A real-life law school exam question

Juan Manuel Alvarez, who parked his SUV on railroad tracks in Los Angeles and caused a train crash that killed 11 people Wednesday, will face capital murder charges. A story in today's San Francisco Chronicle says prosecutors could pursue the death penalty under a century-old California law that makes it a capital offense "to derail a train and cause death."

I link to this story to raise the question of whether it's proper to seek the death penalty in a case like this one, where police believe the man to have been suicidal but to have harbored no intent to kill anyone else. My gut instinct says the death penalty should be reserved for killers who mean for their actions to result in death, but it's still very much unclear what Alvarez intended in this case.

If the police's beliefs are indeed the correct version of the story and if Alvarez wasn't insane at the time, his level of mental culpability would have been either "knowing" or "reckless" -- enough to justify a life sentence, but not enough to justify death. Then again, it's hard to conceive that a guy could leave his SUV parked across train tracks and not intend for chaos to ensue.

I'm also quite sympathetic to the societal consideration expressed -- perhaps in jest -- by UC Hastings law professor Rory Little, who gets the honor of concluding this post: "You need to charge train wrecking, if you can, because we want suicidal people to stay away from railroad tracks. If you're suicidal, jump off a bridge and don't endanger anybody else."