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The Year in Clemency

Monday, January 10th, 2011

My crime column this week looks at the notable clemency and pardon stories of 2010.

Also, I have a post up at Hit & Run responding to the Economist‘s criticism of my call to abolish drunk driving laws.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 5:47 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Alcohol, General Criminal Justice, Motorist Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “The Year in Clemency”

  1. #1 |  Kid Handsome |  January 10th, 2011 at 7:15 pm

    That is a very nice rebuttal. I agree with your points entirely. I just wish you had as much money and government connections as MAAD.

  2. #2 |  Kid Handsome |  January 10th, 2011 at 7:16 pm

    Of course I was referring to your DUI Laws rebuttal, not your clemency article. Sorry for the lack of clarity.

  3. #3 |  InMD |  January 10th, 2011 at 8:20 pm

    I generally like the Democracy in America blog but I have no idea where they were coming from with the criticism of that article.

    A major problem facing libertarianism, at least of the Reason, Cato, Agitator strain, is that so few people seem to understand it. It ends up either being used as a punching bag despite an almost total lack of influence on policy or being co-opted by right wing cranks.

    The point is illustrated by the fact that there isn’t anything particularly ideological about either the first article or the rebuttal. These arguments, while consistent with libertarianism, are about dealing with drunk driving more sensibly based on logic and law. It’s a shame that the “libertarian” label allows people to freely ignore it without even examining the reasoning behind it.

  4. #4 |  Lloyd Flack |  January 10th, 2011 at 10:15 pm

    Radley,

    One thing that you don’t realize is that your reaction time is impaired well before you get drunk. You need to separate aout driving when you have had so much that your jugment is impaired from driving when you are slowed down and your abilty to drive safely if there is no emergency is fine but your abilty to react to an emergency in time is impaired.

    Habituation to acohol can reduce impairment of your jugment. It will not help you with the effect on your reaction time. You may have a case for removing effect on jugment as separate crime. But the criterion for driving with impaired reactions should be based on blood alcohol concentration. It should also carry significantly lower penalties than driving with so much alcohol that your judgment is impaired.

    Now significant slowdown of your reactions occurs below 0.08%. In Australia we have a limit of 0.05% and this is consistent with the pharacological evidence. In fact as a student I took part a a subject for experiments on this and I knew the results. Impairment of judgment takes place at higher blood alcohol concentrations, 0.10 – 0.15% I think.

  5. #5 |  KBCraig |  January 11th, 2011 at 4:24 am

    Arbitrariness troubles justice and should be avoided where possible.

    Sez the critic who favors and entirely arbitrary standard of 0.08 BAC.

  6. #6 |  KBCraig |  January 11th, 2011 at 4:25 am

    “an” entirely arbitrary standard. sheesh.

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