Wednesday, June 14, 2006

No More Tears

Wow, what an emotional day. Today we had a sentencing hearing for this lady who was driving on a suspended license and with no insurance, and 9 miles over the speed limit. A 12-year-old boy didn't look both ways and stepped out in front of her car. He was in a coma for 2 months before he finally died. So today we had to decide what to do with the lady that hit him.

I had already made the gut-wrenching decision two months ago not to charge her with vehicular manslaughter. Yes, she broke the law by driving, and yes, it was _a_ cause of the boy's death, but, in my opinion, the boy stepping out in front of the car was the supervening cause of his death. In other words, if it wasn't her car, it might have been someone else's that he stepped out in front of.

The speed wasn't a deciding factor either. They say she would have hit him, even if she had been going the speed limit. The impact on him would not have been as severe, but no one can know whether he would have survived.

So the family made their victim impact statements today. I bawled my eyes out. Even the judge bawled. He was sobbing as he rendered her sentence. The lady ended up with $1300 in fines, $4000 in restitution for burial expenses, 2 years probation, and one year of suspended jail.

6 comments:

Bradley said...

What race was the lady?

Randi@SowderingAbout said...

what does suspended jail time mean?

oh man. what a hard case.

I hate to say that I don't necessarily feel "horrible" for her because she wasn't supposed to be driving anyway. Its those types of people that have done so much damage to my own car. But that is a personal issue.

What made her license suspended anyway?

Shawna said...

Ya, why was her license suspended? If she was driving safe, even with a valid drivers license the boy would still be dead. I don't think that should enter into the deal it all.

Cladeedah said...

Race is a non-issue. I see peope of all races get these kinds of driving offenses. They're slacker offenses, and all races have their slackers. Why, what race do you THINK she is?

I neglected to mention she also got 25 days of actual jail,. but that was because she didn't pay the original ticket on this case. (The case got split into two. She was arrested immediately for the suspended license, but the speed work up wasn't done until the boy died 2 months later, so we had to charge the speeding later.)

Suspended jail means probation. She has to stay out of all trouble and pay the fines and restitution and have no more traffic violations for two years or else she goes to jail for one year.

We wanted to get the family some money, which she couldn't give if she was in jail. This way, we hope they'll at least get something before she innevitably screws up.

Her license was suspended for failure to provide financial responsibility for a previous accident.

Housekeeper said...

Your forgot the part where she lied to you about her insurance, bitch should have gone down for that alone.

Cladeedah said...

Yeah, that was hard to prove at trial because we don't keep copies of the cards they show in court. Her argument was she showed proof for _after the fact_ and that I dismissed the charge by mistake as if she had shown proof good for the date of the violation. I check people's insurance cards about 30 times a day, so I've gotten pretty good at telling whether the policy was good on the date of the violation or not. Still, we didn't have a copy of her fake ass card, so we couldn't prove it.