Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
According to The New York Unified Court System, “DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE TO HUMAN LIFE refers to a person’s state of mind in recklessly engaging in conduct which creates a grave risk of death. A person has a depraved indifference to human life when that person has an utter disregard for the value of human life. In other words, a person who is depravedly indifferent is not just willing to take a grossly unreasonable risk to human life – – that person does not care how the risk turns out.”
And further, “depraved indifference to human life reflects a wicked, evil or inhuman state of mind, as manifested by brutal, heinous and despicable acts. It is evinced by conduct that is wanton, deficient in a moral sense of concern, and devoid of regard for the life or lives of others.” (New York Unified Court System)
Hmmm… Sounds familiar—and maybe not just to Law & Order fans. Deficient of moral sense of concern. Devoid of regard for the life or lives of others. Someone engaging in reckless, thoughtless, selfish, and dangerous acts.
Who do we all know who has “recklessly engaged in conduct which creates a grave risk of death?” Who has “an utter disregard for the value of human life?”
Well, let’s see. Who was it that cut off USAID, depriving millions of people outside the U.S. of food and the necessary medical care necessary to survive? According to a study in The Lancet, these funding cuts could result in the deaths of 14 million people by 2030 (The Lancet). Almost one-third of those deaths will be children under the age of five.
Who has sharply curtailed funding for FEMA and NOAA? This decision very probably added to deaths during the recent catastrophic flooding in Texas. One of the federal employees forced into early retirement by the present administration’s draconian budget cuts had been in charge of emergency communication—which failed miserably in this crisis. This is just one example of “disregard for human life”. How many more will die in future floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes because of federal cuts to DHS, FEMA, the National Weather Service, and the communication networks that connect all three?
Who has been indiscriminately arresting immigrants—some of them U.S. citizens—and throwing them into egregiously overcrowded and unsanitary prison facilities—some of them in foreign countries? Who has been disappearing people from the streets without notification to family members or local authorities? Are these people still alive, or are they the victims of “brutal, heinous, and despicable acts”.
Who was responsible for stacking the SCOTUS with extreme conservatives who overturned Roe -v- Wade, throwing reproductive laws back to the states, which in some cases have prohibited surgery for women whose lives have been endangered—or ended—because of delayed or denied miscarriage treatment? Let’s ask the women of Georgia and Texas. Why don’t we ask the families of Candi Miller, Josseli Barnica, or Amber Thurman?
Who has stood by spouting nonsense about the evils of vaccination while thousands of Americans have been stricken with, and several have died, from measles? Who has put a screeching halt to many public health programs which will no doubt also result in deaths during the winter flu season?
Who passed a “big, beautiful bill” which continued tax cuts for the most outrageously wealthy few in this country at the cost of draconian cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. As a result, many rural hospitals will not be able to afford operating costs and close as a result. Many nursing homes, which are heavily dependent on Medicaid funds for their residents, will also have to close. Those Americans who are dependent on The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) for insurance will be left out in the cold. Children may starve.
While the lawlessness, hypocrisy, greed, and amorality of the Trump administration is appalling, what is truly sickening is their blatant disregard for human life. Their policies will result, and have resulted, in the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans. An “utter disregard for human life” is one of the definitions of depraved indifference. It seems obvious that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Kristi Noem, Steven Miller, Marco Rubio, and all the other shameless opportunists in his administration, Republican Congress, and the SCOTUS have absolutely no regard for the sanctity of human life. While not consciously or perhaps deliberately committing murder, they are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands—so far. Who knows what the butcher’s bill will be in a year or two. Or four.
While Trump is responsible for creating DOGE, which gutted USAID and the National Institute of Health, he is only one of his elite clique of the indifferently depraved. The architects of Project 2025, the harsh and draconian reimagining of our government—our lives—have been working behind the scenes with elements of the Christian Nationalist movement to strip women of reproductive rights and the trans population of their right to privacy.
They’ve stopped DEI programs everywhere they can and are continuing their decades-long battle to obliterate public education—and now the university system. The zealous disregard for anything outside their ideology—including human life—constitutes “conduct that is wanton, deficient in a moral sense of concern.”
Now, I’m no attorney, but it seems to me that the American people might have a case here. While at times a head of state must make decisions—like going to war—that may endanger the lives of his citizens, his first major responsibility, according to the Preamble to the Constitution is, “to form a more perfect Union… promote the general Welfare.”—the operating instructions for the Constitution. Not that Donald J. Trump or his administration or his SCOTUS or his Congress gives a damn about the Constitution, but it does speak to the responsibility of our government to protect its people, not destroy them. If his administration is willfully responsible for the deaths of thousands, they should be criminally liable.
If these people are not guilty of more serious crimes, they—under any definition of the term—are guilty of depraved indifference. They know their policies are killing pregnant women, poor people, and children; they just don’t give a damn. They are beyond cruel, beyond hateful, beyond morality. They love money. They love themselves. Everyone else can go to hell.
Besides simple life and death matters, this administration’s brute squad—ICE—has swept people off the streets, broken up families, and ripped children away from their mothers. They have allowed measles to become an epidemic again.
These people—to use the term loosely—should be charged in a court of law. I believe district attorneys in nearly every jurisdiction in the United States would have a case for depraved indifference. Of course, the Vances and Kennedys and Trumps will say no, this is not our fault.
But no matter how often they try to rationalize, explain away, point fingers, or sidestep the issues, their hands will still be bloody. They are guilty and they know it.
Even Lady MacBeth had a conscience. She paid for her crimes. Perhaps our present leaders will, too, before any more innocents have to die.
Notes