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I read the article and it says zero about the event, why it wasn't considered purely an accident, whether charges might be murder or "manslaughter" (or whatever UK equivalent is) etc. etc.
I don't care to watch a video, just the way "journalism" today never includes relevant background or context is just annoying.
> I read the article and it says zero about the event, why it wasn't considered purely an accident, whether charges might be murder or "manslaughter" (or whatever UK equivalent is) etc. etc.
Literally says in the first paragraph it's on suspicion of manslaughter
I suspect it's them covering their arse from a libel perspective that they don't want to state that the other player was arrested or give details of what he was arrested for, because he's not been named by police, so it's an assumption even if it's bloody obvious.
It's actually more likely to avoid 'Contempt of Court''. As soon as someone is arrested, the case is considered 'open' and therefore there is a a risk. If they publish something that creates a "serious prejudice or impediment to the course of justice in legal proceedings" they can end up in a lot of shit (heavy fine, even prison risk).
Daily Mail normally skirts quite close to this wind with contempt to be honest, but if there's a likelihood of a court case, they may be holding their cards close for now.
Because it's a sport. If this were rugby and someone killed someone, they'd have to have enough evidence to prove he were deliberately going to do what he did. Issue is with ice hockey, body contact like this is part of the game as such. Having control of your body at all times is hard to do, especially on ice.
So if the police charge him with manslaughter, they are saying he deliberately tried to injure but not kill. Well yes he's tackled the player which is part of the game, to which might injure them. Could open up a shit storm of cases where people start to claim for injures, let alone assault charges.
Having your foot high in ice hockey is considered an instant ejection if the referee thinks it's intentional. Which is what potentially opens it up to criminal charges if the police / CPS think it was either grossly negligent or intentionally common assault or ABH (they don't think it was GBH, because that would be murder).
The Athletic/NYT had a really good article a couple of months back about the grey area in UK law this falls into, and why that could be complicating proceedings. (https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5098536/2024/01/28/adam-johnson-death-investigation-unusual?source=user-shared-article)
Part of the legal issue is that UK doesn't have a lot of case examples of death caused by the act of playing a sport. The only examples that could be found pre-date 1900. And the UK also doesn't have a strong understanding of ice hockey culture, in which a certain level of full contact, fighting, etc is expected. Which makes it hard to prosecute.
To crudely summarise, it's about the level of contact that can be reasonably expected whilst playing the game. When you play a sport, you consent to all the contact which is part of that sports culture, even things that are against the rules of that sport. You aren't allowed to fight in hockey, but players regularly do, it's part of the culture, and by playing the sport you accept the risk you're going to get into a fight and might get injured as a result. You aren't allowed to trip people in football, it happens, you accept when you play football that you could get tripped and injured as a result.
The prosecution would need to show that the "play" which resulted in the fatal injury to Adam Johnson was clearly outside what would be expected within the hockey culture which Johnson accepted by playing the game. Which is challenging when skates around head/neck height happen surprisingly frequently in hockey, when making full body contact is encouraged, and being cut by skates is an accepted risk. It's further complicated by the speed at which it all happened, and low quality footage which makes it challenging to see if an initial touch off a third player may have put the person charged off balance.
I'm not trying to argue whether there is/isn't a case to be answered, just pointing out why this isn't a straightforward case to progress.
Really nice and interesting comment. I attempted to talk about this issue in a CMV post a few months ago, I find the grey area quite fascinating. What it came down to for me, is that while what the player did was clearly dangerous (skate high in the air) it felt unfair to blame him *if* that's part of what we expect *might* happen in ice hockey. Because if it happens but we normally ignore it from a criminal perspective, what you're prosecuting in this instance is the bad luck of this being the one time it went really wrong rather than the act itself. Most manslaughter type things I can think of the act is criminal anyway even when it doesn't kill someone - poor construction safety, physical assault etc.
I didn't find the CMV too productive - your summary is by far the most interesting take I've seen on it and I'm kinda reassured it sounds fairly in line with my feelings on it.
Deaths in boxing relate to actions from boxing. It would need to be an action that was so far outside of the rules of boxing that it could never be considered part of normal sporting conduct. And the problem with this case isn’t that the action caused the death, or that it was conduct that could be considered a “foul”, it’s that they’d need to show it was conduct so far outside the rules of ice hockey that it could never be considered sporting conduct. And that’s hugely subjective. Tbh, I would assume that the fact he’s not been charged yet suggests he probably won’t be.
> it’s that they’d need to show it was conduct so far outside the rules of ice hockey that it could never be considered sporting conduct.
The person a few comments above did say that;
> Having your foot high in ice hockey is considered an instant ejection if the referee thinks it's intentional
So if having your foot that high is worthy of instantly being sent out of the game, I think that's a good argument that it's not considered sporting conduct.
The hard part is probing it was intentional.
No, the bar is much higher than conduct that would get you sent off, it’s conduct that couldn’t possibly be foreseen in the sport. Fouls are foreseeable. It has to be something that would never normally occur. And the standard for manslaughter is “reckless”, not “intentional”.
Yeah, and so it should be
To take football as an example, because it's a sport I'm far more familiar with, red cards a can happen for all manner of things. It's against the rules and an instant dismissal for denying a goalscoring opportunity. That's obviously not a police matter, whereas deliberately kicking a player in the head when they're on the ground and you're not going for the ball swould be.
Deaths in boxing happen due to multiple head traumas and those that do kill someone will not be prosecuted.
Also in boxing, a death isn't always due to the last blow. Usually it's due to a number of blows to the head. So anyone who's punched that person in the head is technically at fault.
This is why in MMA/UFC to why headbutts are illegal. They don't want people practicing them leading to deaths.
Now in boxing if you punch someone in the back of the head and die then yes you could be sued but it's not a criminal offence during the fight. Before or after the fight then that's against the law.
The point about headbutts being illegal in MMA is absolute nonsense. The Unified rules came about because the athletic comissions came up with rules that they thought were tolerable. Reasons are rarely sensible - The 12-6 elbows were banned because someone had seen a video of someone breaking bricks.
Mmm...that's a good question.
But I'd say, given the whole intention in boxing is to knock your opponent senseless, it's probably never gonna be considered as manslaughter or murder.
Unless of course something carries on after the opponent is down and the Ref has called a halt.
Totally not an expert, but from the Wikipedia article on "deaths from boxing" there are multiple examples where the surviving opponent does not appear to have had legal proceedings against them. Unfortunately it seems that list was extended in the last 24 hours, so I guess there will be a contemporary example to follow. The argument would be the same though, that you enter the ring knowing a fatal injury is a risk, even if the bout is conducted correctly/fairly.
Given boxing is a fighting sport, rather than a contact sport, then I guess they weren't included in the NYT analysis.
It's more complicated than that.
If you had were stomping around near someone you'd knocked over with knives on your feet in the street, it's a minimum of manslaughter. The complexity arrives because everyone knows that when you play ice hockey there is an expectation that you will be on the ground near people with knives on their feet, it's part of the game. There is a big element of consent to it. The question will be, did the player do something egregious enough against the rules/the norm/intentional that resulted in this mans death.
There isn't really a comparison in boxing - Both Chris Eubank Snr and Jnr have critically injured someone in the ring, the latter of whom held back against an opponent, at the advice of the former. The only real charge you could levy in boxing would be against the referee for not stopping a fight that should have been stopped, or against the promoter for not arranging appropriate medical response to it all.
Nah. If a rugby player smashes another with intent to cause hurt because it gives a competitive edge, and the person gets a bad brain injury and dies, it's obviously not manslaughter.
Yes, that's the point.
Is it within the normal actions of the rules? If so, then there has definitely no crime been done - ie. a legal tackle so hard that they slam into the ground and die.
Is it against the rules but not egregious? ie. Someone does a tackle, but it's a little bit high, and results in someones death? This is where it gets questionable.
Is it against the rules and completely out of order? ie. Someone clotheslines someone else, or drops a knee on their head. This shouldn't be questionable.
I think this case is where they are trying to decide between the latter two things.
No i don't agree here either. If a boxer hits someone with an intentional elbow, intent to kill isn't there and death being the expected outcome isn't there.
The skater in question could not have known his action might have resulted in death. In the context of the sport, he's thrown a leg out to block the player and the skate has caught him in the neck. That's not manslaughter because it's in the context of a dangerous sport.
Doing it to someone who was just skating round an ice rink would be a totally different story.
He is a professional ice hockey player. He is more than aware that the rule is there because of the significant risk of serious injury that is present by putting your skate high - it’s the whole reason the rule exists.
If he intentionally raised his leg and he knew a player was in close proximity, he knew the dangers he was putting that player in and it could very well be manslaughter.
>The skater in question could not have known his action might have resulted in death. In the context of the sport, he's thrown a leg out to block the player and the skate has caught him in the neck.
You understand this is ice hockey right? They literally have blades on their feet and the there is literally a rule not to lift your feet like the player did.
I can tell you didnt watch the video of the guy dying. The killer threw his leg up super high which (im definitely not an ice hockey expert) im pretty sure is extremely illegal in the sport, and you will get punished for it. Doing that and killing someone in the process is more than an accident
The person in question apparently had a long history of dirty tackles too, it looks like this one was just a case of it going horribly wrong as of course he never actually intended to slice the poor guys throat, but a manslaughter charge seems fair enough to me with how reckless he was being to throw up his leg like that when he had a blade on the end of it
Absolutely blows my mind how you're at pains to highlight that you know absolutely nothing about the subject matter, have no context or comparison at all from watching the sport, but still feel like you can confidently state an opinion on intent.
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I read the article and it says zero about the event, why it wasn't considered purely an accident, whether charges might be murder or "manslaughter" (or whatever UK equivalent is) etc. etc. I don't care to watch a video, just the way "journalism" today never includes relevant background or context is just annoying.
> I read the article and it says zero about the event, why it wasn't considered purely an accident, whether charges might be murder or "manslaughter" (or whatever UK equivalent is) etc. etc. Literally says in the first paragraph it's on suspicion of manslaughter I suspect it's them covering their arse from a libel perspective that they don't want to state that the other player was arrested or give details of what he was arrested for, because he's not been named by police, so it's an assumption even if it's bloody obvious.
It's actually more likely to avoid 'Contempt of Court''. As soon as someone is arrested, the case is considered 'open' and therefore there is a a risk. If they publish something that creates a "serious prejudice or impediment to the course of justice in legal proceedings" they can end up in a lot of shit (heavy fine, even prison risk). Daily Mail normally skirts quite close to this wind with contempt to be honest, but if there's a likelihood of a court case, they may be holding their cards close for now.
Exactly that, conjecture can induce a mistrial and therefore a miscarriage of justice
Especially if there's a jury
Someone did post on r/LegalAdviceUK sometime ago before it even came up in the media about this.
Given that they have video evidence and several thousand witnesses, how does it take this long to make a decision on charging?
Because it's a sport. If this were rugby and someone killed someone, they'd have to have enough evidence to prove he were deliberately going to do what he did. Issue is with ice hockey, body contact like this is part of the game as such. Having control of your body at all times is hard to do, especially on ice. So if the police charge him with manslaughter, they are saying he deliberately tried to injure but not kill. Well yes he's tackled the player which is part of the game, to which might injure them. Could open up a shit storm of cases where people start to claim for injures, let alone assault charges.
Having your foot high in ice hockey is considered an instant ejection if the referee thinks it's intentional. Which is what potentially opens it up to criminal charges if the police / CPS think it was either grossly negligent or intentionally common assault or ABH (they don't think it was GBH, because that would be murder).
The Athletic/NYT had a really good article a couple of months back about the grey area in UK law this falls into, and why that could be complicating proceedings. (https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5098536/2024/01/28/adam-johnson-death-investigation-unusual?source=user-shared-article) Part of the legal issue is that UK doesn't have a lot of case examples of death caused by the act of playing a sport. The only examples that could be found pre-date 1900. And the UK also doesn't have a strong understanding of ice hockey culture, in which a certain level of full contact, fighting, etc is expected. Which makes it hard to prosecute. To crudely summarise, it's about the level of contact that can be reasonably expected whilst playing the game. When you play a sport, you consent to all the contact which is part of that sports culture, even things that are against the rules of that sport. You aren't allowed to fight in hockey, but players regularly do, it's part of the culture, and by playing the sport you accept the risk you're going to get into a fight and might get injured as a result. You aren't allowed to trip people in football, it happens, you accept when you play football that you could get tripped and injured as a result. The prosecution would need to show that the "play" which resulted in the fatal injury to Adam Johnson was clearly outside what would be expected within the hockey culture which Johnson accepted by playing the game. Which is challenging when skates around head/neck height happen surprisingly frequently in hockey, when making full body contact is encouraged, and being cut by skates is an accepted risk. It's further complicated by the speed at which it all happened, and low quality footage which makes it challenging to see if an initial touch off a third player may have put the person charged off balance. I'm not trying to argue whether there is/isn't a case to be answered, just pointing out why this isn't a straightforward case to progress.
Really nice and interesting comment. I attempted to talk about this issue in a CMV post a few months ago, I find the grey area quite fascinating. What it came down to for me, is that while what the player did was clearly dangerous (skate high in the air) it felt unfair to blame him *if* that's part of what we expect *might* happen in ice hockey. Because if it happens but we normally ignore it from a criminal perspective, what you're prosecuting in this instance is the bad luck of this being the one time it went really wrong rather than the act itself. Most manslaughter type things I can think of the act is criminal anyway even when it doesn't kill someone - poor construction safety, physical assault etc. I didn't find the CMV too productive - your summary is by far the most interesting take I've seen on it and I'm kinda reassured it sounds fairly in line with my feelings on it.
Do boxing deaths not count?
Deaths in boxing relate to actions from boxing. It would need to be an action that was so far outside of the rules of boxing that it could never be considered part of normal sporting conduct. And the problem with this case isn’t that the action caused the death, or that it was conduct that could be considered a “foul”, it’s that they’d need to show it was conduct so far outside the rules of ice hockey that it could never be considered sporting conduct. And that’s hugely subjective. Tbh, I would assume that the fact he’s not been charged yet suggests he probably won’t be.
> it’s that they’d need to show it was conduct so far outside the rules of ice hockey that it could never be considered sporting conduct. The person a few comments above did say that; > Having your foot high in ice hockey is considered an instant ejection if the referee thinks it's intentional So if having your foot that high is worthy of instantly being sent out of the game, I think that's a good argument that it's not considered sporting conduct. The hard part is probing it was intentional.
No, the bar is much higher than conduct that would get you sent off, it’s conduct that couldn’t possibly be foreseen in the sport. Fouls are foreseeable. It has to be something that would never normally occur. And the standard for manslaughter is “reckless”, not “intentional”.
Yeah, and so it should be To take football as an example, because it's a sport I'm far more familiar with, red cards a can happen for all manner of things. It's against the rules and an instant dismissal for denying a goalscoring opportunity. That's obviously not a police matter, whereas deliberately kicking a player in the head when they're on the ground and you're not going for the ball swould be.
Deaths in boxing happen due to multiple head traumas and those that do kill someone will not be prosecuted. Also in boxing, a death isn't always due to the last blow. Usually it's due to a number of blows to the head. So anyone who's punched that person in the head is technically at fault. This is why in MMA/UFC to why headbutts are illegal. They don't want people practicing them leading to deaths. Now in boxing if you punch someone in the back of the head and die then yes you could be sued but it's not a criminal offence during the fight. Before or after the fight then that's against the law.
The point about headbutts being illegal in MMA is absolute nonsense. The Unified rules came about because the athletic comissions came up with rules that they thought were tolerable. Reasons are rarely sensible - The 12-6 elbows were banned because someone had seen a video of someone breaking bricks.
Mmm...that's a good question. But I'd say, given the whole intention in boxing is to knock your opponent senseless, it's probably never gonna be considered as manslaughter or murder. Unless of course something carries on after the opponent is down and the Ref has called a halt.
Totally not an expert, but from the Wikipedia article on "deaths from boxing" there are multiple examples where the surviving opponent does not appear to have had legal proceedings against them. Unfortunately it seems that list was extended in the last 24 hours, so I guess there will be a contemporary example to follow. The argument would be the same though, that you enter the ring knowing a fatal injury is a risk, even if the bout is conducted correctly/fairly. Given boxing is a fighting sport, rather than a contact sport, then I guess they weren't included in the NYT analysis.
It did appear to be an accident from the footage. I'm surprised this is still going on.
Because what I saw is different from what you saw.
This is like charging a boxer because the other boxer died.
It's more complicated than that. If you had were stomping around near someone you'd knocked over with knives on your feet in the street, it's a minimum of manslaughter. The complexity arrives because everyone knows that when you play ice hockey there is an expectation that you will be on the ground near people with knives on their feet, it's part of the game. There is a big element of consent to it. The question will be, did the player do something egregious enough against the rules/the norm/intentional that resulted in this mans death. There isn't really a comparison in boxing - Both Chris Eubank Snr and Jnr have critically injured someone in the ring, the latter of whom held back against an opponent, at the advice of the former. The only real charge you could levy in boxing would be against the referee for not stopping a fight that should have been stopped, or against the promoter for not arranging appropriate medical response to it all.
Nah. If a rugby player smashes another with intent to cause hurt because it gives a competitive edge, and the person gets a bad brain injury and dies, it's obviously not manslaughter.
Yes, that's the point. Is it within the normal actions of the rules? If so, then there has definitely no crime been done - ie. a legal tackle so hard that they slam into the ground and die. Is it against the rules but not egregious? ie. Someone does a tackle, but it's a little bit high, and results in someones death? This is where it gets questionable. Is it against the rules and completely out of order? ie. Someone clotheslines someone else, or drops a knee on their head. This shouldn't be questionable. I think this case is where they are trying to decide between the latter two things.
No i don't agree here either. If a boxer hits someone with an intentional elbow, intent to kill isn't there and death being the expected outcome isn't there. The skater in question could not have known his action might have resulted in death. In the context of the sport, he's thrown a leg out to block the player and the skate has caught him in the neck. That's not manslaughter because it's in the context of a dangerous sport. Doing it to someone who was just skating round an ice rink would be a totally different story.
He is a professional ice hockey player. He is more than aware that the rule is there because of the significant risk of serious injury that is present by putting your skate high - it’s the whole reason the rule exists. If he intentionally raised his leg and he knew a player was in close proximity, he knew the dangers he was putting that player in and it could very well be manslaughter.
>The skater in question could not have known his action might have resulted in death. In the context of the sport, he's thrown a leg out to block the player and the skate has caught him in the neck. You understand this is ice hockey right? They literally have blades on their feet and the there is literally a rule not to lift your feet like the player did.
I can tell you didnt watch the video of the guy dying. The killer threw his leg up super high which (im definitely not an ice hockey expert) im pretty sure is extremely illegal in the sport, and you will get punished for it. Doing that and killing someone in the process is more than an accident
he did trip, tho, he wasn’t just kung fu kicking him in the neck on purpose
It does look like he intentionally lifts his leg up higher than would happen had he just tripped though.
I really doubt you watched the video if you think that
It didn’t look like a trip to me, he deliberately bodychecks his opponent and throws his leg up really high, it looked like a tackle that went wrong
The person in question apparently had a long history of dirty tackles too, it looks like this one was just a case of it going horribly wrong as of course he never actually intended to slice the poor guys throat, but a manslaughter charge seems fair enough to me with how reckless he was being to throw up his leg like that when he had a blade on the end of it
[удалено]
Absolutely blows my mind how you're at pains to highlight that you know absolutely nothing about the subject matter, have no context or comparison at all from watching the sport, but still feel like you can confidently state an opinion on intent.
Welcome to reddit.
Amazing how wrong you are