Ignorance of the law is not a defence, but error of fact can be.
For instance, everyone who drives can be assumed to know that on a one-way street, you have to drive only one way. But if a driver turns the wrong way on a one-way street by accident (dark night, road not clearly marked, etc.,) that may be an error of fact that can be relied on as a defence.
It’s easy to make a mistake when you start driving on the other side of the road. The danger comes not so much when you first start, because then you are being exceptionally careful and paying 100% attention to what you are doing, but after a few days, when you start getting used to driving on the other side of the road, but you still have most of your old instincts.
Hell, I’ve done the same thing myself when transitioning from one system to another - I’ve turned out of a driveway onto an empty street and driven on the wrong side of the road for a few hundred yards before seeing a traffic light further on, and quickly getting back on the right side of the road.
BUT… and this is a big BUT… we don’t know the facts of the case. We are only speculating.
There may be a lot more to it that we don’t know about. She may have been talking on her phone, she may have been speeding, she may have been drunk, or something else entirely that we haven’t thought of. We simply don’t know all the facts of the case, so it’s better to suspend judgment.
But accidents aren’t ipso facto blameless. And still less is relying on “instinct and muscle memory” alone, especially in a new environment. That’s why we have two levels of offence, “dangerous driving”, and “driving without due care and attention”. But until the full evidence is heard and assessed by due legal process, we can’t know exactly what might apply here.
The police here never talk about ‘accidents’ on the road; they are always Road Traffic Collisions (RTCs)
I see the Crown Prosecution Service (presumably having received Ms. Sacoolas’s statement as well as any other evidence) have authorised a charge of “causing death by dangerous driving” (the more serious option). Stand by for a politico-legal battle.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/20/anne-sacoolas-charged-over-death-of-harry-dunn
Given that the State Department says she’s immune, and the State Department is also responsible for approving all extraditions, there probably won’t be much movement on this unless she returns voluntarily.
If she has diplomatic immunity, and can’t be prosecuted, is there any reason we need to know exactly what might apply? The broad story seems clear. She drive on the wrong side of the road due to having driven in that side all her life and being new to driving in the left. Tragically, she hit and killed someone because there was a head-on collision. What more do we need to know?
Her husband is an intelligence agent, not a diplomat. Two UK specialist lawyers on diplomatic immunity have given the opinion that she did NOT have diplomatic immunity. If she really had diplomatic immunity, the case would have been dropped long ago.
2. We don’t know the facts of the case. As I said in my post above, she may have been talking on her phone, she may have been speeding, she may have been drunk, etc.
The fact that she has been charged with dangerous driving suggests that there is more to it than the simple story of making a mistake. Also, the CPS has asked the media not to release details, as that might prejudice a future court case. That means there is more to the case than has yet been made public.
It should be for the courts to determine culpability and not for posters to speculate, so I shall speculate myself.
Imagine you are a US citizen, and you happen to be driving your car. As you move along the highway another vehicle, ooh, I dunno, lets imagine a motorbike seems to be coming at you on the wrong side of the road - what do you think would be the most sensible thing to do?
Me, I think I would be driving with enough competence to see what hazards were arising in front of me - I think the first thing I would do is stop.
Apparently she pulled out in front of the bike rider - no matter what side of the road you are used to driving on you must look out both ways before pulling out - seems to me something is wrong on her part. Bike riders get this all the time - along with the classic ‘I didn’t see you’. Seems to me she didn’t look properly - that isn’t careless driving, pulling out and not looking is dangerous - hence the charge
I don’t know how long would be considered to be a reasonable time to get used to driving in another country - but three weeks seems to plenty.
Apparently his parents are rich and are causing a fuss hiring a top lawyer, and they want vengeance, wishing Sacoolas to go to prison for 14 years. Otherwise this would have died down.
That’s justice, not vengeance. Vengeance would be going after her personally outside of the legal system.
Unless the lady was swigging vodka out of a bottle with one hand while texting on her phone with the other at the time, a prison sentence is unlikely. Fourteen years is the maximum. Maximum sentences are quite rare here and only for the most heinous of crimes.
It is incredibly unlikely she would get anything near 14 years, I have seen dangerous driving offenders kill people, who had no licence, no road tax, no insurance and previously banned off the road and get nothing like 14 years - and these are at the very high end of the sentence scale.
It is not all that unusual to be sentenced to non-custodial community service, I think that if she were to appear in court the charge would be downgraded to careless driving, she would be fined if found guilty and even a dangerous driving conviction is not likely to see her in prison at all - I doubt she could even lose her licence because there is no way that would take effect in the US anyway.
Instead of immunity, a better system might be to agree that for serious crimes, diplomats can be prosecuted but the sentence cannot exceed what the punishment would be in their home country for that crime. Or just the whole prosecution happens in their home country.
I’m aware that this could be extremely difficult to implement; court systems are of course not set up for this kind of thing.
But something has to be better than a diplomat’s brat son hypothetically being able to rape a child, and the response simply being to shrug and say something something saudi arabia.
That makes sense.
Naw, it’s vengeance. The justice system channels the available outlets for vengeance and keeps them in check.
Granted, people suffering as a result of something like this might find it hard to distinguish “justice” from “vengeance” (which is why there is due legal process in the first place) - but is it really “vengeance” to expect that due legal process to apply to anyone in her situation?
What’s your cite for “his parents are rich”?
Well, it depends on whether she actually has immunity. But if she can’t be punished anyway, yes, obsessing over whether the case can be fully investigated is about seeking vengeance. And any desire for a 14 year prison term is certainly about vengeance – unless she was high on some illegal drug or gunning to kill someone that day, that’s WAY more punishment than fits the crime – which may be a misdemeanor, in US terms.
What, am I chopped liver?
Didn’t you read my post re likelihood of a 14 tear sentence?
This is not going to happen, in fact it is more likely that she will not be given a custodial sentence at all.
I agree with all that, I also recall recently driving in Ireland, one time after turning around in a driveway while sort of lost and a bit stressed on a country road, I drove a few 10’s meters on the right (not that small Irish country roads always have enough room for cars to pass in opposite directions anyway…
). But that was second day, first day I was 100% focused ‘drive on the left, drive on the left’.
On other link though about CIA, drone etc that seems to me irrelevant to this woman’s situation, which I like you don’t really know. Or only relevant in that some people might be making more of a big deal of it than any other fatal accident (a word which doesn’t necessarily mean ‘nobody’s fault’) because of the politics of US/UK foreign policy cooperation those people don’t agree with.
As to culpability it’s true AFAIK in US or UK (basically similar legal systems) that you are culpable for stuff a reasonable person should have known. A reasonable person should know you need to drive on the left in UK and on the right in the US. I don’t see any way to argue innocence based on ignorance of basic, general traffic laws. It could be a mitigating circumstance in deciding your punishment though. Or alternatively further evidence of particular provable aspects of recklessness an aggravating factor. And like others said something more specific like driving the wrong way down a poorly lit or marked one way street would be different.
As far as legal reach of immunity I also don’t know, but it’s like anything else of that kind. If the country agreed to have the foreign personnel there under a particular agreement as to immunity, that’s on that host govt, back around to political debate about US operations hosted by UK which isn’t really relevant to this particular woman’s guilt. If a legal argument can be made she really wasn’t covered by immunity, well lawyers can work that out. It isn’t a function of her fault and definitely not of whether particular UK citizens agree with particular joint US/UK operations.
My understanding albeit via first hand accounts is that in Saudi Arabia the legal system tends to operate on the principal ‘well if you’d been in your home country, where you belong, this traffic incident never would have happened’ and your actual fault isn’t the only factor legally.