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 :
Lowrie’s 1999 Mitsubishi Montero plowed into the youngster on 104th Ave. in Jamaica, Queens, last July while she was visiting her grandparents.
The Brooklyn girl died five days later.
Lowrie’s sister said her brother didn’t see the girl when she came out from between two cars in a sprint for the ice cream truck.
His blood-alcohol level registered just slightly above the state’s legal limit of .08.
There was no evidence that Lowrie was speeding or otherwise careless. While his BAC was just above the arbitrary .08 limit, the margin of error had to be taken into account. He was a truck driver by occupation, which could be seen as a plus or minus. Whether he was adept at driving after a couple drink or not isn’t known, but there is nothing to suggest that it played any role whatsoever in the death of Zhaneya. Regardless, nobody wants to harm a child, no matter what the fault.
The flip side, that young Zhaneya Butcher ran into the road from between two parked cars to reach the ice cream truck, one of the great joys of childhood, makes this story even more tragic, and more difficult. According to the News, a women, whose connection to the case is unclear, lashed back at the outrage for the sentence:
But outside, a woman with the defendant lashed out at the victim’s family as Lowrie hid his face beneath a leather jacket.
“People should keep their kids in the house and not running between parked cars,” the woman snapped as she guided Lowrie down a Queens street.
It’s unfortunate that anger flows both ways, as this sort of comment inflames rather than calms. It’s not that it’s inaccurate, but that no one who loses a child needs to have their fault rubbed in their faces. One can’t reasonably blame a 6-year-old for running into the road between parked cars. That’s what children do, foolish, dangerous things.
In the absence of neglect, or the unthinkable, an affirmative approval for little Zhaneya to run into the road, it’s similarly hard to blame the grandparents. Controlling a child is something adults strive to do, but they aren’t always easily stopped, and they rarely have an appreciation for the warning. Kids are kids, much as they should be treated as children regardless of which side of the courtroom their conduct puts them.
What makes this case remarkable is that neither the prosecution nor judge allowed the sorrow of the death of a child to inflame their passions and use the system as angel of vengeance, calling for extreme punishment or the failure of the law to deal with the evil of drunk driving. They discharged their duties as they should, even though no one got to be on TV spewing outrage and hyperbole.
At sentence, Kent Lowrie spoke of his sorrow at the death of a child. So too did his lawyer, John Tumulty. I add my voice to the sorrow of the death of 6-year-old Zhaneya Butcher, not because I had anything to do with it, but because I’m a parent and a human being.
That it isn’t enough to soothe her parents is completely understandable. There is nothing that can make the death of a child better. Not even life imprisonment. Not even execution. But there is nothing more the system can, or should, do. I am terribly sorry for their loss. It’s not good enough, but that’s all there is.
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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…
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.
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?
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.
Create a sensible field sobriety test, and keep the dashboard camera rolling.
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.