I was reading through this thread about a politician with two DUI/DWIs. One of the comments expressed the notion that it is possible to get caught the one and only time you drove drunk, but to be caught a second time suggests you’re driving drunk a lot.
I myself have held that sort of position, that being caught implies you’ve done something more than once. So being caught twice means you’re doing it a lot.
Particularly with drunk driving, if I hear someone got caught, I assume they drove drunk a lot, and eventually got nailed for it. Speeding too, as well as shop lifting.
So how wrong is this notion, that being caught means you’ve committed the act more than just the one time?
It also seems to be applied differently to different crimes. So I also need to ask if this concept should be applied to our legal system? Obviously we should only convict someone on the crime committed, but should there be a followup based on the idea they’ve done it more than once?
I’m pretty sure that isn’t worded the way I’d like it to be. But following a DUI there tends to be some leniency regarding the ability to then drive again, before eventually losing his/her license.
When it comes to sexual assault and child molestation, we as a society seem okay with the notion of a sex offender registry, which seems to imply that there is no reform, and there was no “just one time.” In many of theses cases the judge may impose restrictions.
There’s not only the ‘having been caught twice means a higher probability of offending often’ angle but also the ‘having offended again after a shot across the bow’ aspect. Which is more important IMO, so I’d extend more lenience to the ‘offence, offence, conviction’ case than to the ‘offence, conviction, offence’ case.
This should be decided by looking at what the empirical evidence shows is the rate of recidivism for each category of crime. Balance out the cost to society of the expected rate of recidivism vs the cost of enforcement.
I would say that assuming that someone has done it before is dangerous. It may be true but still dangerous, the courts must prove that your are guilty and without evidence they cannot not. If they had evidence then fair enough.
Right, and this discussion is much more “off the books,” obviously in a court of law they can’t charge you for multiple murders on the assumption you probably did it before. I’m certainly not trying to suggest it should. Although is it possible that factors into sentencing?
I just find the personal aspect of it much more interesting. That for certain offenses, a single conviction gives me the impression they’ve done it before. And subsequent convictions gives me the impression they do it a lot.
I also find that for convictions such as drunk driving, and tend to assume they do other things drunk. People caught stealing one thing make me assume they are thieves.
It’s possible that I’m projecting a pattern. Someone that accomplish a great feat like Olympic gold usually did something pretty good before hand like a world championship.
Although in my time as a public defender, I don’t believe I ever had a factually innocent client, I do believe I had a number of first-timers, stupid kids (even if over 18) that did something without thinking and got caught.
I do think multiple convictions are relevant to the question of mistake. That is, if you are accused of shoplifting, and your defense is you honestly forgot you had them item with you when you left the store, I can see that… but not on your second of third run-in with the law using that excuse.
Logic dictates that if you get nabbed for DUI multiple times you’re either a) getting so drunk that you’re fodder for cops (and a menace to society), or b) you’re a recidivist drink-driver.
Either way, you have a scarlet letter you should wear with ignominy.
So now as a society we brand repeat offenders, and in some cases legally. How would someone go about removing said letter? Or is it once a criminal always a criminal?
I am one who is firmly agaist bringing up previous convictions* at trial. The result of that is essentially that the accused has to prove he did not do the crime.
Subject to certain acceptions, like during sentencing arguements, Bail applications and as rebuttal, when the accused has himself asserted good character.
The phenomenon can presumably be studied. We could then create a function that returns the expected number of DUI offenses given the number of DUI convictions. We could say in court, upon sentencing, “This guy has been found guilty of DUI. According to our studies, a person with one DUI conviction has driven drunk X times with a Y% confidence interval of Z. Therefore we should increase the punishment accordingly.” Is probability not evidence?
Two problems I see:
We can’t use the statistical argument all the time. Could you imagine a prosecutor telling the jury, “Blacks males are 50% more likely to commit crime X. Therefore, the likelihood that the defendant committed the crime is higher because the defendant is black.”? So I am not comfortable with using it in this case, and there are many more hypothetical cases I would be uncomfortable using the “statistical” argument for.
I think this is already taken into account by some laws, especially DUI laws. I got convicted of a DUI once. I paid altogether around $3000, although I didn’t lose my license due to a plea deal my lawyer got me. But I had to take a “drunk driving” class, and talking to the others, I was without a doubt the luckiest of the group. Most paid more than $5000 in addition to losing their licenses. Is this a fair punishment for a single risky decision?
I knew a guy who was sleeping outside of a party in his back seat in the driveway with the ignition off. But the cops showed up, found him drunk in his car with the keys in his pocket and arrested him for DUI. This illustrates, to me, how out of proportion our punishments (and outrage) are to the crime, especially for a single offense. But I hear arguments all the time from proponents of tougher DUI laws about public menaces who drive shitfaced nearly every day and don’t get caught. How people get DUIs in multiple states (the arguer usually stresses how he’s killed a small young family in each state) and get charged in each one as a first time offender because there isn’t a federal DUI database to check.
So personally, I feel that our tough sentencing laws for DUI are already informed and inspired by the statistical likelihood that a convict has offended multiple times before. I would be much more comfortable, however, if the argument was phrased as it was in my first paragraph, rather than in the emotional and over-the-top appeals found in MADD propaganda.
The following rule of thumb is only tangentially related to the OP, but I offer it up anyway:
Get arrested once for drunken driving, and your chance of being an alcoholic is not much higher than the general population (say around 10%). These non-alcoholic one-time drunk drivers have a relatively low rate of reoffending.
Get arrested twice for drunken driving, and your chance of being an alcoholic goes up over 90%.
Get arrested 3 or more times for drunken driving, and your chance of being an alcoholic are over 99%.
And for simplicity’s sake here, we’ll set the definition of alcoholism as “loss of control over one’s drinking”.