How would a jury rule if a drunk 19 year old pulled out a gun in a bar and killed a person on accident?
Would it be called negligence?
Well negligence is a civil term really moreso than a criminal one, but the basic concept is criminalized by what is called "General Intent." General intent means you have acted recklessly or negligently.
If you break down those terms further, negligence means you should have realized the danger. Reckless means you consciously disregard the danger. The amount of non-realization usually hinges on what the likelihood of the damage is.
So how did the drunk 19 year old kill someone? Did he get totally wasted then pull out a gun and start firing in different directions in a crowded room? I'd call that reckless. How can you not know that firing a gun into a crowd of people is gonna hurt someone? You'd have to be almost deliberately ignoring what is a near-certainty of harm. That's reckless. It's considered much more serious than a negligent-level act.
Or did the 19 year old instead just have the gun out while he was drunk, was playing with it, but then dropped it and it went off and killed someone? That's more like negligence. He should have known not to be playing with a gun in a bar while he was drunk, but his action was accidental, it wasn't like he even meant to pull the trigger, and you can hardly say it was a "near certainty" that he'd drop the gun and go off. People hold things all the time when they are drunk and don't drop them. There is a "danger" here that he is playing with, but it's hardly a near certainty that playing with the gun was gonna end up hurting someone.
I consider DUI more like negligence. It's not a near certainty that someone gets hurt. In fact, the chances of an accident happening when you drive drunk are probably not even 1% (especially if you are in the .08-.10 range). The increased likelihood of an accident while DUI looks really bad but only in comparison to the fact that the chance of an accident happening when you AREN'T drunk is probably like 0.000000000000001%. So it might be a thousand times more likely than if you are sober, but it's still hardly anything close to a certainty.
In the end it's really the disregard of something that doesn't have a very large likelihood of occurring. It's on par with negligence in my book.
Like I said, they have criminalized that with "General Intent" crimes, but there should be a stark difference between that and specific intent crimes.
