Drunk Driving by Proxy

Scott Hardie | March 11, 2012
Say you're had too many drinks, and you know better than to drive, so you responsibly hand your keys over to someone else. That person unfortunately turns out to be drunk as well, and causes a fatal accident in your car. Are you just as responsible for the death as the driver?

That's the dilemma facing a Tennessee woman. She could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison under a law that punishes giving car keys to intoxicated people.

Two things come to mind for me:

1) I haven't read the actual law, but the article says it applies to "anyone who knowingly hands over their keys to an intoxicated person." Wouldn't the prosecutor have to prove the "knowingly" part, and have a hard time proving that?

2) Years of Law & Order have trained me to expect this as a setup, as in they're throwing the book at her to convince her to testify against her own boyfriend, with no expectation that she'll actually be punished so severely. I have no idea if that's real or TV fiction.

Regardless, what a sad mess.

Erik Bates | March 12, 2012
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Scott Hardie | March 22, 2012
Similarly, one's state of mind seems like it will factor into the defense of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting. (That he hasn't been arrested yet is such an outrage, and that the public outcry keeps mounting, makes prosecution seem inevitable.) The "Stand Your Ground" law allows you to use deadly force if you feel threatened. Does that emotion need to be proven in court? Normally it's the prosecution who must prove its claims beyond the shadow of a doubt, but surely a killer's defense cannot just say "he felt threatened" to excuse the crime.

Color me a bleeding-heart, but this situation is exactly the sort of sickening consequence that comes about when you write such gun-happy legislation. I don't know if the law inspired Zimmerman to act with confidence, or if it will merely factor into his defense, but either way, the Florida legislators who drafted and passed this law should be ashamed of themselves. They are partly responsible for this mess.

Erik Bates | March 22, 2012
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Samir Mehta | March 22, 2012
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Erik Bates | March 22, 2012
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Scott Hardie | March 24, 2012
Stand Your Ground does allow you to chase someone down and murder them if they were "threatening" you, even if they never interacted with you directly. A judge in Miami just ruled this, in the case of a man who ran after and fatally stabbed someone he saw trying to steal the radio out of his truck.

I have a burning question for the gun lobby: What more do you people want? We have now arrived at the point where you can legally murder someone in the street for appearing to take your property. The NRA has gotten their way on seemingly every piece of legislation, and still they raise the alarm that liberals are going to take all their guns away if they don't receive even more freedoms. The Obama administration has ruled on exactly one piece of gun legislation to date, passing a law that actually expands concealed carry privileges, albeit for certain citizens only. Yet the NRA insists that Obama is coming for your guns! These laws endanger citizens, and for what? As a citizen of the first state among many to pass Stand Your Ground, I feel much less safer walking down the street. If I glance in the open window of someone's car as I walk past, will I be shot as a carjacker? If I wave back to a small child in a stroller, will I be shot as a pedophile? It's scary. The gun lobby is dangerously out of control, and apparently will not be satisfied no matter how far they go.

Erik Bates | March 26, 2012
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Steve Dunn | March 26, 2012
As difficult as it may be, I think it's important to distinguish between the NRA and people who are likely to murder you for waving to a small child in a stroller. Plotted on a Venn diagram, sure, there would be some overlap among these groups, but not enough to justify referring to them interchangeably in a serious conversation.

I haven't yet sorted out the merits or details of the Trayvon Martin shooting (I've been busy, and anyway, it seems like the ideal "wait and see" situation given the sketchy and contradictory accounts) but as a general proposition, I find it best not to extrapolate broad conclusions from the occurrence of atypical events.

Erik Bates | March 26, 2012
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Samir Mehta | March 26, 2012
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Tony Peters | March 26, 2012
my question is how can stand your ground apply to a situation where a person creates a confrontation in which he then "feels" threatened and has to resort to deadly force? Nothing that I have heard about this case would stand up for an officer none of it meets the threashold for the use of deadly force. Why exactly should it have for a civilian? when I played Navy Cop I never approached a suspect without a partner and I would never have let any of my officers do so because there is no control in a one on one confrontation except that which ends with the discharge of a firearm. I never drew my sidearm never mind discharged it though I did use my baton once, the thought of ending a life weighed heavily on me. I understand what "stand your ground" was created for, I don't feel that this situation is the proper application of that law But regardless of my opinion that is a decision that should be made by 12 in a courtroom not the police.

Samir Mehta | March 28, 2012
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Scott Hardie | March 29, 2012
Erik: I think you're totally right about the wild west and the sheriff. That's exactly what it feels like, 1862 instead of 2012. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Steve: I brought up the NRA because they're largely responsible for Stand Your Ground. I don't think they want to murder people. I just think there's a point where we all should say, enough with the gun freedoms and enough with the lobbying for more more more of them, you already have plenty.

Samir and Tony: Great points. I especially agree that it's "a decision that should be made by 12 in a courtroom not the police." I'd like to say that the least that Stand Your Ground could do is require a full hearing by a grand jury, but what's to stop the prosecution from being just as lazy and unjust as the police?

It's easy to say that all of this is obvious in hindsight after Trayvon Martin's death, but some members of Tragic Comedy said similar things in 2005 when the law was first passed. In particular, Anna shared a link to a St Pete Times column with prescient quotes warning of this sort of situation.

Tony Peters | March 29, 2012
I think the stand your ground statute is a great idea, especially for home invasion, if someone came into my house I want the option to beat them to death, I want the option to beat a mugger with a baton (that I have under the drivers seat). But in both of those cases I listed violence is a response to a conflict that I haven't initiated. Unlike this incident which while the details are murky seems to indicate that Zimmerman initiated contact and probably the conflict. Police officers are trained in things like conflict resolution, unlike a neighborhood watch, which is in theory nothing more than an extra set of eyes and ears. It is not their job to replace the police merely assist and there is a big difference between jumping in to prevent a crime in progress and trying to stop a perceived crime before it happens

Samir Mehta | March 29, 2012
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Tony Peters | March 29, 2012
my point is, as I understand it SYG was designed as a response action not for civilians to initiate action. My present home state it is not legal to kill a home invader and until recently it wasn't legal to own a gun in DC. I am reminded of a story I was told years ago when I was studying Arnis



There was this old Filipino dude who was mugged by three ne'er-do-wells in Bayview-Hunter's Point area of San Francisco. The elderly gentleman produced two of those knives and between his three opponents, slashed them 200 times collectively. Well, needless to say, the effusion of blood was quite profuse and the responding police officers were aghast at the sight. Weapons drawn and pointed menacingly at him, they ordered him to drop the knives.

The elderly gentlemen submitted to arrest without incident and at trial, the District Attorney brought him up on charges of Attempted Murder. After all, there were 200 slashes on the three muggers and the volume of cuts were considered evidence of the defendant's bloodlust. Well, the Public Defender asked the court if a demonstration was allowed. to perform a courtroom demonstration. A large dummy was set up and the elderly man was timed as he used his knife on the dummy. If I remember correctly, it was around 100 cuts in a few seconds. The prosecutor dropped the charges (or the judge dismissed it...I can't remember which)..

in today's world he would be convicted before he set foot in the courtroom

In case you haven't seen this

Scott Hardie | January 16, 2013
I was wrong. I said above on March 24, and at various other times offline, that Obama was not anti-gun and was not "coming for" anybody's guns, no matter how much the NRA rang the alarm bell. To me, the disconnect between what Obama had actually done to take away guns (less than nothing) and what certain people thought he was going to do (a lot) was evidence of a growing disconnect in how the left and the right perceived the facts of the world.

Obviously, the NRA was right. I do think Obama's new push for gun control was spurred on by Newtown, and the chances of him taking this kind of action without such horror would have been small, but we'll never know for sure or be able to agree. It's clear that I misjudged this man and this issue, and I should say so.

Erik Bates | January 16, 2013
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Tony Peters | January 16, 2013
some people are really stupid....that's all I am going to say about that Erik

I am actually on both sides of this one. I see no issues with the magazine limit, some tracking, closing the gun show loopholes and better mental health tracking. I have a problem with the AWB as anything more than a cosmetic ban will not pass the Heller decision and if its only cosmetic (like the last one) why have it?. Since CCW is now legal nationwide its time for a federal standard instead of the hodgepodge of state regulations (or lack of them). I also think that regular re-qualification for the right to possess firearms should be part of the changes.

Scott Hardie | January 17, 2013
Good points, Tony.

That "10 Facts" page is quite some lunacy. I'm tempted to debunk the list point by point, but much of what I would say is self-evident and I don't want to spend any more time thinking about that mindset. This way lies madness! It also leads to making good people miserable because of your crackpot ideas. (Thanks for the link, Anna.)

Scott Hardie | January 20, 2013
I'm glad that I didn't bother debunking the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory point by point, because Snopes already did, and much better than I could have.