Originally Posted by Benjamin

No, it's a matter of moral culpability vs. 'mischance and breakdown.' I say that the (whatever) 'gone wrong' expression is employed to imply the latter and deflect the idea of the former. "Three hostages killed in robbery gone wrong" suggests the robbers somehow weren't really to blame for the deaths, it's not what they intended to happen, after all.

Well, that seems more or less correct, no? Intentions matter and so do circumstances. Soldiers losing their minds and going on a rampage is a pretty old phenomenom and, had they stayed home, they probably would have been somewhat OKay.

But understanding a behaviour or the circumstances, while attenuating the crime(s), does not excuse it...

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Quote:

The "gone wrong" expression is an odd one. The meaning is to deflect blame from the individual to the circumstances

Perhaps.

It may just mean that something went wrong. A hostage-taker who threatened to blow up his hostage if the ransom wasn't not paid but inavertentlly blew up himself could accurately be described as a victim of a plan that "went wrong". A young man in a Toyota Landcruiser, who was travelling to propose marriage to his sweetheart and was washed away and drowned when he tried to cross an outback creek that was usually dry but at the time was three metres deep in storm water, was also a victim of a plan that went wrong.

In both cases the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Circumstances certified that no circumstance was inappropriately treated in either case.

You both make sense. Some usages do not. BTW, the felony murder laws here make 'a death resulting from an intent to rob' a crime punishable as a willful murder. It's a doctrine that spreads too wide a net sometimes....

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