Dominic Cummings Trip to Barnard Castle - Manslaughter? The UK government's cheif advisor took a trip to Barnard Castle in the middle of a nationwide lockdown. A clearly illegal act. As a result of this, many people are choosing to flout lockdown rules because &quot;if he can do it, why can't they&quot;? Thus, community transmission is on the rise and we're facing a second spike. Any reasonable person in power would know that by getting caught flouting the rules, they would weaken the application of those rules. Thus, by taking this trip, Dominic Cummings would have reasonably known that he would put people at risk of catching COVID-19. As such, could he potentially be found guilty of manslaughter for these excess deaths as a direct result of his actions?
No. It would not meet the criteria for &quot;unlawful act manslaughter&quot; per the CPS Guide for Crown Prosecutors: The offence is made out if it is proved that the accused intentionally did an unlawful and dangerous act from which death inadvertently resulted. This is because there's no unbroken chain of causation. Let's walk through each element. 1. An unlawful and dangerous act Unlawful Clearly, the act was unlawful — leaving his home without reasonable excuse contrary to the relevant regulations. Dangerous This is an objective test. The test is whether all sober and reasonable people recognised its danger, based solely on their observation of Cummings' conduct during the act. (DPP v Newbury (Neil) [1977] Crim. L.R. 359). It seems the objective test is met - as the risk of harm only has to be &quot;some&quot; risk of harm, and you could argue if he had coronavirus he was putting other members of the public at risk, even if that risk was slight. 2. Causation The prosecution must establish that the unlawful act was a cause of the death without an &quot;intervening act&quot; to break the chain of causation (R v Lewis [2010] EWCA Crim 151). It will be impossible to prove such a chain of causation in this case, therefore any attempted prosecution will likely prove unsuccessful. There is no direct, unbroken link between what he did and someone dying of coronavirus.
I don't think that simply failing to make a sufficient explanation of the risks would make a death manslaughter. Three would have to have been serious negligence in addition, rather beyond the level needed to find malpractice, as I understand the matter. Law.com says that: Voluntary manslaughter includes killing in heat of passion or while committing a felony. Involuntary manslaughter occurs when a death is caused by a violation of a non-felony [sic], such as reckless driving. The Wikipedia article on Manslaughter says that Involuntary manslaughter is the homicide of a human being without intent of doing so, either expressed or implied. It is distinguished from voluntary manslaughter by the absence of intention. It is normally divided into two categories, constructive manslaughter and criminally negligent manslaughter, both of which involve criminal liability. Constructive manslaughter is also referred to as &quot;unlawful act&quot; manslaughter. It is based on the doctrine of constructive malice, whereby the malicious intent inherent in the commission of a crime is considered to apply to the consequences of that crime. It occurs when someone kills, without intent, in the course of committing an unlawful act. ... Criminally negligent manslaughter is variously referred to as criminally negligent homicide in the United States, and gross negligence manslaughter in England and Wales. In Scotland and some Commonwealth of Nations jurisdictions the offence of culpable homicide might apply. It occurs where death results from serious negligence, or, in some jurisdictions, serious recklessness. A high degree of negligence is required to warrant criminal liability. ... An example is where a doctor fails to notice a patient's oxygen supply has disconnected and the patient dies (R v Adomako). Another example could be leaving a child locked in a car on a hot day
I'll preface this by saying I live in Australia where the lowest jurisdiction that can make an act a criminal offence is the state; local governments simply do not have that power here, Question 1: If I understand this right you have a law that you do not enforce that carries moderate sanctions and you are asking that a law that you do not enforce with greater sanctions will be a greater deterrent? Well ... no (see here). If you want to stop the behavior you have to enforce the sanctions that you have in a fair and impartial way. I would suggest that you make it very clear that starting in early September the laws will be enforced - that gives people fair warning. Then, each weekend in September you bring in enough police (State Troopers?) to enforce the law. Its not going to take many $250 fines to make people stop. Question 2: No comment. Question 3: No comment. Question 4: Sounds like a good way of getting the city sued for negligence; just because people are breaking the law does not make it legal to hurt them. If you are serious then fencing the entire area may be worthwhile but the area would still need to be policed.
Can a shopowner in Thailand ban someone from entering their shop on the grounds of their citizenship? The first tweet, explains the context properly: I’m at my local hospital this afternoon to get a medical certificate. My work permit expires soon and so I need to run around getting all the documents in order. At the hospital they wanted to check my passport before letting me in to see if I had been abroad recently. Thailand has been very popular with visitors for decades and if laws existed that discriminated against foreigners this would be commonly known. So in this case the 'discrimination' probably not because of citizenship, but more about a faulty assumption that the virus is spread by foreigners. This will have nothing to do with Thai law. The (tweet) OP quotes only another persons claim. The OP states in the first tweet that they checked his passport only to see if he was abroad recently. So he didn't share the same experience of the American. Based on that, this second hand source (that can't be verified) is probably unreliable. Due to the present (global) uncertainties, caused by the Coronavirus, one should look at the whole picture. 2020-02-04: Coronavirus: Chinese targeted as Italians panic - BBC News In Italy and elsewhere, panic is spreading much faster than the coronavirus itself. Chinese businesses are empty, shopkeepers are shutting down and Chinese nationals are being targeted. At a bar beside the Trevi fountain, a notice was put up banning customers from China. So the the situation described by the original (tweet) OP is understandable, but the quoted (but not varified) second hand source as well as the events in Italy are not. The incidents have prompted condemnation from the Italian authorities. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte reprimanded the regional governors, telling them that they were not competent to make such a call and that nothing justified such fear. Discrimination, solely due to citizenship, would be against Human Rights prevention of discrimination. Special cases may exist for prices that are subsidized and thus only for residents. Dual pricing was common in the Czech Republic until 1999, when it was ruled illegal (but still persisted). Then a foreign resident had to supply proof of residency to avoid paying the higher price. 2007: Illegal practice of dual pricing persists in Czech Republic At the time we assumed that this was legal (it was certainly understandable), but it seems that was not the case. Are the &quot;Human Rights prevention of discrimination&quot; written down somewhere? Also, who enforce them? Universal Declaration of Human | United Nations Human Rights Enforcement Mechanisms of the United Nations | ESCR-Net European Convention on Human Rights - Wikipedia European Court of Human Rights How these international laws/conventions are implemented into national laws will differ from country to country. For Germany they are anchored into the constitution: Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany Article 25 Primacy of international law The general rules of international law shall be an integral part of federal law. They shall take precedence over the laws and directly create rights and duties for the inhabitants of the federal territory. and are enforced by the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) and can be passed on to the European Court of Justice (or European Court of Human Rights) should the need arise. Thailand: Part of Section 30 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand 2007: Unjust discrimination against a person on the grounds of the difference in origin, race, language, sex, age, disability, physical or health condition, personal status, economic or social standing, religious belief, education or constitutionally political view, shall not be permitted.
The principle of constitutional law is that in order to arrest you, the officer would need probable cause. Certain acts are in themselves violations of the order (being closer to another person that 6 feet, illegal sneezing). Walking in public does not per se constitute a violation. In order to briefly stop a person walking on the street (a "Terry stop"), the officer needs a reasonable suspicion that the person is in violation of the law. That means there has to be a reason, and a gut feeling does not count. An officer would not (legally) be able to stop every person they see walking down the street / driving, and demand an explanation of where they are going. If a person is just aimlessly wandering down the strees with friends (even if they are sufficiently separated), that could suffice to justify a stop, given the limited legal excuses for being outside your home.
It is not possible for someone to forfeit their rights because the GDPR is compulsory law. In the EU, laws can be regulatory or compulsory. In case of an agreement, regulatory laws can be set aside, if both parties agree on that. But compulsory laws cannot be set aside. Of course laws can also be partly compulsory. For example provisions which cannot be changed in disadvantage of a consumer. So there is freedom of contract, but it's freedom is reduced by law for the common good or for example to avoid misuse of bargaining power. In particular consumer related laws are often compulsory because it has little power against the other parties. Companies can have their negotiations done by lawyers, so they can make a well informed an well negotiated decision. As an extreme example, you cannot kill someone, even if that person has given you written permission. See also "Peremptory norm" on wikipedia for international law examples.
It looks to me like this is authorized under New York State's Executive Law Section 24. The text is long, but I think it addresses most of the points in your question. The law allows the chief executive of a local government (e.g. mayor of a city) to declare a local state of emergency "in the event of a disaster, rioting, catastrophe, or similar public emergency". Under such a state of emergency, the executive can promulgate local emergency orders, that can include provisions like travel bans, curfews, mandatory evacuation, etc. Violating such an order is a Class B misdemeanor (see paragraph 5). I didn't see any explicit requirement for the executive to weigh safety benefits against restriction of personal liberties. The executive just has to "find" (i.e. decide) that a disaster exists and imperils public safety. However, there are some safeguards. The local state of emergency is limited to 30 days (some orders can be extended for an additional 30 days); see paragraph 1. And the state legislature has the authority to terminate the state of emergency by a concurrent resolution (paragraph 8). Further good reading is a primer (PDF) written by the legal counsel of New York's Office of Emergency Management, giving a guide in layman's language for local chief executives on how to handle state of emergency declarations. I'm slightly puzzled as to why, in this case, the order was given by the governor, when it looks from the law like it should be the mayor's role to do so. It could be that the mayor took the appropriate legal action and just let the governor make the public announcement. Also, Executive Law Article 2-B (Sections 20-29) have many other provisions regarding emergencies. Section 28 gives the governor the power to declare a "disaster emergency", though it's not clear from that section whether this includes the power to issue similar emergency orders.
(Lots of digging) https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.341 The above is a series of definitions for the purposes of criminal statues. Way down (noting that the page notes that this section was amended in 2021, so almost certainly in response to this case, given the amount of attention it has received), as subdivision 22, we have the definition: Subd. 22.Predatory crime. &quot;Predatory crime&quot; means a felony violation of section 609.185 (first-degree murder), 609.19 (second-degree murder), 609.195 (third-degree murder), 609.20 (first-degree manslaughter), 609.205 (second-degree manslaughter), 609.221 (first-degree assault), 609.222 (second-degree assault), 609.223 (third-degree assault), 609.24 (simple robbery), 609.245 (aggravated robbery), 609.25 (kidnapping), 609.255 (false imprisonment), 609.498 (tampering with a witness), 609.561 (first-degree arson), or 609.582, subdivision 1 (first-degree burglary). Thus, it looks like your Minnesota government website is not complete. However, the above seem like the most likely crimes to warrant inclusion on the register. The prominent reason in this instance is the registration will hamper Chauvin from regaining employment as a police officer in Minnesota or any other state. Where I live, there are reports of &quot;problematic officers&quot; being &quot;shuffled&quot; between departments; this would explicitly prevent that.