You needn't prove or even have intent to kill to support a charge of murder. Intent and premeditation is only required for first degree murder while only intent but not premeditation is required for second degree murder.
Gross negligence and reckless actions can consitute depraved indifference to the life and safety of others. Its enough to support a conviction of murder in the third degree in some states or negligent homicide in virtually every state. Minnesota representatively defines murder in the third degree as:
609.195 Murder in the third degree.
(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years.
Fits street racing pretty well if you ask me.
Is it okay for Law Enforcement to make examples out of people? Like if certain behavior usually results in probabtion or very light punishment would it be OK to just say okay enough is enough. Now the same behavior results in 30yrs imprisonment.
Times change, priorities change, the severity of a problem and its impact on society changes.
Street racing is certainly nothing new, neither are deaths and serious injuries from street racing. What is new, due to today's level of traffic congestion and the sheer number of idiots who can afford fast cars, are street racers killing and injuring those other than themselves.
Street racing was a fabled and romanticized activity in no small part because the risk was almost exclusively bore by those participating in street racing. Now that street racers are routinely killing innocent others including entire families just trying to get home from Walmart, it has lost the once-fabled image to that of common criminals.
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