The tone deafness of the letter is astounding. This was not a “mistake”, this was a crime.
I’ll never understand why any decent person would want to be associated with organization where the admission requires drinking yourself out of consciousness.
There is no real “duty to rescue” laws that I’m aware of, but in my opinion the alcohol consumption and how that is framed from both a prosecution and a defense position will be crucial if it gets to trial. The defense will probably be that they had no idea he had internal injuries or a concussion and was simply a drunk “brother.” Hazing, reckless endangerment,supplying alcohol to a minor etc I understand how that might frame. Involuntary manslaughter will not be an “easy prosecution” in my opinion. I predict alot of plea bargains and probably why the prosecution is opening with involuntary manslaughter. The whole incident is so wretchedly sad and unnecessary and no one can bring that son back to his parents.
True - no duty to care as to the other students, I would think. But I think it’ll be a tough go to say – we had no idea he had internal injuries and head injuries, given the texts they have saying “he fell down a staircase hair first, may need help” plus the searches re concussions; sleeping with concussions etc. Clearly they were suspecting a head injury.
Forgetting the law, as humans there are so many ways they could have done the CYA while still protecting themselves. Hell why not move him to some common area on campus or back to his dorm lobby and call his roommate or RA and anonymously say – come get him; we can’t help him but he’s in trouble. Drive him to the hospital, dump him off at the ER entrance and leave – they’ll take it from there and good Samaritan laws protect you. Hell - they could even have called his parents and I imagine no parent would ignore such a call – even the 3 hrs it would take to go get their son from NJ and take him to the hospital would have been better than the 12+ hrs his “brothers” ignored him while he fell down repeatedly.
Agree aj725. I can’t fathom what they were thinking. Honestly I think they thought he was drunk and had a concussion…and probably thought he’d sleep it off and they’d deal with the potential concussion in the morning sad to say. I can’t see any of them calling HIS parents, but I can’t imagine none of them thought to call their parent (unless they all had parents who couldn’t handle a middle of the night drunk call).
@ aj725
Part of the problem as a ‘dry’ fraternity they did not have any rules about hosting alcohol events. Typically a ‘wet’ frat would have sober members present to make better decisions or a sober member to drive him to ER.
The ‘dump and run and call’ does happen but this was February in Pennsylvania so at least they didn’t dump him in a snowbank.
I wish there was a more severe penalty for the beast who punched him in the abdomen when he was unconscious. There must be some law to protect defenseless individuals from assault.
My friend works as an emergency doctor and she says it is sickening how many young adults are dropped at the ER doors with alcohol poisoning or heroin ODs.
What allows one to be dry and another wet?
The involuntary manslaughter charge is not the most serious charge those young men are facing. That charge is a first degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a maximum $10,000 fine. The most serious charge, of which 8 are facing, is the aggravated assault charge which is a felony in the first degree, punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment if convicted. And after that, there are several more first and second degree misdemeanors with varying degrees of punishment…
IMHO, and I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV 
, the frat president and pledge master will be the ones most likely to do prison time. Not only are they facing the 1st degree felony charge but they are also facing hazing charges (based on text conversations recovered from their phones) from Spring and Fall 2016 as well as hazing charges from the night of Timothy’s death. I can only assume the DA brought those charges to prove a pattern. They knew what they were doing, they had done it before and they even knew someone could be hurt since one of the pledges in the Fall 2016 class fell, sliced open his forehead and had to be taken to urgent care. Given all that plus the video and testimony from other students and I just don’t see how they can possibly walk away from this…
ty @SyrAlum
Someone upthread mentioned far less penalties.
^It’s really too bad. Of all the schools I have visited with the kids and for other reasons, Penn State was one of my favorite campuses. I was accepted to transfer there and probably would have done so, but I wanted to transfer to a city, with the thought that any future employment would most certainly be in an urban location and I wanted to adjust from my rural/small town life. I don’t know that Penn State is somehow more prone to these disasters. The Sandusky thing was out of the norm, and certainly other schools have had hazing issues, including Cornell and MIT. D’s school just had a kid jump from a local cliff.
Was the Sandusky thing out of the norm? They just put Joe Paterno’s son Joe on the Board of Trustees(the same Board that fired Joe). The board is made up of alumni. The gross behavior and denial of what took place continues. Joe knew (possibly from the 1970’s) did nothing to stop it, allowed access to a locker room to the molester. at least 20 some youth were molested and the place the gatekeepers son on the Board of Trustee’s (the same day the hammer falls on the Fraternity nontheless)…insane and denial. So far more than $220 million has been paid out because of Joe’s lack of courage and inability to be a real man because he put football first.
I would say out of the norm because what other school has that happened to? Not saying that those situations have not existed at other schools, but they haven’t been revealed?
It doesn’t seem that anyone there is putting the kids first. Their priorities are way off.
Something just isn’t right there, plain and simple. Buyer beware.
There’s also the matter of one or more fraternity members threatening and physically assaulting the one brother who wanted to call 911 early on.
Could there be additional charges brought for not only impeding, but also threatening/assaulting him into effective silence?
I imagine they can add charges in Pa. state court; it’s done in federal court all the time – an initial indictment with the basic charges and a superseding indictment to add to them – often bc the investigation isn’t complete at the time the initial charges are stated.
Aggravated assault carries a maximum up to 20 yrs – but I’d be surprised if anything close to 20 yrs sticks. I still think it’ll end up being near 5-7-ish years max, if society is “lucky” and it doesn’t end up going the Brock Turner route. Let’s hope whoever punched him when he already had a ruptured spleen ends up with a sentence as close as possible to 20 yrs.
Nope, the student who punched him was charged with one count of recklessly endangering another person - a 2nd degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 2 years in prison and a max fine of $5000. IMHO, I doubt he will serve any time at all.
I’m not a lawyer so this is not clear to me - what is the difference between “reckless manslaughter” and “criminally negligent homicide”, relevant to a case like this?
^^I’m massive cynical, I guess, but to me it comes down to $$, $$, and $$.
I don’t understand people here calling these kids “monsters”, frothing at the mouth for them to be locked up, close all frats, etc. Piazza went to the Frat voluntarily, drank excessively voluntarily, and had a terrible accident. Apparently, no one saw him fall down the stairs or knew how far he fell and it’s not clear to me that the first fall was what caused his death. There were no physical signs of a severe injury (e.g. bleeding, dents in the head) and it would be hard to distinguish between such an injury and severe intoxication. The one sure sign (arms to the side with the hands up) was only present at 10am the following morning after the second fall down the stairs.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we have the advantage of knowing what happened. They didn’t (even though a couple of them raised the alarm early – Davis and Rizzo) and were probably drunk at the time as well. I don’t have any problem with all of the charges against the members except for the manslaughter and assault charges.
@droppedit I think the video and the grand jury report, make it pretty clear that the drinking excessively was not at all voluntary, it was coerced. As for the assault charges, that probably stems from him being punched. The involuntary manslaughter charge needs no intent. It is death occurring during unlawful acts, which there were plenty.
@wisteria100 - the one boy who punched Timothy was charged with recklessly endangering another person (2nd degree misdemeanor). All eight boys who “coerced” the pledges to drink were charged with first degree felony aggravated assault.
@droppedit - I think you need to read the presentment in it’s entirety. After reading it word for word, I agree with the Grand Jury’s conclusion that “Timothy Piazza died as a direct result of the extremely reckless conduct of the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity…”
The presentment is pretty sickening. Since much of the evening is on the video surveillance, it might make mounting a defense rather difficult for some of them.