Just adding, in Indiana, at least, if you get a second DUI while on a suspended license for a first DUI, you can get in a lot more trouble than if your second DUI happened while you were actually allowed to drive (your license was not suspended).
I have known college students who got suspended licenses after one DUI, because in Indiana (and some other states), there’s a point system, where any offense, other than parking offenses result in you getting points against your license. A point remains for, IIRC, two years. Accumulate enough at once, and you lose your license. Some students had so many points for speeding and other non-DUI offenses, that their first DUI results in a suspended license. But like probably 95% of people with a suspended license, they keep driving.
The sh!t keeps piling up, though. If you were, for example, given a suspended sentence for your first DUI offense, you will end up having to serve it if you get caught driving on a suspended license, even sober. If you are drunk, they’ll probably throw the book at you.
I would write a letter. It would inform the defendant that I don’t have a friend by that name any longer. Furthermore, it would imply that bad things would happen in we ever met face to face again.
Fuck drunk drivers. I have less than zero sympathy for him, all my sympathy goes to the parents of the children he killed.
This fine young man has offered me 10 million dollars to write you about his upstanding character, which I must note includes an incredible amount of generosity. It’s hard to put numbers on these things, but I would value his generosity very highly, at approximately 10 million dollars. …"
I just don’t have this instinct for revenge for some reason. I can’t see how it does any good.
Rather than prison for life, effectively throwing away another life, force him to set up some kind of trust in the kids’ names to solve some crucially related problem. He doesn’t get to be in charge of it of course. Have his earnings heavily garnished for life. Require him to invest his time in related community work for life. Stuff like that. Someone will have to administer all this, yes, which costs money, yes–but how will that compare to the cost of life imprisonment? Probably not too poorly.
Anyway, I voted choice 2–write the letter, so court has full info. I will note I answered it assuming a kind of “perfect world” scenario ignoring the fact that in the real world this kind of letter-writing campaign would generally only help out rich and/or white people…
I think people are imaging that the guy who did this is the one asking for the letter, rather than your actual good friend. Imagine your best friend, who is a decent person and who has lived a good life, is arrested for this horrible crime. Wouldn’t you want the judge to know he shouldn’t be judged solely by his worst act?
The way you describe it, it does sound like revenge.
Seriously, there is no benefit to the parents of the children other than revenge. The benefit to society of locking people up like this is deterrence and isolation, to prevent future crimes, but the parents have already lost it all. There’s no getting that back for them, no matter how many go to jail, not even if there’s torture and execution involved.
If leniency meant we give him a stern talking to and tell him never to be seen driving drunk around these parts again, now get on home and try not to get drunk on your way back, then I wouldn’t argue for leniency.
But 8-12 years in prison seems to me to be a pretty stiff sentence for driving drunk. Thing is, if he was three times the legal limit, that’s not having a few drinks and getting behind the wheel. Four beers in an hour for a normal sized man with a normal metabolism only puts you at 0.08. Three times the legal limit requires a heck of a lot more. A 2-3 beers an hour ago means you’re going to blow below 0.08, unless you’re a tiny person or have an idiosyncratic metabolism.
You don’t get falling down drunk and get behind the wheel unless you’re the kind of person who regularly gets falling down drunk. I don’t drink much, and that means when I’ve had a few beers I really feel it. Even if I’m well below 0.08, I feel really drunk, and pay special attention when getting up from my chair to walk to the bathroom. This guy was falling down drunk.
That doesn’t change my answer one bit. He’s no longer my friend.
You see, my best friend would know that I saw a friend get killed by a drunk driver when we were both 15, and as a result I’m not exactly rational on the subject. For an example that’s covered by the statute of limitations, I have beaten the shit out of at least two people who refused to hand over their keys while drunk.
With that said, I’m bowing out of this thread. I’m far too emotionally invested in the subject to debate it rationally.
I think the choices you offer in the poll are misleading.
Any letter I write is not to seek leniency for him.
The letter I would write would be truthful and simply include my feelings and observations about his character, background history and behaviour, family life and bonds, societal contributions, etc.
It would then be up to the judge to determine whether my and other people’s letters seem to support leniency or an even harsher sentence.
Do Canadian courts actually need to rely on letters written by the friends and relatives of the defendant and submitted by the defense attorney to get a “fuller picture”? Because maybe that’s my hang-up. In the jurisdictions that I am familiar with, there is generally a pre-sentence investigation/report completed by a more neutral party (such as as the probation department or court employees) which usually involves interviewing some combination of relatives, employers, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, etc but isn’t subject to the screening effect that comes with the defendant or victim organizing a letter writing campaign.
*With 92 letters , I’m fairly certain it was organized - I can’t imagine that 92 people independently came up with the idea to write these letters.
I read that they took a reading 10 minutes after the first reading and it was higher. That implies he was drunk when he got off the plane and had enough alcohol in him for it to continue to raise the level of inebriation. He was also driving way too fast.
So, not only no to the letter writing but OH HELL NO.
If he was truly repentant he would have demanded the maximum penalty. He could serve his time productively by tutoring other inmates through school starting each class with a pledge of sobriety in front of a picture of those he killed.
I’ve been there.
Jeff, a good buddy, drove drunk for the 101st time and managed to kill a nice girl. California, 1985. I have to admit to doing the same for a brief period of my life. Drunk driving conviction in 1982. I spoke at his sentencing. It was hard. I know my friend was alcoholic and needed help. I know he killed an innocent person. Many of us tried to get him to get help. He wouldn’t listen. I told the judge all this and asked him to help Jeff rather than just tossing him in jail. I was hoping the prospect of a long jail sentence and severe civil penalties would make him realize his life choices were killing him.
He got 7 years, out in under 4, drivers license suspended for many years ( I don’t remember the exact number) post release, probation post release, and restitution in an amount he would never be able to pay. He got out and moved to Missouri where California had no reciprocity agreement and skated out of the suspension and restitution. The family of the girl he killed never did sue for damages, probably because they knew it wouldn’t lead to any actual compensation. Heard from a mutual friend years later that he died of alcohol related complications.
If I had it to do over, I would tell the judge to throw the book at him.
Leniency did no justice here. It helped me. YMMV.
Sometimes the world is just a fucked up place.
He chose to drive drunk. Obviously, he doesn’t think the laws should apply to him. Throw the book at him.
When my younger sister was driving drunk in a borrowed car with no license for the umpteenth time and hit a tree, she tried to get out of prison by stating “Well, I’ve never hit a person. And the owner didn’t ask to see my license.”
Muzzo got sentenced earlier this week. Judge split the difference and got 10 years, instead of the 8 the defence asked for, and the 12 that the Crown sought as the upper range.