On moral culpability, I agree with you. Whether the stone hits the victim or not, the perpetrator is just as morally culpable in either outcome. The perpetrator is equally "bad" for throwing the stone, even though the punishment varies depending on the outcome. The problem is that it is very difficult to quantify moral culpability, especially in a way that could be evaluated in court.

> I think you're actually giving a consequentalist account in both examples, just one time collectively and the other individually.

That's an interesting point, so let me revise my example. If we only considered intentions and not outcomes, the civil penalty would depend on how much damage the perpetrator intended to inflict (interpreted in monetary terms) by throwing the stone, multiplied by what the perpetrator believed to be the probability that the stone would hit the victim. The amount of the civil penalty could be wildly different from the victim's actual losses.

A financial system could be set up to ensure that the victim would always be compensated for their actual losses, while the perpetrator would always pay an amount that scales with the monetary interpretation of their moral culpability. There would be no guarantee that the incoming payments would equal the outgoing payments.

I don't think it's possible to implement this system, because there is no way to determine the required numbers with a reasonable degree of accuracy. As long as intent is established, courts rely on outcomes to determine judgments when the extent of the intent is unclear.

> My point is rather that for criminal culpability to exist, there needs to be intent. And (excuse me if this is somewhat inaccurate because I'm not from a common law region), in general a 'guilty mind' is a requirement in criminal law, no?

Yes, intent is an important factor in criminal cases. I'm not trying to argue that intent doesn't matter in court, because intent does matter. My point is that, for a legal system to be practical, outcomes also have to be taken into consideration.

> Insofar as people receive lesser judgements for crimes without adverse outcomes the argument is that the better outcome reflects less willingness to commit or go through with a crime.

Outcomes aren't necessarily a good approximation for intent. A perpetrator who is more competent at executing crimes would generate more adverse outcomes, while an equally willing but less competent perpetrator would generate fewer adverse outcomes. The more competent perpetrator should receive a greater sentence, but the reasoning would be based on the perpetrator's greater harm to society rather than their intent.

> To take an extreme example, no jurisdiction I'm aware of punishes attempted murder substantially less severely than actual murder even if the outcome is that there's no harm done at all. Likewise an accidental death is not a crime.

The counterpoint is that, at least in the U.S., states differ on whether attempted assaults are recognized as crimes, and whether assault charges require actual injury. There are related charges that vary per state, so I'm not able to make a generalization on the difference between attempted crimes and successful crimes.