reflects society's judgment about how serious it is to do something with ill intent) and culpability. To insure that these factors are balanced in a predictable and fair way, we embody the weighing of those two factors in a collective legislative judgment codified in a state or national penal code, rather than a case by case decision making process by judges. The modern trend towards giving more weight to culpability. If anything, the tendency at the present is for legislative judgment to give more weight to culpability than it has in the past as social science methods in criminology have demonstrated that culpability demonstrated in criminal conduct actually carried out by a person is indeed highly predictive of that person's future dangerousness to society For example, cruelty to animals is an offense which reflects very high levels of culpability despite often involving relatively modest amounts of harm viewed in a human-centric way. But, cruelty to animals is increasingly being upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony, because it is a very diagnostic litmus test for psychopathy in an individual and very frequently eventually escalates to causing serious harm to humans. Similarly, drunk driving when it is charged based upon a traffic stop, rather than an accident that occurred while someone was driving drunk, is a very low harm offense, just like any other traffic offense, and historically has only been a misdemeanor. But, in cases where someone is repeatedly convicted of drunk driving, the culpability is high and the conduct tends to reflect a very difficult to self-regulate addiction and substance abuse problem that is highly likely to recur and to eventually result in a high harm accident. Repeated convictions are what distinguish an incident where someone is basically just criminally negligent in driving when they should have known that they shouldn't, from the far more serious case where someone recklessly and with indifference to the well being of others drives drunk knowing full what the risk that they are exposing other people to. And because repeat drunk driving convictions are more culpable and reflect a personal character of the offender that shows a high likelihood of causing future harm to others, many states are starting to upgrade repeat drunk driving from a misdemeanor to a felony even though the actual harm from the specific incident of drunk driving that only gives rise to a traffic stop is still just as low the fifth or sixth time someone is convicted as it was the first time. Conclusion So, in sum, assigning different penalties to different levels of culpability is a way to allocate limited correctional and punishment resources in a manner proportionate to the future risk of dangerousness that the current conviction provides undeniable evidence of in a non-arbitrary manner. Indeed, most people simply internalize the notion that more culpable conduct deserves more serious punishment because it is wrong, without conceptualizing in the more theoretical abnormal psychology informed and utilitarian framework in which I have described it above to demonstrate the implicit logic and wisdom behind the gut instinct that more culpable conduct should be punished more seriously, especially when its cause is not a passing incident that is unlikely to recur.
Article 199 of the Penal Code, as it appears from changes up to 2017, says: 人を殺した者は、死刑又は無期若しくは五年以上の懲役に処する。A person who kills another person is punished by the death penalty or imprisonment for life or for a definite term of not less than 5 years. This is for homicide as opposed to other related crimes, and there are also effects on sentencing for someone who is guilty of multiple offences, for example. The term can be halved if there are sufficient extenuating circumstances, so 2.5 years seems to be the minimum. In any case, 10-15 years is within the range.