Sometimes, Sorry Is All There Is
In an age where every vehicular death seems to demand severe criminal punishment, and if there is no punishment to be had, a new law to enable it, it's rare that a defendant walks out of court. But 53-year-old Kent Lowrie, after expressing his sorrow at the death of 6-year-old Zhaneya Butcher. walked away.
There is no death of a child that doesn't break hearts, no matter how cold you are. And it's understandable that her parents are furious with the sentence of 5 years probation imposed of Lowrie after his plea to vehicular manslaughter. No parent would feel differently. But this is why dispassion, rather than anger and hatred, is a better guide.
From the Daily News:
There is no death of a child that doesn't break hearts, no matter how cold you are. And it's understandable that her parents are furious with the sentence of 5 years probation imposed of Lowrie after his plea to vehicular manslaughter. No parent would feel differently. But this is why dispassion, rather than anger and hatred, is a better guide.
From the Daily News:
Where are all the crazy, knee-jerk comments for this post? I thought it'd be overflowing by now.
I don't think driving at .08 is really that bad. I'm sure I've done it. The number means different things for different people, but I think for most it's not what we think of as "drunk" and is probably less dangerous than texting or yelling at a political or sports radio host.
We do need to reform DUI punishments though. Slap on the wrist for the first offense is okay with me. But, if you get a second offense within the same year, I want the book thrown at you; obviously you have not learned your lesson, and it's the people who don't learn, who don't feel tremendous regret and shame at the first offense, who are most likely to kill someone.
One could draw a parallel between DUI offenders and Peregrin Took...
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Unless this post is picked up by some MADD group, they won't know it exists. The proponents of executing every person who ever downed a beer don't read blawgs like SJ. It's not interesting to them.
As for the ubiquitous .08 BAC, it's long been recognized internally as an arbitrary, meaningless number (it used to be .10 before MADD demanded that they nail more people), devoid of empirical basis and bearing no meaningful connection with intoxication, and wholly inconsistent with the fact that there is no number that applies to everyone, since a variety of factors are necessarily involved.
But the marketing campaign against drunk driving, and making .08 the absolutely mark of evil, has been very successful, and most people just accept it as the immutable line.
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For a 180 lb man, .08 is a 6 pack of beer over about 3 1/2 hours. Not a crazy amount of drinking, but a fair amount if you're going to be hitting the road.
I hear a lot of complains all the time about .08 being "arbitrary" etc, but I haven't heard of a workable alternative. Maybe we give out special cards to alcoholics who have proven the ability perform adequately at higher BACs, and they're allowed to drive drunker than everyone else?
.08 is certainly enough to at least modest impact most peoples' depth perception and peripheral vision. Reaction time slows down pretty right after .08. Would everybody be happy with .10 instead? .16? Or will people just always think it should be higher no matter what it is?
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You've drunk the cool-aid. The numbers put out as propaganda are nonsense, and there was once a time in America when DWI was based on conduct rather than BAC. But people drink the cool-aid.
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Create a sensible field sobriety test, and keep the dashboard camera rolling.
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I salute the prosecutor and the judge for having the guts to make and accept the plea-offer (which is very unusual for me....I feel very much like Alice in Wonderland). The backlash in my jurisdiction for such a plea-bargain would entail a search for tar and feathers.
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