Hey Sonic,
I'd like to point out that I'm not taking a side in this, in fact, I hate Tony Stewart with a passion. I think he is a whining hot-head with deep pockets. That just pisses me off. Rich people need to be humble, and nice. Tony, is a douchebag.
I'm just commenting as a person who has built and driven these cars for several years, and want to make sure the difficulty of controlling them and seeing out of them is not left out of the conversation. When I scrutinize the video, it does not look like he saw him until it was too late, and would not have expected to see him out on the track. He tried to avoid him, not run him over. Period.
Ward Jr. got out of his car during a yellow flag, which would have disqualified him and put him in violation of track rules. He may have been ejected had he made it back to the pits. I have seen incidents like this happen first hand with pissed off drivers running onto the track, in every case, those drivers were banned from the track for the remainder of the season.
Had it been Jeff Gordon or Kasey Kahne in Tony's spot, I seriously doubt there would be as much uproar. I am thoroughly convinced that anyone that got strapped into one of those cars with 750 hp of alcohol burning fury between their legs they'd immediately understand things in a very different way.
Oh, and Stewart cannot be prosecuted either, because every racer signs a hold-harmless, "you might die" document before they can even race. They won't let you in the pits unless every participant signs it. It basically says that if you race, you might die, and if you do, it is nobody's fault but your own.
In this case, it was his own fault he died. And I will say this One... More... Time...
Ward Jr. died because he got out of his race car and walked out onto the track under a yellow flag at a sprint car race.