Earlier this week, State Supreme Court Justice M. William Boller handed out two sentences to two women, both accused of driving drunk with children in the car. One received jail time, while one did not.
Indeed, the two cases did have their differences.
The first woman had her three children in the car while drunk and currently is undergoing alcoholism counseling. She was convicted of a misdemeanor and faces 30 more days in jail after spending several weeks in jail earlier this year.
The second woman, who was under the influence of drugs with her three-year-old son in the car, has pled guilty to the Leandra's Law felony, which makes it an automatic felony for a DWI or DUI with children who are 15 or under in the vehicle. Although she was fined (the first woman was fined as well) and sentenced to community service, she received no jail time.
We realize that the court system in the United States is subjective and that judges are paid to make their own judgments based on the facts of each individual case. It seems ridiculous, however, that a misdemeanor charge warrants jail time, while a felony charge doesn't, despite the cases being remarkably similar.
It appears that the second woman's attorney was able to work the system to arrange a plea deal that didn't involve jail time. The first woman, however, had little wiggle room due to her suspect record of alcoholism and treatment.
These specific cases, however, highlights a larger issue.
For all that New York State is trying to do, through advertisements and police crackdowns, to deter people from drinking and driving, the way that people are punished in the courtroom seems quite arbitrary. Additionally, it appears that the more people you know, or the more people you pay your lawyer to know, the easier it is to get out of any serious consequences.
We're all familiar with the situation where you get pulled over for speeding or running through a stop sign. A friend of your family happens to be a police officer or high-ranking official in that town, and all of a sudden that person becomes your uncle. After simply dropping a name, you're free to go.
That happens often (probably every day), but a lot of times, people aren't as lucky to know the right name to drop or have a lawyer with connections in that town. A speeding ticket may not be such a big deal, but with a DWI conviction, which has the potential to affect the rest of one's life, shouldn't the process be a little less arbitrary and fairer across the board?
The answer is yes, it should.
However, as long as the punishment process is left in the hands of judges and police officers, things won't change much. Legislators can try as they might to make the process completely fair and objective, but the truth is that the nature of the system will never allow that to happen.
