I do not understand this line of reasoning...
Passenger in deadly crash not guilty, Seattle P-I, 2007-03-13:
The sole survivor of one of the state's deadliest single-car wrecks can't be guilty of encouraging her friend to drive drunkenly because she was a victim of the crime, the state Court of Appeals ruled Monday.
A jury found Teresa Hedlund guilty three years ago of being an accomplice to drunken driving July 16, 2001, when the car she was riding in slammed into a concrete pillar, killing her fiance and the five others crammed inside the vehicle.
In an unusual legal stance, Auburn prosecutors argued that Hedlund had been egging on the driver, Tom Stewart, to drive recklessly by videotaping him as she sat in the passenger seat.
But Monday, a three-judge panel found that Hedlund could not be prosecuted as Stewart's accomplice in the crime because she was a victim of it. She was critically injured and spent many months recovering from head, spleen, liver and hip injuries.
Let me see if I get the court's line of reasoning straight: because she was injured while a crime was committed, there is no possibility that she was committing that crime.
I understand the "unusual legal stance" part may go against my libertarian leanings, and no I have not read the trial transcripts, so I may be getting a garbled picture of this (courtesy an ignorant journalist). But that last quoted sentence is where I am completely confused.
The court's reasoning is that if a man steals a car, drives it until it conks out, leaps out and tries to fix it, and gets run over by it because he forgot to set the parking brake, then that man is a victim of the act of stealing a car (because it would not have run over him had he left it alone), so therefore he cannot be charged with the crime of stealing that same car?
I am at a loss to explain this reasoning. Even the appeals court's ruling left something to be desired.
For example, (Appeals Court Judge William) Baker wrote, if a bank robber accidentally shoots his getaway driver, the driver is a victim of assault, not robbery -- which suggests the driver would still be an accomplice to the robbery.