A summary…
She was driving drunk 25+ mph over the limit on the wrong side of the road. She killed a guy and she went to the hospital. While she was there - she tried to get an IV to dilute her blood alcohol concentration with an IV.
She got 15 years for pleading guilty to vehicular homicide, but will not serve any of the time after her sentence was suspended.
no more half measures walter
Yeah, vehicular homicide is basically legal in the US, so long as you don’t flee the scene.
And even if you do, if you’re a relatively high-ranking politician in a white supremacist flyover hellscape state, you can get off with a $1,000 fine and an impeachment conviction that amounts to a slap on the wrist and maybe means you just have to go work the consulting circuit:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61890557
What gets me is how many precautions you have to take to make sure you don’t die. Wear a seatbelt, ensure your car is properly maintained, look out for obstacles, account for weather and visibility conditions, pay attention to drivers next to you, ahead of you, and at every intersection. And that’s all assuming you’re in proper condition to drive, yourself.
And even accounting for all of that, anything can happen.
Every time I see a scene in a US made film that involves characters in a moving vehicle, I’m immediately expecting the violent car crash trope to happen. That’s how normalized the violence of cars is in the USA.
Every time I see a character standing in a street, I expect them to get hit by a car, and I’m usually right. It’s like unspoken language in US media.
IDK it’s obviously a tragedy, but also 15 years in obviously just a punitive sentence - keeping this person in a cage for 15 years isn’t going to achieve shit. I think the judge made the right choice, or at least more right than a 15 year sentence.
Agree with you about the sentence being long, but the goal of sentencing (imo) should be to prevent this from happening again. She should have to forfeit her license and have her car sold.
It’s a fair enough position. The problem is that because of American infrastructure there is a good chance that that is a sentence of homelessness. I know many people who have continued driving with a suspended license bc there is no feasible alternative to get to work and thus be able to pay rent.
