It wasn't his car. It wasn't his keys. It wasn't his alcohol. He wasn't a passenger.
But this guy was charged with manslaughter, vehicular homicide, and other counts because he allowed his friend to drive while intoxicated, and that friend subsequently got into a head-on accident which killed a person in the other car, and himself.
Basically, he's being charged because he didn't take more action against his drunken friend. It's understandable on a moral and practical level.
But criminal charges?
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
_*THE CAT'S MEOW!*_
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
at least his liver didn't make alcohol. Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
_*THE CAT IS BARKING, THE CAT IS BARKING*_
Why is the cat barking? I don't know.
Posted by Magnus Pym Eye (Member # 239) on :
"And the dog came in and he smelled the carpet, and everbody said "WHY'S THE DOG SMELLING THE CARPET?!"."
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Powell's attorneys said police did not warn him adequately that Pangle should not be allowed to drive."
The guy was arrested for drunk driving, and he had to be told that the guy shouldn't drive? So, their arguement is that their client is a complete idiot?
As for that guy in the other article... If his liver really is putting out alcohol into his blood, and he knows about it, then he's still guilty. I mean, DWI is DWI, regardless of how the alcohol got there. If someone injected ethanol straight into their veins, they could go driving and excuse themselves by saying that they were okay since they hadn't had anything to drink.
Posted by Colorful Cartman (Member # 256) on :
quote:In July 2000, Kenneth Powell, 40, allowed his friend, Michael Pangle, to drive after he had been arrested for driving while intoxicated.
Pangle had been arrested. I therefore presume that he was taken into custody. So, I mean: "?"
Once again, we've stepped onto the slippery slope of personal responsibility and accountability. What was the guy supposed to do, put his friend in a straitjacket?
I smell worms.
[ August 10, 2002, 07:26: Message edited by: Colorful Cartman ]
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
The courts have ruled before that people have an ethical responsibility to uphold the law. Also, although at first I was like "why didn't the police keep him?" many departments aren't ALLOWED to keep someone after they've been charged and bail is posted. The big factor here was with the jurisdiction's system of keeping tabs on vehicles. Baltimore City, for example, will not release a vehicle used in a DWI offense until the next day. Baltimore County impounds vehicles at a private lot, and vehicles are released when the owner or a friend shows up -- and more often then not, that makes it a lot easier for the drunk to get right behind the wheel.
The sober friend knew his other friend was drunk. He made a poor decision, and he deserves to be charged with a crime.
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
And before I get TOO serious ...
_*SNAY!!!*_
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Oh, I agree that the guy was an idiot, if he let the drunk guy drive. But charging him with a crime like that would mean, in my mind, that he pulled the trigger. Or drove the car, whatever. He didn't.
A citizen is supposed to uphold the law, yes. But how can he be held responsible for some other man's actions? I'm sure he wasn't a legal guardian of the other man, or something like that. What was he supposed to do, knock him out? Shoot him in the leg to keep him from getting in the car? There's only so much you can do...
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"I'm sure he wasn't a legal guardian of the other man, or something like that."
But he was. He was the one who picked his friend up from the police station, and the police told him to take his friend home. He didn't.
"What was he supposed to do, knock him out?"
He was supposed to drive the guy back to his house, not back to his car.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Hmmm.
Hmmmmmm....
Okay, I may have to change my mind on this. I certainly don't claim to be an expert on the law, especially regarding the consumption of alcohol in excessive quantities and in public.
Considering that the drunk guy had been picked up for DUI and public drunkenness, etc, it's certainly reasonable to assume that he was not in his right mind. Therefore, the friend who picked him up should have taken him home. And you're probably right that legally, the drunk guy was in his care.
The problem as far as I see it is still that he's being charged with vehicular homicide. In my mind, you get charged with a crime if you did something. Powell wasn't driving the car. Shouldn't he be charged with being an accessory or something, instead? Or maybe criminal negligence? I could understand those...
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
An interesting article on the subject.
Posted by Kosh (Member # 167) on :
quote: (Snip)... Powell agreed, and when he arrived at the police barracks, a trooper gave him directions for getting from there to the arrest site, where the drunk driver's car was parked.
Powell followed the directions and dropped off his friend, to whom police had already returned his car keys, at his parked car. (snip)
Looks like the police were just as guilty.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Okay. Charge them, too.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Woah woah woah! Okay, I hereby reverse my conversion on this issue.
The POLICE gave the DRUNK GUY the car keys. With that comes the implicit understanding that the drunk guy was going to go pick up his car and then drive off. Never mind the friend coming to pick him up, or the directions from the station to the car. If the police handed the drunk guy the keys, then there would be no clear-cut reason for the friend to NOT take him back to his car. Sure, common sense would suggest not taking the guy back to his car until later. But wouldn't one expect the police to have this kind of common sense also? In a situation such as that, I would almost certainly follow the judgment of a police officer, and follow his/her instructions.
A breathalyzer registered the guy at 0.21??? Good grief, I thought that police generally held people in that stage of inebriation overnight to let them "sleep it off" first. Wouldn't that guy have been liable to be charged with public drunkenness if he'd been picked up again, even if he was just walking home?
And this, THIS is the most damning paragraph of all:
quote:Were the intoxicated driver alive, it is unlikely that anyone would have considered charging Kenneth Powell in connection with the collision. With the true culprit dead, however, the only apparent way to hold someone criminally responsible was to prosecute Powell.
I wish I could've put this into words earlier. Basically, the prosecutors are trying to appease the family of the victim in the other car, to "prove" that they're "tough" on drunk drivers. Which is laudable in and of itself... until they make someone else into a scapegoat, just to prove their point.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
The guy would have needed his keys for things other than driving. Such as, say, to get into his house.
Posted by Colorful Cartman (Member # 256) on :
quote:Powell followed the directions and dropped off his friend, to whom police had already returned his car keys, at his parked car.
quote:As defense attorneys were quick to point out, however, it was the police who put the car keys in the hands of a man registering a .21 on a breath test for alcohol.
Must've been master keys.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: The guy would have needed his keys for things other than driving. Such as, say, to get into his house.
Well, if the guy were still drunk, they should've given the keys to his FRIEND, who would then drive the guy home, open the door for him, and get him inside. And then go get the car after the owner had recovered from his hangover.
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
quote:A breathalyzer registered the guy at 0.21??? Good grief, I thought that police generally held people in that stage of inebriation overnight to let them "sleep it off" first. Wouldn't that guy have been liable to be charged with public drunkenness if he'd been picked up again, even if he was just walking home?
Although the police certainly do *appear* to be in error, keep in mind that they are governed by a wide selection of laws -- Federal, state, and local. No two departments do things the same way, even in the same state. Baltimore City, for example, tows DWI offenders’ vehicles to a city-run lot, where it won’t be released for at least 12 hours, regardless of why it was towed. Baltimore County, OTOH, tows vehicles to private lots, and nothing forbids the private lot from releasing the vehicle at any specific time period (outside their own operating hours). Some jurisdictions don’t tow vehicles at all, and many rural areas have five or six agencies operating the same juridiction which can make things all messed up -- even urban areas have lots of agencies -- Baltimore City alone has six agencies running around: Maryland Transit Police, Maryland State Police, Baltimore City Police, Department of Corrections, Baltimore Sheriff’s Office, Housing Police.
The Transit Police, of course, have jurisdiction on all MTA property, plus any traffic violations. State Police have state-wide jurisdiction, but mainly stick to the highways in the urban and suburban areas of Maryland. The Sheriff’s Office in Baltimore is mostly responsible for security at the court, and transfer of prisoners. The Corrections Dept runs the jails. The Housing Police used to only have jurisdiction in the projects, but they were recently given city-wide jurisdiction. Anyway, the whole point of this little “lesson” was to show how confusing it can be to determine what happens to a vehicle, depending either on the agency doing the arrest or the jurisdiction it occurs in.
A friend of mine is a Transit Officer, and hates DWI arrests -- why? Because depending on whether he’s in Baltimore County, Baltimore City, or Ann Arundel County, he’s got to do the arrest three different ways!
Okay, back to the topic.
This is what ArizonaDO, an officer from AZ had to say on the matter on an LEO board I post on:
quote:If a bond amount is set and the inmate has the ability to post it, you have to let him/her go. That is like refusing a judges court order to relase someone from custody. We release dangerous persons from jail everyday on bond, we can't say to them "hey, didn't you murder that little old lady with a claw hammer the other day? oh, screw that, I am not letting you out." It just does not work that way. Remember the eighth amendment?, No cruel and unusual punshment...no bond set to high etc. etc.. If the people or law makers feel that it is a truly dangerous issue, they need to set a no bond on DUI's. Kind of the same deal as domestic violence charges, no release until you talk to a judge. You can't expect police departments or jails to make up the rules as they go along. The rules and policies are set forth by elected persons, the police are there to enforce the rules and policies placed upon them.
H8Criminals, a Park Police officer, said:
quote:Hmmm ... as an officer, my view on this ... I'm not sure if I agree with Manslaughter, however, I do think there should be SOME kind of penalty. Even "failure to obey a lawful order of a police officer" may do, if NJ has that charge. I've heard of bartenders getting charged with things for continuing to serve drunk persons at the bars if that person got in to an accident. I've heard of party hosts getting in trouble for the same thing. Had the friend followed the request of the officers to "take care of the subject" or to "take him home," and THEN the guy left and got back to his car his own way, then it's different. If the friend brought him immediately back to his vehicle, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to smell him and realize there's probably a reason he was supposed to bring him home.
This about makes the point. It wasn’t the PD’s fault. It was the idiot friend who decided his drunk friend could drive even though he knew he was drunk.
Posted by Kosh (Member # 167) on :
quote: The guy would have needed his keys for things other than driving. Such as, say, to get into his house.
They kept my keys overnight when I was arrested, and I wasn't intoxicated. I had to go to the police station the next morning and ask for my house keys. They acted like they were doing me a favor returning them then.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Personally, I keep all my keys on one ring. I got outer Yale, outer deadlock, inner Yale, inner deadlock, my parent's front door (I have four keys to get into the house, they have one; yes, I do live in a city and they live in the country, how'd you guess?), car steering wheel lock and car key. I don't even bother having some sort of fancy keyring anymore, it'd be too bulky.
Now, on two occasions I've had to remove the car key from the bunch in the past fortnight: once at the airport long-term car park for valet parking, the other today when I took my car to be MOT'ed. It's the work of a few seconds but it requires two hands, and how many police officers are going to bother when they're dealing with a drunk-driving asshole (which is actually a redundancy - all drunk-drivers are assholes)?
Like so much else in life, the whole situation has arisen from a chain of unfortunate occurrences. I don't think the friend should get away without any sort of punishment, but it's no good blaming the whole sorry mess on him.
That can wait until the inevitable civil action which will undoubtedly be brought by the victim's family. B)
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Snay, thanks for posting those responses. That clarifies things a bit as far as the PD letting the guy go. Question, though -- Did he actually have to post bail? Wouldn't he have to go before a judge for bail to be set? I assumed that he was just being released after being booked, or whatever. (Can you tell I don't have much of a clue about how law enforcement works in that area? ) And I would've thought that in cases like that, where a person was clearly still drunk and a potential danger (they guy had a 0.21 BAC, so he HAD to have been obviously drunk), then I don't see why they couldn't have held him overnight. I thought that was what most PD's did with drunks anyway.
Anyway, I certainly have no problem with that friend getting nailed with a civil lawsuit. They guy certainly was an idiot and deserves to get hit with hefty penalties, but I still don't agree with criminal charges.
Wery interesting...
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Y'know, I hadn't thought of that. He would have to have a bond hearing before he could be bailed out. I didn't think they did that that quickly.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
According to my lawyer, on a misdemeanor, one can be "cited out" without a bail hearing. This is, as I understand, something like a traffic citation where one is promising to appear in court at a given time in the future.
Posted by ThoughtPyminal (Member # 480) on :
Jesus. Why don't they just ban alcohol again? Let's cut it off at the head, people, get at it before it ruins anymore lives...
More seriously: I don't know how the rest of the human race behaves under the influence of alcohol...but I can say that even though I have been so plastered I couldn't remember my own name, I remembered not to drive anywhere. Also: I have never broken any limbs whilst partaking (a favorite excuse back in school for kids who got royally fucked up on the weekends and came back in full body casts: "I got drunk and FELL. Hahahahaha.")...nor have I raped any young women or assaulted innocents, robbed banks or hijacked any monorails.
It's called "self-control". I learned it from Saved By the Bell, goddamn it. If the Preppie can learn his lesson, so can I.
Posted by Colorful Cartman (Member # 256) on :
You had to learn self-control by watching that horrible moralistic excuse for a teenshow? Poor man, didn't your folks ever tell you SbtB was hazardous to your mental health?
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Zack is God. Do not argue on this point.
It's an interesting thing actually, and one I'd like to do a psychological study on. If I were a psychologist. How comes some people lose all self control when drunk and decide "I can drive! I can beat up people twice my size!" and other idiotic things, and others can get absolutly completely plasered and yet still be together enough to know not to drive, not to start fights, and to go to the toilet before they get in bed?
Personally, if I'm going for a drink, I don't take my car with me. I'd just have to pick it up in the morning anyway.
Just to clear up confusion, like Lee I have all my keys on one key ring. When this article says "car keys", is it likely to be spiecifically referring to his car keys, or is it typical in the US to carry all your keys on one ring, and "car keys" is only being used descriptively here rather than "his keys with included those to his car"?
Posted by Colorful Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Gah! If we're gonna compare deities, Screech wins hands down. No contest.
I figure it's a biochemical thingy. Something like a natural immunity to alcohol that's hardcoded into your DNA. I'd kill for a couple of THOSE mutant genes.
[ August 16, 2002, 06:24: Message edited by: Colorful Cartman ]
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
But it's not "immunity" to alcohol, per se. I still get drunk. Other people I know still get drunk. They then attemt to jump over bollards, fail, and whack themselves in the bollocks with hilarious consquences.
But they'd still never consider driving.
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
quote:I raped any young women
So, you rape young men ... ?
Liam: most people have their keys on the same ring. I have in the past kept my car keys on a detacheable ring from the rest of my keys.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Someone denying that they do something does not make the opposite true Jeff.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Jeff: So, when you say you don't intentionally try to kill deer, you mean that you intentionally try to kill sheep?
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
No, TSN, what I mean when I say "I don't intentionally kill deer" is that "I intentionally try and run down TSN but I never see him."
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
*sigh* Some people are just hopeless. . . Hint: The mountain roads you're driving along while on this quest - well, that's not a mountain it's going round. 8)
![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
) And I would've thought that in cases like that, where a person was clearly still drunk and a potential danger (they guy had a 0.21 BAC, so he HAD to have been obviously drunk), then I don't see why they couldn't have held him overnight. I thought that was what most PD's did with drunks anyway.