I think you are giving this kid the benefit of the doubt, but I for one am not too certain. Common sense will tell you that shing a laser or for that matter anything into the windshield of a moving vehicle has the potential of distracting the operator in the best case scenario, and causing a crash in the worse case scenario. His lawyer was his worse enemy in allowing him to deny he knew it was a bad idea after the testimony of his friends. In any case, he chose to plead guilty and take a plea bargain. If he was so convinced he was not guilty then he should have gone to trial.
From what I understand (though I am sure a more coherant answer will come) lasers concentrate light of a particular wavelength into a tiny beam and with that beam comes a lot of energy which is then further focused by the lens of your eye to a much smaller area on the retina which then burns the cones and rods of the retina thus damaging your eye.
I see the difference but I do not see how it applies to the case at hand. I see what he did as being analogous to me shooting a gun into the air in celebration and that bullet comes done and hits someone in the head. I did not intend for the bullet to hit them, but I am still guilty of killing the person(I believe it is manslaughter, but the lawyers in the form may disagree). I believe this happened in Philadelphia a number of years ago.
Because laser is not like a flash light.
Yeah, but the severity of the sentence is probably partly due to the fact that it was a far more powerful laser than your typical 'pointer'. You may play dumb when toying mindlessly with a pencil-like device, it is much harder to do that when you have something much more capable as his 'commercial' grade laser which (we don't know) could have involved directing a beam with a separate mirror, a stand, mounts, etc.
Don't you worry I am sure he will, and probably twice on sunday. As a good friend of mine used to say going to jail means sleeping quarters, three meals a day, and all the sex you do not want.
Ignorance is not a defense as far as I know.
Not yet convinced of that in this case either. See post #21. Also how do you prove intent. Action is easy, intent is trying to see what was in his mind, and you only have his self serving word for that. Another example I can give is with boating. I was always taught in boating that I was responsible for my wake. If someone got injured because of my wake I could be held accountable. I certainly did not intend for my wake to hurt someone but if it did. I know these are civil examples, but a legal example could be the case where a college student(i believe) stole a stop sign and as a result of him stealing the sign a fatal accident occurred because someone did not stop because the sign was not there. The student was arrested and found guilty. I guarantee you he did not intend for an accident to occur, it was just a college prank, but someone died and he was held accountable. How about all those kids who have died because parents have left them in cars, left their guns out, left them unattended near the swimming pool... you think any of them got off of their criminal charges because they did not intend for their kid to get hurt or die because of their lack of due dilligence. Though on second thought these examples really do not count, because he was not convicted of hurting someone, he was convicted of shining the laser at the aircraft, which he obviously intended to do. You cannot tell me he did it seven times by accident.
It was not just one stray "bullet" that happened to hit the aircraft. It is more like you aiming your machine gun at a landing aircraft during the final approach and then aiming your machine gun at the police helicopter that was dispatched to find you.
