Sentencing drunk drivers
There are many kinds of killers but there remains one type of killer against whom no amount of
money, precautions or planning can offer adequate protection. I am speaking of
the drunk driver. Even if you lead the dullest of lives, you may still be
killed by a drunk driver unless of course you never leave your house and even
then, it is possible you will be killed if the drunk driver’s car ends up in
your living room when you are sitting
near the window with your back to the window.
I don’t know who infuriates me more—drunk
drivers who kill people or the judges that sentence them to lenient terms of
imprisonment.
Faton Doberdolani and his
girlfriend, Venera Simnica, were stopped at a red light on McKnight Boulevard
in Calgary, Canada when Ryan Kramer’s Lexus slammed into their car at more than
100 km/h on November 26, 2011. A police breath test showed Kramer had a
blood alcohol reading that was more than double the legal driving limit
when he got behind the wheel after drinking with three friends at a
northeast Calgary strip club.
In June, 2015, a Calgary
judge handed that drunk driver a 3 ½ year term of imprisonment for the deaths
of those two people in an alcohol-related crash. Under Canada’s sentencing
rules, he must serve at least two thirds of his sentence before he is
automatically released from prison. That means he will have served only 30
months in prison. That comes to 15 months in prison for killing each of his two
victims.
Justice Barbara Romaine said at Doberdolani’s sentencing that the sentence was intended to be a deterrent to others who choose to
drink and drive. Give me a
break. Does anyone in his or her right mind really believe that 30 months in
prison is really that much of a deterrent for killing two people?
Federal Justice Minister Peter
MacKay introduced legislation that would impose a mandatory
minimum sentence of six years for impaired driving offences causing death. That means that the person would be released
after serving four years (48 months) which is still not enough for snuffing out
the life of an innocent person.
Suppose the innocent person was your two-year-old child (and
your only child) who could have lived for 90 years. That means that for the
inconvenience of imprisonment for 48 months in prison that the drunk driver
that killed your child would serve, his conduct cancelled out 88 years of your
child’s life. Does that seem fair? Would you say that justice was balanced?
Given this omnipresent danger, wouldn’t you think our legal
system would prioritize removing drunk drivers who kill from our
society for as long as possible? But curiously, the law treats drunk
drivers far more leniently than just about all others who kill through acts of
extreme recklessness, which is the basic definition of second-degree murder.
In Alaska, Anchorage’s latest notorious drunk driver, Lori
Phillips maimed a 31-year-old mother of two and killed her fiancé in a head-on
collision. Once again, the two victims had nothing to do with Phillips, no
knowledge that she was suddenly swerving toward them in a Ford Explorer with a
blood alcohol level four times the legal limit. When Phillips was sentenced in
2012 for first-degree assault and second-degree murder, the
judge imposed a total sentence of 20 years to serve in prison. Even that is unfair when you
consider how many years were deleted from the fiancé’s life. In Alaska’s trial courts, second-degree murder
sentences typically start in the 20- to 30-year range and go up from there.
Many years ago, a drunk driver killed the author of Gone with the Wind while she was
crossing a street. He had a record of drunk driving so the judge decided that
in order to protect citizens from being killed by this drunk driver, the judge
sentenced him to 40 years in prison. Now
that is justice.
The law directs courts to impose sufficient jail terms to
reflect a principle of sentencing called “community condemnation.” It reduces
the impulse for the families of drunk-driver’s victims to seek personal
physical revenge such as “Kill the bloody bastard!”
Many years ago, a drunk driver in California was driving his
large truck and he ran over a six-year-old boy and killed him. The judge
sentenced him to a term of probation. The father hunted down the driver and
shot him to death. He was arrested and charged with second degree murder. The
jury acquitted him. Now obviously that
wasn’t a just verdict but it is easy to see why the jury acquitted him after
hearing the man’s defence lawyer ask; “What would you do to the drunk driver
who killed your six-year-old son and only got a year’s probation?”
Canadians minding their own
business are far more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than by someone
wielding a gun. According to Statistics Canada,
“impaired driving is the leading cause of criminal death in Canada.” Every year
in this country more than 600 people are killed in drunk-driving incidents. By
comparison, the number murdered most years is just over 500. The latter number
includes murders with all types of weapons – knives, clubs, guns, fists etc.
The comparison however isn’t entirely accurate. Of the 600 people killed in
impaired driving crashes, more than 400 of the victims were typically the drunk
drivers themselves. That means that 200
of the victims were innocent persons.
The government of Canada doesn’t seem nearly as
worried about drunks in cars, even though impaired drivers are a much greater
threat to public safety than handgun brandishing drug dealers and gang members.
Drunk drivers are an even greater threat than an angry spouse or ex-spouse.
No one made drunk
drivers drink and climb behind the wheel. So they are as responsible for the
deaths they cause as any thug who opens fire on a crowd of people. The drunk
drivers should be treated the same also when it comes to punishing them.
In Colorado, Connor Donohue, a 21-year-old pleaded guilty to charges of vehicular
homicide, vehicular assault, leaving the scene of an accident involving death,
leaving the scene of an accident involving serious bodily injuries and driving
under the influence in February 2013 when he was 20-years old. He could have been sentenced to a maximum of
34 years, but was given a 10-year prison sentence for the death of a police
officer
In Seattle, a Dawn Vrentas who was
convicted of killing two people while driving drunk was sent to prison for
only 22 months for her third DUI. That is only 11 months for the
deaths of each of her two victims. Her blood
alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when a Washington State
Patrol trooper stopped her along Interstate 5 in July of 2013. The 32-year-old
Edmonds woman was pulled over while driving home drunk from a party on Capitol
Hill in Seattle. Vrentas received her first DUI in 2001 when she was just 18
years old. Four years later,
drunk again after a party just north of Spokane, she veered off a road and
crashed into a pond. Vrentas' two friends, Kyle Hutchinson and Wally Corman,
died in the crash, and Vrentas' was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison.
Does anyone think that sentences like what she got will deter
this woman from driving again while her driving is impaired? In the province of Ontario, anyone convicted
of driving while they are impaired will have his or her licence suspended for
life.
For the most part, the penalties for drunk drivers who kill
persons in some American states can be pretty stiff. Laws vary
greatly on the amount of jail or prison time a drunk driver who kills an
innocent person may receive. In Alaska, it can be 1 to 99 years in prison. In
Delaware however, it can be as low as 1 to 5 years in prison and in Maryland it
can be 0 to 5 years in prison. In the
State of Oklahoma is it 0 to 1 year. That in my opinion is outright shocking
and ludicrous.
In the country of Dubai, in 2013, a drunk-driver who ran over and killed
the popular Dubai triathlete Roy Nasr was sentenced to a month in prison. In
2014, a Brazilian drunk-driver was given a two-month sentence for running over
and killing a British tourist in Dubai, not stopping to see if his victim was
alright and then trying to flee the country.
Ethan Couch's blood alcohol reading was 0.24 and he also had
a Valium in his system after he and a group of friends stole alcohol from
Walmart, drank it and later piled into his pick-up truck. Driving 70 miles in a
40 miles per hour zone, he struck and killed five pedestrians as well as
injuring two of his own passengers who remain paralyzed.
Ethan Couch, 16, of Keller, Texas, had faced 20 years behind bars but walked away instead with only 10 years probation in October 2015. Youth pastor Brian Jennings. a mother and daughter, Hollie and Shelby Boyles; and 24-year-old Breanna Mitchell all died because he was driving his vehicle while he was drunk in the June 15 accident.
Why would a drunk driver who killed five people while driving in an impaired condition only get probation? Brace yourself for the answer. The judge had let off the 16-year-old boy who killed five people while driving drunk after the teen's lawyers claimed his rich parents spoiled him and never taught him about consequences. The judge also said that she didn’t think he would get therapy in jail.
Well you can be sure that the judge didn’t consider the deterrent factor when she sentence this you killer of humans to probation only.
Back in
the 1970s, I was retained to investigate serious accidents for an insurance
company and in one case I investigated, the young drunk driver T-boned another
car at an intersection and killed all six people in the car which included a
small baby. He got a couple of years in prison and when he got out, he applied
for car insurance. The insurance company asked me to assess him to determine if
he should get insurance for his car. When I met him, he was having a small
party at the back of his house. In front of him were six bottles of beer. When
I said that the killing of the six in that accident must have weighed heavily
on his mind, his response was, “Fuck no.
They were only six Pakis.” (Pakistanis) He was never again insured for his car by any insurance firm.
There is
a pending case in Canada in which Marco Muzzo, 29 was drunk when driving and his
accident claimed the lives of three small children and their grandfather. Aside
from being charged with being impaired while driving his car, he is also
charged with four counts of negligent driving causing death. The maximum
penalty for that crime is life in prison. It
will be interesting to see just how many years he will spend in prison. I will
update this article when I learn what he gets for killing the four people when
he was a drunk driver.
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