Here’s a case that I find disturbing. A woman in South Carolina has been ordered to read the Bible every day as part of a sentence for injuring two people after driving drunk and crashing into them. The woman agreed to it, but I don’t think that matters all that much:
Circuit Court Judge Michael Nettles also included another order in the sentence, one that’s much less common.
Tolley of Rock Hill must read the Old Testament book of Job and write a summary.
It’s a rare ruling, according to legal experts.
Similar sentences have raised constitutional concerns, but Tolley’s case is special.
“Under normal circumstances, the judge wouldn’t have the authority to do that,” said Kenneth Gaines, a University of South Carolina professor of law specializing in civil and criminal litigation. “You can’t just arbitrarily add anything you want to a sentence.
“But if she consented, it’s really not an issue. It’s critical that the defendant was in entire agreement with it.”
Tolley’s attorney, Amy Sikora, a York County, S.C., public defender, said Tolley was thankful for the assignment. She already has started working on it.
The problem here is that it’s very difficult to distinguish between genuine agreement and subtle coercion. If a judge wanted to order you to do that, would you say no? Would you risk the judge changing the other parts of the sentence if you refuse? No court should ever, under any circumstances, order anyone to participate in religious rituals or activities of any kind.
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Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
July 5, 2012 at 9:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My Summary of Job:
God is an asshole.
The End.
busterggi
July 5, 2012 at 9:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Darn but you beat me!
Summary expanded:
“God & Satan are gambling buddies”
Marcus Ranum
July 5, 2012 at 9:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
(eyeroll) Why not have her write “I will not drink and drive” on the blackboard 500 times??
Cue slc1 suggesting she be burnt at the stake in 3… 2… 1…
imrryr
July 5, 2012 at 9:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Katherine Lorraine – lol, you beat me to it too. Is it too late to make a cruel and unusual punishment joke?
slc1
July 5, 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Marcus Ranum @ #3
I reserve burning at the stake for child rapists. I do think, however, that often times, the punishment for DUI is insufficient. Certainly, a second offense should include jail time, with perhaps part of the sentence spent in the emergency room of a hospital where the miscreant can observe the results of alcohol/drug related accidents.
dingojack
July 5, 2012 at 9:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
….before being burned at the stake.
Dingo
yoav
July 5, 2012 at 9:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s the same kind of argument used by certain type of asshole (a certain Texas congressman and perpetual presidential candidate come to mind) use against workplace anti harassment laws, ignoring the fact that a power imbalance exist and that an employee may “consent” to advances from her boss rather then starve to death on the street after losing her job.
d cwilson
July 5, 2012 at 9:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll expand on Katherine Lorraine’s excellent summary:
God is an asshole and we’re just ants under his magnifying glass.
John Hinkle
July 5, 2012 at 9:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hoo boy. Imagine if he ordered her to read the Koran.
anandine
July 5, 2012 at 9:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is not unlike sentencing people to join AA, which has as one of its tents subservience to (capital G) God.
anandine
July 5, 2012 at 9:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Of course,that should have been “tenets.” Get to know preview; make it your friend.
jayarrrr
July 5, 2012 at 9:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“God is an asshole and we’re just ants under his magnifying glass.”
On a sunny day….
The Dominionism creeps in without a peep…
subbie
July 5, 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I can’t help but think of this exchange, from Paint Your Wagon
plutosdad
July 5, 2012 at 9:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I find it interested he said specifically Job, not just “read the bible” which means he could be thinking of Job not as a religious text so much as a lesson. Maybe he wants her to see he suffering after losing everything, and feel bad about what she could do to other people while driving drunk. (though I bet there are better books to read for that).
Or maybe he wants to turn her into an atheist. That book alone probably will do more to shake up someone’s faith then most other Bible books. :)
yoav
July 5, 2012 at 9:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Add to the summary: It’s OK if god kill your entire family as long as he get you a new one later because, you know, family is like a car, if one get totaled the insurance will give you a new one, it’s not as if your family are individuals or something.
Raging Bee
July 5, 2012 at 10:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m a Pagan, but of course I’d rather write a book report than go to jail. And of course, if I saw judges assigning book reports in lieu of jail time (or at least in lieu of MORE jail time), I’d be less likely to be deterred from committing certain crimes, if I were predisposed to commit them in the first place.
The only benefit I see from this is that if the book report means she spends less time in jail, than that’s less tax moneyh being spent feeding and housing her. Other than that, it’s just a bunch of religious dickheads using state power to reaffirm their beliefs. “She read the Bible to avoid jail time, therefore reading the Bible makes people more moral.”
dingojack
July 5, 2012 at 10:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So Americans can agree to have their constitutional rights violated?
Can they agree to be slaves, or to be murdered or …
Ah, America – that bastion of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms!
Enjoy your 4th of July?
Dingo
mrianabrinson
July 5, 2012 at 10:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
No, I would not consent to it. I would have my attorney fight it, along with the ACLU, the FFRF, and any other organization that fights for freedom of religion assist me in fighting. I’ve read the Bile enough to know that in Job, God was the one doing most of the horrible things in that book and my summery would be thus as such, “The god of the Bile is not worth worshipping because he’s anti-human, vile, and evil, among other things and giving more children does not replace the ones he killed. The book just goes to show that women have far fewer elective abortions than the god of the Bile causes spontaneous abortions and kills the living to boot Worship that? Never!” It would really piss off the judge, but hey, it’s the truth. Read it again? No. I’d rather read the Lorax.
Jasper of Maine
July 5, 2012 at 10:06 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Is it possible to sue the judge for constitutional violations?
I don’t mean merely having a higher level court overturning it – I mean to actually de-bench the judge. He’s clearly in violation of his oath when he took the job.
eric
July 5, 2012 at 10:20 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed:
This is not a subtle coercion; its blatant. Just think about it this way: how many of us, put in that suitation, would actually write an ‘honest’ summary of Job in response to such a court order? Of course we wouldn’t – we’d fear that if we didn’t give the Judge the “I learned my lesson” book report he’s looking for, we’d be in for more jail time (or at a minimum, be told to do it again). That’s a very reasonable fear, very understandable even to us outsiders…and the reasonableness of that fear is exactly why this is blatant coercion.
dingojack
July 5, 2012 at 10:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dear Circuit Court Judge Michael Nettles -
Please submit by 5:00pm on the 16th of July, 2012 a 10,000 word report on the meaning of the following:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances“.
Cite and discuss fully all relevant cases relating to the actual interpretation of the above by the US courts (at all levels), and the way it was variously applied by those courts, with particular reference to the initial clause.
If you fail to complete this activity, you will be held to be in contempt.
Dingo
tacitus
July 5, 2012 at 10:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I assume the judge would have put himself in a much more difficult position if the defendant had only asked what the alternative to his prescribed punishment would be if she did not agree to his ruling and he had said “a week in jail” or some other harsher sentence.
Alverant
July 5, 2012 at 10:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
How can they say she agreed to it when the judge had power over her? My personal daydream is that she comes back in and the judge asked if she read the bible every day and she responded, “Yes your honor and because of that I deconverted. That god is one evil deity.”
OleanderTea, a really, truly gumpy bunny
July 5, 2012 at 10:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What an utterly pointless sentence.
At least sentence the woman to something that demonstrates the consequences of DUI — like a visit to the morgue and ER, or time at an AA/NA meeting.
OleanderTea, a really, truly gumpy bunny
July 5, 2012 at 10:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, and what eric said.
scienceavenger
July 5, 2012 at 10:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
SLC1 said: I do think, however, that often times, the punishment for DUI is insufficient.
Call me a doubter. Is there any good data as to what the causality actually is, or what reduction in driving ability is associated with various levels of intoxication? Most of what I’ve seen is of shoddy quality at best, horribly irrational at worst. Just how impaired is a person at 0.8% BAC?
For example, take the claim “X% of accidents are alcohol related”. Firstly, that’s logically backwards, a different version of the old “Ozzy causes suicides, because many kids who were suicidal listened to Ozzy” nonsense. To determine how much A causes B, we need to know the proportion of A that results in B, not the proportion of B that has A. We need to know how many “drunks” cause accidents, not how many accidents involved drunks. And given the amount of drinking and driving that unfortunately goes on, I’d say that figure is pretty low.
Secondly, what qualifies as “alcohol related”. If I’ve had one sip of a beer in my car, does that qualify? What if I was the victim? I’ve heard nightmare anecdotes of totally sloppy work in making this determination, everything from automatically labelling accidents after midnight as such, or doing so if there was any alcohol in any of the cars, regardless of amount or who was “at fault”.
Given the horrific record of the authorities in dealing with other matters documented on this site, I find it hard to believe the information on alcohol-related accidents is any better. I’m certainly not in favor of genuinely impaired individuals driving. I’m just very skeptical that current law is addressing the issue in a remotely rational manner.
scienceavenger
July 5, 2012 at 10:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, and obviously the judge was way out of line, and needs a First Amendment refresher.
dingojack
July 5, 2012 at 10:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Scienceavenger – I believe (but I can’t find any cites at the moment) that there has been studied on how alcohol affects reaction times/fine motor control etc. using test subjects in driving simulators. So they is some data out there – although I agree how that relates to actual crashes is a lot more subjective.
Dingo
dingojack
July 5, 2012 at 10:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
studied = studies and pt a comma after the word ‘agree’. Sorry
Dingo
Pierce R. Butler
July 5, 2012 at 11:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I can only hope that the defendant’s essay includes some ruminations on the implications of the Hebrew deity as a female, and a frigid one:
Pierce R. Butler
July 5, 2012 at 11:06 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oops on # 30 – that weird citation was Job 38:29.
newfie
July 5, 2012 at 11:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Judge looking for a Supreme Court appointment under a Republican administration or something?
“Hey Judge, is it ok if I swap the Bronze Age Hebrew Mythology for something more contemporary? Like Norse, or Celtic myth?”
Stevarious
July 5, 2012 at 11:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“It wasn’t really rape because she consented. She was in entire agreement that she’d prefer to let me have sex with her than let me put a bullet in her brain.”
I’m not suggesting that the judge actually put a gun to her head. But when you are in that court, and you’ve been found guilty, and you’ve already been sentenced to 8 years in prison, what are you going to do? Say no, and just hope that he doesn’t add more time out of spite? Or say yes, and hope that he’s willing to shave a couple years off, or make parole easier. The power differential was far too unbalanced here to establish any meaningful consent.
I was in court a couple of months ago and I had a judge hanging just a 1 year driver’s license suspension over my head – that felt like a gun pointed at my head (no license = no driving = no job = no child support payments = jail). I can’t imagine she was feeling anything but ten times worse than what I felt. I’ve no doubt I would have agreed to almost anything to get out of that, and from some offhand comments he made after he worked out a lesser sentence, I’m certain that the only reason he gave me the lesser punishment is because I am a white male.
She may well be completely fine with it. But there’s no way we’ll ever know for sure, unless she feels like talking about it after her sentence is up.
oranje
July 5, 2012 at 11:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
She has to write a summer book report? Does she have to make a book cover out of a brown paper grocery bag, too?
dave
July 5, 2012 at 11:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Reminds me of DARE campaigns of the 80′s, which often featured the claim that, “25% of Emergency Room visits had used drugs.” The percentage might vary. Aside from the fact that I couldnt see how they could determine that, it was obviously a meaningless statistic: I once pointed out to the lecturer that 100% of people visiting an Emergency Room had used Oxygen in the past hour. That didnt do much other than cement my reptuation as a wiseass. But as a result, I have a maxim that “Any single statistic is meaningless.”
With respect to “Alcohol Related Accidents,” I looked into this sometime ago, from what I recall, some national org (can’t recall if it was the FBI or the NHTSA) does collect statistics from local police, but you are correct, any involvement of alcohol counts: Dead sober driver hits another dead sober driver, who has a drunk passenger — alcohol related. Dead sober driver hits drunk driver — alcohol related. Dead sober hits drunk pedestrian — alcohol related. Having said that, I think the role of the drunk person is broken out in the detailed statistics, but only the topline number gets generally reported. This is all from memory only.
abb3w
July 5, 2012 at 11:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@30, Pierce R. Butler:
Interesting.
There was at one point the worship of Asherah, which was later suppressed by the Jehovan priesthood; and I vaguely recall someone or other putting forth the speculative notion that Song of Songs, Esther, Ruth, and Job were leftovers from some (unspecifed) non-mainstream tradition.
Given Job 38:28, though, this would only make sense if the “deity” of Job was still the plurality of deities from one of the creation myths.
anandine
July 5, 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[metablog] I’d like to note the tenor of conversation on this blog, in this thread and in general. People talk about the issue and hardly ever bring up Hitler, and there are some knowledgeable, clever, and insightful people commenting. Few trolls find it worthwhile muddying things up here, which removes a possible major irritant. There is a good signal to noise ratio.[/metablog]
OleanderTea
July 5, 2012 at 12:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually the members of a “niche-lifestyle website” I frequent has had several lively conversations about whether people could consent to being a slave. The answer from a few of the legal sorts was “no”, people cannot legally consent to be actual slaves.
Yep, I enjoyed July 4th; I was drunk. It helps the cognitive dissonance. (And at my house we call it “Traitors’ Day”, just to piss off the righteously-jingoistic).
jws1
July 5, 2012 at 12:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hitler!
d cwilson
July 5, 2012 at 1:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
abb3w:
Many scholars believe that Job is the oldest book in the Bible, which may go a long to explaining the many of the contradictions, such as Yahweh treating Satan almost as an equal instead of an exiled rebel.
Asherah is just one of a number of gods that the ancient Isrealites believed in. Satan was probably a deity at one time and was likely a separate entity form Lucifer. Ba’al and Dagon were probably worshipped by the Israelites at one point as well, given how much space the Old Testament devotes to stamping them out.
Even after the cult of Jehovah came to dominate their culture, for Israelites were not monotheists (believe that only one god exists), but monolatrists who believed multiple gods exist, but that they were commanded to worship only one. This is why there are so many stories in the bible where the Israelists backslide and start worshiping other gods and then Jehovah gets out the smitey hammer to punish them for it.
d cwilson
July 5, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
We call it, “My mother’s birthday”.
dingojack
July 5, 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thou shall have no ther god before me. (After me is perfectly fine, just worship me first, or else!)
Dingo
thisisaturingtest
July 5, 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
scienceavenger, @#26- I agree with your general premise that “alcohol-related doesn’t necessarily mean alcohol-caused.” But I think you may be over-thinking here, and in a vacuum to boot, if you only consider the “alcohol-related” statistics. As dingjack @#28 says, there are studies which show, unsurprisingly, that alcohol impairs motor and cognitive skills; and I think you have to take the “alcohol-related” highway stats in conjunction with those (your “ozzy” analogy doesn’t really work, because there are no reliable outside data that can equally show a causal link between suicide and listening to him). When you take the two indicators together, I think a broadly-valid inference can be drawn (and by “valid,” I mean rational enough to justify saving lives).
For your argument that 0.8% may not be enough for some people to be really too drunk to drive- maybe so. But isn’t that just the same argument as saying that it is for other people, only in reverse? It’s sort of a subjective standard, true enough; but, realistically speaking, for situations like this, you have to draw a line somewhere, and pretend it’s an objective one, otherwise you have no standard at all.
teele
July 5, 2012 at 3:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The message I get from this story is that reading the bible is a punishment.
Raging Bee
July 5, 2012 at 3:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I got that message from trying to read the Bible myself.
Uncle Glenny
July 5, 2012 at 3:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m pretty much with scienceavenger on this.
But, faced with the choice – and not having the ability to hire my own lawyer for this – I’d take the assignment and fake it. I’ve been inpatient psyche (and been in some dual-diagnosis residences) and seen what some people do to prove they’re making amends: the first step is a fucktonne of lawyeer, then generally AA attendance that has to be signed off on.
p.s. I read somewhere not too long ago how just minor lack of sleep, and maybe this was particular to teenagers, has an effect on alertness/reaction time not unlike moderate drinking. I think it was what’s-his-name the around-the-clock guy. I may look for it later.
Oh, then I’d see if I could cause trouble for the judge, although I suppose I’d no longer have standing.
eric
July 5, 2012 at 4:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wouldn’t surprise me. I think mythbusters also compared it (drinking) to texting or talking on the phone while driving and found a similar effect.
Like turingtest, I get the distinction scienceavenger is trying to draw but have no real issue with laws that try and use some level of BAC as a reasonable proxy for reduced driving ability. I’d frankly be more concerned about the quality of breathalyzers to measure BAC accurately, than about BAC being used as a proxy for alcohol’s impairment of brain and motor function.
iknklast
July 5, 2012 at 4:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Scienceavenger – I’m not sure what your point is here, since she actually crashed into the people; this wasn’t about the possibility of her crashing because she was drunk; she did crash. Whether it was because she was drunk is less relevant, though I do agree that you might not get jail time just for crashing into people – but you might get a big judgement against you in terms of money, so in this case, a person might still end up in court, might well think that reading the Bible might reduce the amount of damages, and might feel coerced into agreeing. But this endless discussion about whether or not being drunk causes crashes is sort of irrelevant, since she wasn’t in court because she was drunk and MIGHT crash, when she did in fact crash.
chuckcain
July 5, 2012 at 4:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Coercion vs voluntary agreement is immaterial. If her sentence is either lightened or intensified on the basis of religious observance, it’s establishment.
lofgren
July 5, 2012 at 5:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This being America, we can safely assume that three quarters or more of the drivers on the road have at least a minor lack of sleep. Preventing it (or making it illegal and policing it) is probably impossible. So really you need to compare “at least a minor lack of sleep” to “at least a minor lack of sleep and also enough booze to hit .8%.”
CJO
July 5, 2012 at 5:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Many scholars believe that Job is the oldest book in the Bible, which may go a long to explaining the many of the contradictions, such as Yahweh treating Satan almost as an equal instead of an exiled rebel.
It’s not just one thing. The Book of Job as we have it incorporates a folktale that is probably as old as anything in the Bible, but that is being used more or less as a springboard for the author’s own poetic meditation on theodicy, which is probably from the early Hellenistic period (maybe 4th c. BCE).
Asherah is just one of a number of gods that the ancient Isrealites believed in. Satan was probably a deity at one time and was likely a separate entity form Lucifer. Ba’al and Dagon were probably worshipped by the Israelites at one point as well, given how much space the Old Testament devotes to stamping them out.
In Job, Satan is actually ha’saytan in Hebrew, that’s with a definite article, meaning “the adversary,” and the use of the article means it’s not even being used as a personal name but as a title. It’s not supposed to be a deity, more like an angel or emanation of God, the one who is the adversary of humanity. More Devil’s advocate than Devil (you could just as easily read “prosecutor” for “adversary” to understand the sense of the title in the context of Job).
The name Lucifer being synonymous with Satan as the Devil and the exiled rebel concept were much later developments. As late as the 1st centuries CE in various Jewish circles it was still a major point of contention whether such figures as the “fallen” angels had free will and could be held responsible for the evil in the world or whether they were just doing God’s bidding. Suffice it to say that for the author of Job and for a lot of ancient Jews, the idea that God was a benificent figure was far from obvious.
cag
July 5, 2012 at 6:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As someone whose father was killed by a drunk driver a few minutes after the bars closed (estimated speed 80 mph in a 30 mph zone through a red light (T-boned)) I am less than sympathetic to anyone drinking and driving. I am in favour of zero tolerance. Incidentally, at 0.8% BAC the imbiber would be dead. The limit in many jurisdictions is 0.08% which I consider to be too lenient.
I am also in favour of confiscating any vehicles owned by the perpetrator. If the owner of a trucking company drives drunk, confiscate every owned vehicle, car, truck, motorcycle, boat etc. For those that do not own a vehicle, that should be their state for the rest of their lives. Their driver’s license should also be permanently revoked. As it is now, the consequences are inadequate. Anyone getting behind the wheel when drunk is a hazard to all and until we get serious the danger will remain present.
As far as drinking and driving goes, I am not interested in the punishment fitting the crime, I want the punishment to deter the crime. One life lost to a drunk driver is one too many. Same for drugs.
If you are guilty of driving drunk, stop doing it. The life you save may be that of someone else.
Drunk driving apologists, not interested in your feeble excuses.
Suido
July 5, 2012 at 7:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Scienceavenger and Uncle Glenny
http://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=654172
Abstract:
Alcohol is an intoxicant. As soon as the alcohol hits your bloodstream, you’re driving skills may be impaired. This is dangerous for others around you. What’s not to understand?
Australia has a limit of 0.05%, and having used breathalysers while drinking, I can confidently say that sometimes I feel drunk at 0.02%, other times I feel fine up to 0.1%. Those feelings are subjective, and my own judgement is being impaired as well. Even if you don’t feel drunk, your reaction times, coordination and visual acuity will be off.
There needs to be an arbitrary point, and I think the lower that point is, the better. I would say that 0.05% is the highest limit that is reasonably defensible as safe.
Suido
July 5, 2012 at 8:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Eric #47
I don’t know about other parts of the world and IANAL, but standard procedure as I understand it in Australia is that breathalysers are used pretty much any time you get pulled over, and any positive reading means the driver must return to a police station for a blood test. Refusing to submit to a breathalyser or blood test without suitable medical reasons will not help your cause. The blood test will trump the breathalyser results – if the time it takes to get to the station and have the blood test is enough time for you to drop below .05%, you’ll be free to leave… as long as you haven’t given the cops any other reasons to lock you up ;-)
I think that’s a fairly good way to deal with the accuracy limitations of breathalysers, and allows a little more leeway for borderline cases eg you had a few beers after work and waited an hour before driving home; you’re feeling sober but your BAC may still be around .05%.
thisisaturingtest
July 5, 2012 at 9:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
cag @#52: I hope you won’t think I’m being a “drunk-driving apologist” if I point out that your “punishment to deter the crime” is a rational deterrent which you want to apply to people who, by definition, are not wholly rational at the time they commit their crime. Folks who get behind the wheel of a car when drunk aren’t in a state to consider fully the consequences of their actions. The death penalty isn’t a deterrent because most folks who commit murder don’t think the penalty will ever apply to them- they don’t expect to be caught- and folks who drive drunk aren’t capable of considering the penalty at the time (they surely are beforehand, but that’s gone when the alcohol hits).
That being said, I don’t think I’d disagree with your proposed punishments- but only as individual punishments that would fit the individual crimes. Zero tolerance of a crime, and draconian punishment on that basis, is one thing; realistic expectation of zero incidence of that crime is another; and I’m not sure unrealistic expectations should drive public policy on crime prevention (I’d at least be very cautious with it). Maybe a better approach would be a way to prevent the crime by preventing the particular incident. Just science-fiction blue-skying here, but…I can see a future car that would have some way of measuring the driver’s BAC, and either starting or not, as the case may justify. I know that’s completely unrealistic now- just an idea I’m throwing out as an indication of the direction I’m suggesting.
cag
July 5, 2012 at 11:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
thisisaturingtest #55, please understand that this is an emotional response of what I hope for, not expect. The crime of drunk driving is made more heinous by the fact that the perpetrator is usually sober at the time that they drive to the pub/bar/party. That is the time that the rational decision should be made. Failure to make the right decision when sober makes it imperative that the penalty be so severe and the chance of detection so high that it has a much higher deterrence effect than what is now the norm. Like everything else, it will be impossible to get 100% compliance, but that is no reason to carry on as normal.
I’m against jailing these individuals except in the most egregious cases. High fines, along with confiscation of their vehicles are preferable to having the taxpayer pick up the tab.
As long as politicians drink and drive I expect that the laws will not get serious about this crime which resulted in about 30 deaths a day just in the USA. This is higher that the rate for gun related murder in the USA (see table 310). This is a serious problem which cannot be solved by accommodation.
thisisaturingtest
July 6, 2012 at 7:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
cag- yes, I understand the emotion. I share it to a degree. I had a stepdaughter, a few years ago, who I dearly loved, killed in an accident in which alcohol was suspected. The only thing I disagreed with you about was the deterrence value of the punishment; and I guess that would be a hard thing to prove one way or the other. As far as the severity of the punishment, I’m in general agreement with you; so, the deterrent value may be an academic question only anyway. BTW- thanks for the links. I collect those; you never know when any given one may come in handy.
Uncle Glenny
July 6, 2012 at 7:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Suido:
I believe most cops here in the US do not carry breathalyzers (except I assume at checkpoints); they would perform a field sobriety test, and then deal (take you in, call for backup, I suppose) and then do it. Then, I believe, they (presumably the prosecution) would attempt to back-calculate the BAL by assuming a rate of clearance from the body. There are some potentially serious inaccuracies that can be introduced by both of these, thus I share Eric’s concern, especially as I’ve lived in the situation where due to my schedule and type of car it was great sport for cops, both the Massachusetts state police and the local Lexington police, to just tailgate me to pass the time. The state police would occasionally ticket me for speeding when I was certain I wasn’t; the locals would pull me over and more likely simply say I had swerved, or there had been a report of a sports car stolen (no description), or I was carrying my bicycle home on the car and they wanted to make sure I hadn’t stolen it off someone’s porch, then let me go. (They once pulled me over when I was bicycling home in the wee hours, claiming someone had seen a prowler at the Toyota dealership, and searched my backpack for a toyota; I let them because it had dirty dishes and laundry – including underwear – in it.) I’ve never had to get out of the car or do a field sobriety test or anything like that. The number of times I’ve driven near the limit in 38 years of driving probably can be counted on fingers of one hand, and it was only because the person who was supposed to be driving couldn’t handle my car due to inclement weather.
As to the typo of “0.8%” I may have exceeded this after an almost-successful suicide attempt, as my BAL was measured by blood test at 682 mg/dL (0.682%) many hours after I had passed out, albeit without taking the pills I had intended to. I’m classified as disabled.
cag:
I can understand your emotional response. In the early 1960s my father was put into the hospital and his car was totaled by a collision – in a supermarket parking lot. Somewhere around that same era his sister and her son were in an accident and killed. I was pretty young (5 or 6) so didn’t understand the seriousness of the former, and my aunt and cousin just kind of vanished. I’m pretty sure the former involved alcohol, and (later told by my maternal grandmother) know the latter did.
I was once getting a ride from a friend, and while stopped at a traffic light, we got rear-ended so hard the seats we were in broke. The car was old and totaled. He sped off, but a bystander had IDed the car. Drunk driver; I don’t know if his license was already suspended.
I was once leaving the office very late at night and just missed seeing an idiot take an off ramp too fast and flip his car. This was Cambridge, bottom of the Longfellow bridge. He got out of the car, bleeding, hopped two low fences and two pairs of subway tracks with live third rail and made for the pay phones in a panic to call his lawyer. Definitely drunk. I left and let the security guard(s) handle it.
Neither of the above two were rational or deterred.
Nor had been the defendant of a DUI, not her first, the one time I almost sat on a jury (she didn’t show and we were dismissed).
Nor had been the people I met in rehab who were there to show a judge they were cleaning up their acts. Nor some of the people I saw at AA meetings who had to get proof they attended. Maybe some of these guys would clean up, maybe they were only first offenders, maybe they hadn’t caused injury. Maybe they’d stay scared enough to be deterred, at least.
Maybe because I grew up gay, repressed, and feeling like outsider when I did, I was a liberal before I knew what it meant; the town my parents lived in as of when I left for college put in zoning regulations (the no opposite sex unrelated adults living together sort) expressly to keep out hippies. As I learned that sometimes beating up queers is worth a stern admonishment.
I certainly don’t want to be the one who gets pulled over on the moral equivalent of a Driving While Black and loses everything because due to a combination error, miscalculation, and hyperbole I’m found to be legally drunk due to those two glasses of wine I had at the Handel and Haydn Society reception two hours ago.
Especially if I’m on a bicycle.
That stuff I mentioned about sleep vs. alcohol: there are also issues of age, and different people really do have circadian rhythms that sync differently.
Sorry for helping to drive this off the topic of the original post. I don’t really have a good answer for a BAL cutoff. At what point is the epsilonic improvement of lowering it pointless because it’s in the noise with respect to other unavoidable variation?
Maybe I should go to bed.
scienceavenger
July 6, 2012 at 10:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Suido, thanks, that was the kind of information I was looking for. And yes, I meant 0.08%, not 0.8%. My point was, from a casual observation of the political discussions on the subject, it seemed our public policy was based more on the understandably emotional and devastated reactions of the victims of drunk driving (all my sympathies Cag) rather than sound science. (I know, law not based on science, go figure). It’s nice to see its not as arbitrary as it had seemed.
Am I the only one that doesn’t understand why, if drunk driving is illegal, and one can get drunk in a bar one drives to, why it isn’t mandatory that bars have a functioning breathalizer for drivers to use to make sure they aren’t breaking the law? I know some goofballs would take that as a challenge, but our current situation is akin to having speed limits but no speedometers. And for that matter, if we are really concerned with drunk driving, why aren’t cops sitting outside bars at closing time and shooting fish in a barrel?
Oh, and my summary of Job is the same as the first poster’s: God is an asshole. How anyone could read that book and come away loving and worshipping Yahweh boggles the mind.