Originally Posted by
Loose rivets
Obviously Harry is not able to put himself in the mind of a young, flight-stressed and chronically harassed mum. If she did the unthinkable and set light to a bin full of paper, should she miss a large part of her children's growing years? That would be barbaric.
Which is why it wouldn't happen - the mitigating circumstances that you describe would be taken into account in determining her sentence.
But the fact remains, in this (hypothetical) example, that she would still have been guilty as previously discussed of "arson with intent or being reckless as to whether the life of another would be thereby endangered".
Whichever way you look at it, that's a serious and potentially catastrophic crime.