Summary
Christopher and Angelica San Martin were watching a basketball game in their Radcliff duplex one Sunday afternoon in 2012. During a commercial, Angelica went upstairs to use the bathroom. The San Martins’ 3-year-old son and 15-month-old daughter followed her to play in the master bedroom.
A few minutes later, Angelica heard a loud crack from down the hall. Her son began screaming.
…
“Nationally, we seldom see prosecution after an accidental child shooting, and certainly it’s rare with family members,” said Robert Weisberg, who teaches criminal justice at Stanford University and studies the effectiveness of gun laws on public safety.
“There tends to be huge sympathy for the parents in these cases, even if it’s clear they are entirely at fault for what happened,” Weisberg said. “It’s seen as a double punishment to threaten parents with prison after they’ve had a child injured or killed. Either the prosecutors feel sympathy or else they fear the jury will feel that way. And a lot of people truly don’t believe the parents have done anything wrong. They don’t see leaving a loaded gun out as negligent.”
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