Penalties for DUI

The thread about the crazy women hitting the man has got me thinking.

I have never really understood why getting caught driving under the influence of alcohol or any kind of drug (the kind that alter your perception or may hinder your driving) isn’t considered attempted murder. I would liken it to aiming a gun in a crowd and and shooting. You didn’t specifically mean to hurt the person you hit, but their pain is a direct result of your irresponsibility.

What are your opinions on this? Do you think that people get off too easy?

I completely agree. Unfortunately, drunk driving and the like will never be considered attempted murder in the US.

Why, you ask? Because those who are in power who could make the laws tougher are guilty of it too.

Hell yes people get off too easy. I knew this guy online in Florida whose wife was hit by a drunk driver, and his wife was 8 months pregnant at the time. The baby died, the wife lived (just about died, though), and of course the drunk driver lived (don’t they always?). I can’t remember what her sentence was but it was pitiful. She should have gotten no less than life.

If a drunk driver ever hits me, and I am able to get out of the car and go after them, I’ll be the one needing a lawyer, not the drunk.

Because attempted murder is commonly defined as (i) attempting to unlawfully to kill another; or (2) with intent unlawfully to kill another to do any act, or omits to do any act which it is your duty to do, such act or omission being of such a nature as to be likely to endanger human life.

The nature of the requisite “intent” is clear: it is to kill someone. Most drunk do not form such an attempt.

Which is why they are often charged under other criminal offences; for example, manslaughter. Just because they do not fall under attempted murder does not mean they get away free.

**Please provide some evidence to support your assertion that lawmakers have a vested interest in supporting allegedly lenient drink-drinking laws.

Gah. “Form such an intent”, not “attempt”.

Just my own personal experience here, but…

When I was younger (and stupider) I used to drive drunk quite a bit. While it was not my intent to kill anybody, it most certainly was my intent before I went out to drive drunk. Here’s what I mean. I would drive somewhere knowing that (a) my drinking pattern would not allow me to be sober before I drove home and (b) I would drive home for some reason (I didn’t have enough money for cab fare or I had parked in a space where I couldn’t leave my car all night or something stupid). So, before I had even had my first drink, I had made a conscious and sober decision to drive drunk. Most of my friends did this as well.

Repeat: generally, the offence of attempted murder requires an intent to kill.

There are other criminal laws to cover drunk drivers who kill without the requisite intent to come under attempted murder. Drunk drivers do not fall through a hitherto unknown gap in the law.

Argh, my post got cut off. Yes, I understand from a legal perspective that I did not have a legal intent to kill when I was driving drunk. But I think that I was fully aware of what the possibilities were.

Since driving is a privilege administered by the State via license, the privilege to drive carries with it an intent on your part to always drive safely. (We already assume implied consent to a blood test when the Police suspect DUI.) And since the acquisition of said license requires you to become familiar with the rules of the road, including understanding the consequences of driving while under the influence, after acquiring your license any subsequent driving on your part while intoxicated is an implied intent to violate those rules of the road. After all, no “forces” you to drink and drive. You made that decision on your own.

While this may not meet the strict definition of intent for attempted murder, getting behind the wheel as a legally licensed driver means you accept responsibility for your actions. I’m sure there are drivers who get drunk and then drive, there are many others who drive sober to a location to get drunk and then drive home.

I have no sympathies for drunk drivers, or anyone DUI. If you injure or kill someone while DUI, the penalties should be severe, perhaps including confiscation of the vehicle, heavy fines, jail, even a lifetime ban on driving for a first offense DUI if someone is injured/killed (and no occupational license).

Ironically (and I am not saying I agree/disagree with this), but we already do this with other drug use for a first offense. Why should the drug known as alcohol be treated differently?

In common law terms, attempt is a specific intent crime. You have to intend the result. Intent to murder someone can be inferred from shooting into a crowd, and if you intend to murder one person but actually murder someone else, that intent is transferred. Modern statutes define this as “knowing” behavior, meaning you knew what would happen even if you didn’t intend and desire it; this is good enough to establish murder.
However, almost killing someone through merely reckless behavior where there was no intent to kill there can’t be an attempt.

At common law, extremely reckless behavior that results in death can be “depraved heart murder” (or, if only reckless, involuntary manslaughter). Almost killing someone through extremely reckless behavior isn’t “attempted depraved heart murder”, because you can’t attempt something you didn’t mean to do.

In Texas, killing someone while DWI is “intoxication manslaughter”, and is a second degree felony. There’s no “attempted intoxication manslaughter”, because you can’t attempt an accident. There are, as Narrad said, other laws that are better suited.

Not a good analogy. When you shoot into a crown, your intent is to harm someone. Once that intent is there, under the law, it transfers to whomever you actually hit.
OTOH, when you drive drunk, your intent is to drive home, or to another bar, etc.

Quibble: it can also be intent to harm, with the consequence of that intent to harm being the death of another.

Narrad has stated the law pretty much accurately, so nothing needs to be said about that. So allow me to pontificate about one of my pet concepts. :smiley:

Our intent-based criminal justice system is, IMO, rather flawed. It flows from the concept of punishment of sin, which, while a good goal, shouldn’t be the first priority of a criminal justice system. What should be the first priority is protection of the innocent.
In some ways, a murderer is less dangerous than a drunk driver. Putting serial killers, etc., aside, murderers have a motive to kill their victim - a love affair gone bad, money problems, etc. That generally means that they don’t have a motive to kill the rest of us, and we are safe from them. It also gives us some control - don’t give another person reason to kill us, and we won’t get killed.
A drunk driver, OTOH, or a kid who drops rocks off of overpasses, or other such miscreants, are effectively motiveless. That means they pose a risk to all of us, and there is very little we can do to reduce our risk.

But such negligence-type crimes are generally punished less severely than intent-based crimes. The rationale is that the perpetrator “didn’t mean to.” So? Hell, in my opinion, a person so careless or indifferent that he/she kills without meaning to is more dangerous to the rest of us than a cold-blooded Mafia hit man. And they should be sent away for as long, if not longer.

Sua

Isn’t there such a charge as Vehicular Manslaughter, which applies when someone who is drunk/impaired kills someone else while the drunk/impaired individual is driving?

As for the firing a weapon into a crowd (or a building which is presumably occupied), doesn’t that represent “callous disregard for human life?”

Interesting point. In gun arguments, people quote statistics on gun deaths, but the stats usually don’t take into effect gangs and the drug trade. It makes it look as though people not involved in gangs or drugs are really likely to be shot whereas I think the opposite is probably true: You can lessen your danger of being shot to a huge extent by not getting involved in drugs or gangs.

So, you can control your risk, at least to some extent. DUI doesn’t afford me that luxury. Just being on the road puts me at risk. Though I can lessen my risk to very minor extents by not being on the road after midnight on New Year’s or other holidays.

Julie

What I was trying to say is that prior to drinking if you don’t have a plan you are endangering everybody. Shooting in a crowd and randomly hitting people is the same thing (the law may say different, but I don’t think it is).

What I was trying to ask is why it isn’t the same thing. I believe that getting behind the wheel while drunk is intending to kill everyone. We have supposedly evolved so much why do we still refuse to hold people accountable for their actions?

You said it yourself: you aren’t actively killing people, you’re endangering them. If you shoot a gun into a crowd, you either intend to injure or kill someone or know that it is certain to occur. Drinking and driving is more like shooting a gun into the air in a city; you aren’t certain to injure or kill somebody, but you have created an unjustifiable that somebody will be injured or killed. That’s the difference between behavior that is “knowing or intentional” and behavior that is “reckless”. Again, murder can be caused by reckless behavior, but attempted murder can’t. An attempted crime must involve a specific intent to commit a specific crime that falls short of completion. Attempted reckless or negligent behavior is a logical impossibility.

That’s not how those terms are used legally, though. The people who get behind the wheel drunk don’t intend to or know they are going to kill people; they are ignoring an unjustifiable risk that they will do so.

Is your complaint that DWI (DUI to you) is not punished severely enough, or that DUI should be tried as attempted murder? Consider the following scenarios:

  1. Guy is caught drinking and driving. He is charged with attempted murder. The judge rules as a matter of law a specific intent is required for this attempted murder; reckless behavior can not constitute attempted murder. Guy walks scott free.

  2. Guy is caught drinking and driving. He is charged and convicted under DUI laws that make DUI punishable on a level equal to attempted murder, although not of attempted murder itself.

The second is more in line with what you’re proposing, right?

Well, I’m not going to defend those who DWI.

However, I wasn’t to keen on the Feds forcing the states (via Hwy Funding provisions) to lower the level to .08.

Even more distressing is this wonderful piece of legislation that passed the Assembly in Trenton: In my opinion, in an attempt to pander to a grief stricken mother, NJ politicians passed Maggie’s Law, in which:

Accidents do happen, they’re a fact of life. The way I see it:
A 10 prison term is Draconian.
It’s impossible to medically determine how much sleep someone has had in the first place - hence the law is an unnecessary waste of paper and time.