 Hi, I'm David Cantor with the Law Offices of David Michael Cantor and today I'm going to talk about the crime of manslaughter now We in Arizona manslaughter is defined as recklessly or intentionally or knowingly in the heat of passion or a sudden quarrel With adequate provocation from the alleged victim killing them. That's what's known as manslaughter but You also can be charged with manslaughter if you get into a DUI accident and you kill somebody Then they're going to look at recklessness, which is disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk or Circumstances, which is a gross deviation of the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the same situation That means you're hammered and you go driving home a reasonable person they're going to say would not have done that and Therefore there's an accident somebody was killed So the most common time you see manslaughter charges are usually with DUI deaths And it's overcharged a lot. A lot of times it really should just be negligent homicide. Well, what's the difference? Here's the difference punishment for manslaughter if you have no prior convictions is seven years minimum 10.5 presumptive 21 years is the max. Okay, that's a huge range Policy offer at the county attorney's office is 10 to 12 years now. You can do 85% of the time 15% off for good behavior. So seven years Drops to six and then with early kick out. You can actually be out in about five and a half years But if you're charged with negligent homicide, that's four years six years or eight years 85% so four years really becomes about just over three years So that's a huge difference five and a half years or 3.3 years big difference Now the defenses to a manslaughter Supervening cause what's that mean? Well, that means you may have been drunk for example. I'm drunk. I'm at a red light I'm waiting for the light to change a motorcycle comes up behind me hits the back of my car flips over and dies I did not cause that death at all. Yes. I'm a DUI, but I'm not guilty of homicide supervening cause You're in a fight with somebody and that person Is fighting with you and they start cursing at you and they step backwards and get hit by a car again Not your fault or you're in a fight and that person sent to the hospital Then the ambulance gets hit by a car or they get an infection in the hospital That's not reasonably foreseeable. That's a supervening cause. We also argue self-defense Goes without saying We also argue that it was not a reckless Act or a gross deviation from the standard of care. We bring in experts crime scene reconstruction human factors experts That means how long does it take you to hit the brakes? Let's say somebody's driving a hundred miles per hour and They're at what's called ambush velocity and although you may have been drinking and driving nobody can stop in time to avoid that accident We have ballistics experts tool mark experts blood spatter DNA gunshot residue We also attack Miranda rights violations or denial of right to counsel. There's so many different Attacks to defend a manslaughter case. You'd be amazed now if you go to our website dmcantor.com and you can either go to vehicular homicides if it uses a vehicular case or the regular homicide section both have manslaughter You can see that we won numerous cases in our victories page. You'll see that we've done blood alcohol challenges evidence spoilers Spoilization what we call SDM or black box challenges SDM is statistical and diagnostical module That's a black box in your car that tracks your data. We have some of the best experts Look at our victories. You'll see that we have over 20 a sampling of over 20 homicide victories that are in there If you look at our overall victories for the firm We have over 3,000 victories of all different types everything from complete acquittals at jury trial by the way over 130 times We've gotten every charge found not guilty of jury trial Partial acquittals dismissals hundreds of dismissals. They're all there So give us a call if you or your loved one had been charged with manslaughter It won't cost you anything to meet with us. It'll take about an hour of your time We'll look at everything to find a way out of this either factually or technically So I'm looking forward to hearing from you soon. Take care