I’d say DavidSt has it right, except for the bit about social engineering. It is definitely everyone’s job to engage in that.

In general, I think I agree with John Spragge. Punishment serves to deter others, to incapacitate the wrongdoer, and to provide retribution to society. All of those are legitimate reasons, and all apply in this case. Not sure she deserves thirty years, but her choice caused two innocents to die.

I just don’t understand Radley’s whining on her behalf.

The reason I think passenger’s of drunk drivers (even if they don’t own the car) should be accessories is because it is a common thing for the least drunk person in the car to avoid driving because they are the most responsible (hence worried about being arrested for drunk driving). Make them worry about being an accessory, and maybe the least drunk person in the car will do the driving (and drink less to boot). Maybe they call more cabs. Or maybe people will just stay home more often. I know a certain roommate of mine and myself did a lot more staying home after he got his second DUI.

It really doesn’t matter. Our job isn’t to socially engineer, it’s to identify and penalize victim crimes. Accessory is a real crime, and those who sit in the passenger seats tacitly encouraging drunk driving, are helping to kill and maim innocent people.

To answer your question about what it accomplishes to punish people who drive drunk or who facilitate drunk driving: it aims to make innocent users of public rights of way safer. It attempts to accomplish this goal by denunciation, disablement, deterrence. Punishment clearly expresses the public abhorrence of the behaviour; it prevents the offender from repeating the act, and it makes other people who might consider making a criminally bad judgment think twice.

The question of whether the prosecution can justify the charges in this specific case turns on facts which a jury must weigh. The question of sentencing, of how many years a particular offence merits, belongs in the realm of public policy. But the record clearly indicates that the common default policy of assuming good faith on the part of car use has served neither the justice system nor the transportation system well.

It seems to me Zippy doesn’t understand what “murder” is. Murder requires a malicious intent, which did not exist in this case.

She’s not being charged with murder, she’s being charged with homicide, which also includes manslaughter. Involuntary manslaughter generally only requires proving recklessness; that is, that the defendant knew some action of theirs had a reasonable likelihood of leading to the death of some person and they chose to proceed anyway.

Note, this still requires proving she knew her boyfriend was intoxicated, but this case they do know that since she already admitted this.

I don’t understand why you don’t think that criminal liability is appropriate here. You keep saying it’s excessive, but never explain why.

One of the predictable consequences of operating heavy, dangerous equipment when intoxicated is that somebody is that somebody may be injured or killed. If the boyfriend had donned a blindfold and started shooting a gun at random and he killed somebody, would it be excessive to put him in prison? If she gave him the gun knowing he was going to do that, wouldn’t she be culpable as well?

Driving while drunk can cause injury or death to innocent people. These days, everybody knows that. So . . . why is it excessive to put drunk drivers who actually do cause harm in prison for long periods of time? And if somebody facilities that by giving a drunk keys to the car, why are they not subject to the same sanction?

I just don’t get this bleeding-heartism. I thought libertarians were about personal responsibility.

As tragic as these deaths are, no one’s bringing them back by serving X years of jail time. The general public will not have their safety improved by forcing either of these people to serve long periods of jail time. You talk about “inflicting disutility on people being punished”, and I ask you what good is that punishment in the first place? Other than fulfilling your personal vengeance fantasies, you’ve yet to coherently argue that ruining the lives of these two other people would serve any utility whatsoever.

You’ve created a ridiculous standard for what murder is. By the philosophy you’ve outlined if a parent left their child with another guardian, and the child died from an accident, then the parent should get a murder charge. Somehow they should have magically known that an accident was going to occur and that their decision to do anything else is the malicious intent of murderer.

You’ve changed murder from “unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human” to “any act taken by any person tangentially related to the death of someone else”. You might as well charge everyone in the Boeing corporation with 200 first degree murders every time a plane goes down.

If her drunkenness is beside the point, then so is his, and she shouldn’t be punished for letting him drive her car (unless you think everyone should be criminally charged for any crimes third parties commit using their property, regardless of intent).

How much responsibility should she bear for such an incident?

I think both of them should be held civilly liable in that scenario. But no, I don’t think either of them should go to prison for 30 years.

I should have been more clear: the cognitive dissonance is on the part of the legal system.

And I have to agree with Jerry that we take much of this too far, more revenge than justice.

Likewise, if a supermodel agrees to have sex with me while she’s drunk, I don’t think she should be able to wake up and scream “rapist!”

Is your daughter over 18 and where does she party?

This article doesn’t give the driver’s BAC. More importantly, it doesn’t give the defendant’s BAC. What if she was drunker than he was?

You two are the reason why we have these inane laws about drinking and driving. The vast majority of people can drink, drive and get home and it’s not the epidemic that the government makes it out to be. Others cannot and thus we make stupid laws to try and stop the worst offenders (who couldn’t care one way or the other) and end up making criminals of all others caught up in the net.

So I’ll ask you, hat makes this any different than a person who runs a red light and kills someone or speed and caused and accident and kills someone. Would it be any less tragic for the son/father/daughter/mother? What’s the difference, will you feel any less sympathy. At worst these drivers will get manslaughter.

“Do not forget how you would feel in this situation if your family member was killed. It isn’t like this was a fender bender. People died, and it could have been prevented if not for this woman’s horrible decision. – Goober”

I would feel the same no matter how they died, I would be upset but I would not want this lady to do anytime in jail. Not in my nature to want and eye for an eye. Both these people made extremely poor choices but putting her in jail wouldn’t really do anything for me.

http://packet-media.com/2011/01/13/mary-sue-shields-letter-to-the-editor/

That I get. But if you voluntarily place yourself in a position in which your judgment is impaired, I think you’re morally responsible for choices that flow from the decision to impair your own capacities. If you can’t wander around safely while drunk, then get drunk at home. Or don’t get drunk at all.

This is a perfectly reasonable libertarian line: intoxicants are legal, but people are responsible. Kill somebody in a drunken rage? Tough luck; you get the chair. Can’t support yourself because you’re a heroin addict? Die of starvation for all I care. Lose your teeth due to meth mouth? Eat baby food. Give a drunk guy the keys to your car, which he then uses to kill a couple people? To prison with you.

So, for example, if I go to a party, get drunk, and end up in the sack with a really ugly girl, one whom I’d never ever bed while sober, I cannot claim she raped me. Likewise, if a supermodel agrees to have sex with me while she’s drunk, I don’t think she should be able to wake up and scream “rapist!” Now, if I drug the girl, or pour alcohol into her drinks without her knowledge or consent, it’s a different story.

To me, the fact that Erin Brown was drunk is quite beside the point, assuming the intoxication was voluntary. She gave a drunk guy the keys to her car and consented to let him operate it. If she knew he was drunk, she should be responsible, and I don’t have a problem if that responsibility includes criminal liability.

Now, responding to Bergman (33) — do I think that she should be held to a more strict standard than “trained professionals?” (BTW, isn’t that the kind of term that Radley would usually make fun of?) Probably not. To me, the question ought to be whether a reasonable person in her shoes would believe that her boyfriend was not capable of safely operating a motor vehicle. I don’t know the facts, and I doubt you do either.

I’d certainly say that the prosecutor has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she knew he was intoxicated enough that his ability to drive was impaired. If the prosecutor fails to do so, I’d say she should be acquitted. But if the prosecution can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a reasonable person in her shoes would believe her boyfriend wasn’t capable of driving safely, then I don’t have a problem with ruining her life. After all, her actions pretty permanently ruined the lives of two people. The whole point of punishment is to inflict disutility on the people being punished.

When Radley exposes junk science or actual police abuse or prosecutorial misconduct, I think he’s dead on. But I have zero sympathy for Erin Brown or her boyfriend; my sympathy is with the two innocents whom they murdered. Her life gets ruined because of a “split second” decision. My heart pumps peanut butter. Adults in this country are allowed to own things like guns and motor vehicles. I think that’s good — I believe in freedom, and treating people like adults. But those objects are tools capable of inflicting death or great bodily harm. It’s not out of line to ask the owners of such objects to refrain from giving them to drunkards.

Radley~
This reeks of of the Mary Shields case, where a New Years Eve drunken brawl on a dancefloor at a Columbus, Mississippi jukejoint ended with her male assailant dying of a heart attack.

The discredited Mississippi pathologist, Dr. Haynes, testified that the stress from the jukejoint brawl induced stress on an already diseased heart, causing his death.

The judge in the case , Jim Kitchens, admitted that he knew the assailant threw the first punch on the dancefloor. No weapons were involved in the fight, other than the broken barstool leg.

Sadly, Ms. Shields’ name was not on Governor Barbour’s recently pardons of former and current prisoners. The pardons were challenged by the Mississippi Attorney General, Jim Hood.

The Miss. Supreme Court upheld the governor’s pardon decision by a 6-3 majority.

I imagine the reasoning goes something like “If someone I know does something bad it must be an honest mistake; If someone I don’t know does something bad and claims it was an honest mistake, how do I know he’s not lying?”

The problem is, since it’s police and prosecutors who know eachother, the end result is someone who has sworn an oath to uphold the law ends up held to a lower standard than someone who has not sworn when it comes to penalties for disobeying the law.

Re: Zippy, #30:

Yes, she was drunk, and was aware enough to realize her judgment was gone. So she chose not to drive. But knowing she was too drunk to be responsible, you still want her to be responsible in making an evaluation that trained professionals often have trouble with sober? Even though she lacks that training? It doesn’t work that way, nor should it.