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Comment by dietrichepp | Hacker News Reader

I am not a lawyer, but criminal culpability has everything to do with state of mind / mens rea. This is why "murder" is a crime but accidental homicide is not, even though in both cases the same actions might have led to the same consequences.

"State secrets" is also one thing, "classified material" is another thing.

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"Gross negligence" in handling classified material is also criminal, regardless of intent.

At least she should get punished at some level.Not like nothing happend and she can still run for president. What a joke. Shame on us.

Agreed. Even if she _actually_ didn't mean any harm by this, it's insane that we would be okay having someone this negligent vying for the most powerful office in the world.

Of course, the argument that she had no intent is getting tougher to prove with each bit of information coming out. The fact that she (or one of her people) just happened to use BleachBit once they realized investigation was imminent is pretty damning.

The voters are the ultimate authority in all of this, and we get to decide in November.

Accidental homicide isn't a crime? I thought that was what involuntary manslaughter was?

IANAL. It depends on who is at fault. If you are driving your car down the highway and a pedestrian jumps in front of you so close that there is nothing you can do...

That's not really homicide though.

Homicide doesn't mean murder. It simply means the killing of a person by another.

People make a big deal about how in capital punishment, the death certificate says 'homicide'. This isn't a political statement that capital punishment is murder; it is just the objective fact of what happened.

So if someone jumps out in front of you and they die, you're the victim of a homicide?

They would be the victim....

I'm talking about accidentally killing someone where there is no negligence or intent. It's not a crime. It's still homicide.

Accidental -> reckless -> negligent -> intentional

> "State secrets" is also one thing, "classified material" is another thing.

No, actually (in the US at least) they are the same thing.

Perhaps he meant that not all classified material is state secret.

In the sense that not all classified material should be classified, perhaps. By definition, though, the US government considers everything classified to be a state secret.

Accidental homicide is called manslaughter, and is very much a crime.

Manslaughter requires negligence. Not all homicides are a result of negligence, i.e., shit happens.

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