Earlier this week, a high school student in Kentucky opened fire on his classmates killing two and injuring 18. At this time, the student has been charged with two counts of murder and 12 counts of first degree assault, a charge comparable to attempted murder in terms of sentencing. It might seem like the shooter has been charged appropriately, but I believe his set of charges represents a fundamental flaw in the way justice is often perceived.
To illustrate why, consider the cases of two different drivers who run red lights in busy intersections. In both scenarios, a third car approaches the middle of the intersection from the left. Person A drives just fast enough to avoid the oncoming car by a single second and later finds a ticket in the mail because a traffic camera captured his license plate. He got lucky. Person B, however, drives just slow enough for the oncoming car to collide into his trunk. Although Person B emerges unscathed, the couple in the car tragically die in the accident. Person B is arrested, charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter, and sentenced to jail for a decade. He didn't get so lucky.
Person A's ticketing resulted from his illegally running a red light, an activity that poses a threat to the safety of others in society, but can be effectively discouraged with punitive measures. Whether or not Person A intentionally ran the light or just wasn't paying enough attention to the road, the ticket will likely fulfill its purpose of promoting safe driving by prompting him to choose better in future. Tickets work because drivers are capable and willing to modify their behavior in order to avoid having to pay more fines. If drivers did not have control over where they drove their car and were consequently unable to modify their driving behavior, ticketing would be a completely pointless and ineffective measure (at least if one's goal is to encourage safe driving).
Person A was punished because he failed to make the right choice; he drove recklessly when he could have chosen otherwise and he needed to be encouraged to make better choices for the sake of society. But Person B was primarily punished for something he had no control over, specifically the timing of another driver. At first glance, it may appear as though Person B's running the red light directly caused the collision, but, in legal terms, Person B's actions were the proximate cause of the accident (the Wikipedia page even uses this situation to explain the concept). People frequently run red lights without causing accidents, as in the case with Person A, but collisions like the one involving Person B would not have occurred but for drivers like him running the lights. Running the red was a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the collision. This reveals the necessity for at least one other variable which, in Person B's case, was the other driver. Despite the fact Person B only has control over his own choice whether or not to run the light and has no control whatsoever of the other driver's timing, he was nevertheless convicted of vehicular manslaughter as his actions constitute the proximate cause of the couple's death.
Although both drivers exhibited the exact same reckless behavior and committed the identical crime of running a red light, Person B received a much harsher punishment solely because of circumstances beyond his control. If the point of legal punishments is to protect society by encouraging those who've made harmful choices to make better choices going forward, punishing someone for something that would occur in the exact same way regardless of his choices is not only completely illogical, it is a gross exploitation of the justice system for the sake of what is ultimately petty revenge.
Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't take tragedies like the collision in Person B's scenario seriously nor am I making any claims about what the legal consequences of such behavior should be, but what I am saying is that there is a definite inconsistency in the way in which Person A and Person B's punishments were determined that is primarily due to vengeful emotional desires. Sometimes tragedies occur because of unfortunate circumstances rather than the actions of blameworthy parties and, even in times of great pain, we need to remember that placing blame on people who aren't actually responsible only creates more pain. Two wrongs don't make a right.
The same logic used in the red light case can, and I believe should, be applied in reverse to the shooting in Kentucky. The shooter meant to kill all the students he fired at, the fact that he's not a better shot and that a number of the victims managed to survive from their gunshot wounds does not remotely excuse the shooter's intentions. He chose to murder all the students he tried to kill; he had no control over the other factors that fortunately prevented him from perfectly carrying out his mission. Those who survived were lucky, but their luck should not lessen the shooter's sentence. He should be charged with the murder of everyone he chose to murder.
This line of reasoning can serve to increase or decrease the punishments handed to those who break the law depending on the situation, but it would also render some "crimes" nonsensical such as manslaughter (it wouldn't exist) and attempted murder (it would just be murder). A crime is "an action or an instance of negligence that is deemed injurious to the public welfare," not "the potential uncontrollable and unintended outcomes of an action or an instance of negligence that is deemed injurious to the public welfare." There are many real crimes where reformulating sentences and basing them on choices rather that unintended outcomes would be much more conducive to the goal of using the law to encourage better choices for society. A sexual predator who only fails to rape someone because he or she escapes his clutches should be charged with rape, a man who grabs at a woman's purse but fails to pull it off of her should be charged with theft, a woman who falsely accuses a man of rape should be charged with kidnapping, etc. Of course, in cases like this, the prosecution would need to establish intent, which carries a high burden of proof, but I believe it is better to punish those who actually made socially harmful choices in an attempt to curb their behavior rather than punish those who never had a choice in the matter at all.