The death penalty can be applied in few instances. Federally, murder, treason/espionage and train wrecking. Of the 35 states that have the death penalty the applicable crimes are generally first degree murder with some aggravating factor but also include drug offense, child sexual assault and train wrecking.
Traditionally the purpose of the death penalty has been to punish the most severe offenders who endanger us all, remove from society the most dangerous offenders who seem unlikely to reform, and to be a deterrent to potential offenders. In reality though it is not a deterrent and has more often been used as a tool of political retribution, political aspirations or to achieve a social policy.
Pope John Paul II has declared the Church's near total opposition to the death penalty. In his encyclical "Evangelium Vitae" (The Gospel of Life) issued March 25, 1995 after four years of consultations with the world's Roman Catholic bishops, John Paul II wrote that execution is only appropriate "in cases of absolute necessity, in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvement in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically nonexistent." Until this encyclical, the death penalty was viewed as sometimes permissible as a means of protecting society. The universal catechism--book of rules--for Catholics had affirmed the right of the state to punish criminals with appropriate penalties "not excluding in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty."
I am not wanting to present any view on the death penalty itself. Rather, all I want to do today is make a comparative analysis or a case for why drunk driving should be elevated to death penalty status.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration projects the number of traffic fatalities in 2009 to be an estimated 33,963 people in motor vehicle traffic crashes. This represents a decline of about 8.9 percent as compared to the 37,261 fatalities that occurred in 2008. In 2008 alcohol related fatalities accounted for 32% of overall deaths. Of those about 60% were single person wrecks or the drunk driver died in a one car wreck without passengers. This results in about 5,000 innocent victims of drunk drivers in 2008.
Although a dispatcher tried to warn the engineer of a California commuter train that he was about to collide with a freight train the call came too late. The crash killed 25 people on 14 September 2008. It was the deadliest passenger train crash since Sept. 22, 1993, when Amtrak's Sunset Limited plunged off a trestle into a bayou near Mobile, Alabama, moments after the trestle was damaged by a towboat; 47 people were killed.
Neither of these wrecks were intentional sabotage. However, on 15 March 1999 in Bourbonnais, Illinois the southbound Amtrak City of New Orleans, traveling at approximately 80 miles per hour slammed into a semi-trailer truck loaded with steel concrete reinforcing bar (rebar) at a grade crossing and derailed. An ensuing fire sets one Superliner sleeper car ablaze. 11 were killed and over 100 were injured. It was subsequently determined that the truck driver had ignored the grade crossing signals and drove around the lowered gates. Certainly this was careless but didn't rise to the level of intentional sabotage.
As you can see the number of deaths attributable to train wrecks in general and as intentional acts is quite small compared to the 5000 or so innocent victims of drunk drivers.
In looking at the justification for the death penalty in cop killing cases the justification is made that a person who would kill a cop is a danger to us all. That may very well be true. The offender who kills a cop, who knew the risks of his job, that was trying to apprehend that offender on a warrant that could result in a life sentence may be a danger to us all. However, he could be your peaceful neighbor who had often helped you but resisted possible life incarceration with deadly force.
There is a distinction between the "cat backed into a corner" offender and the drunk driver. The drunk driver who kills did not set his sights upon a particular individual; a former spouse, a rival gang member or someone threatening his or her liberty. The drunk driver kills randomly and does it 5000 times a year. Every child at a school bus stop. Every parent walking his or her children along the sidewalk. Every driver on the road. All of these people are at risk of being the next victim much like being at the mercy of a sniper perched on a rooftop shooting randomly.
The point of terrorism is to make a populace feel unsafe. Unsure whether at anytime they will randomly be struck down; sitting in a coffee shop, working in an office building, crowded in an arena watching a sporting event. How did you feel following 9-11? Were you terrorized? Did you think that it was possible that you could be the next victim because you didn't know what method, location or time would be next on a terrorist's list?
This is the way it is with drunk drivers. We don't know what location will be next. We don't know when it will happen. We don't know who the target will be. The only thing we know is that somewhere today a drunk driver will strike and kill using a vehicle and that it will happen multiple times. This is terrorism.
Train wrecks are rare, deaths in wrecks rarer and deaths in intentional train wrecks even rarer. Drunk driving deaths are common. So common that we may not even think that every 8 months another 9-11 occurs where that many people are killed by terrorists.
It is time then that drunk driving resulting in the death of a person be a death penalty offense in parity with other acts that the death penalty is applied to. It will never happen though.
Recall that in the recent past fear-mongers rallying around a government bailout of a failing business entity said that if that ONE auto manufacturer was allowed to fail that 10% of the US economy would fail. There is more than one auto maker in the US. Imagine if the death penalty started being handed out more times each year to automobile drivers than in all cases in the history of the United States.
That may cause many people to quit driving vehicles and leave the driving to trains and buses. That is not a jolt that the US economy is likely to take easily. Financially and politically it is better to allow 5000 innocent people, be it your mother or child, to continue to die annually than to allow the US economy to suffer a financial set-back and suffer the political consequences.
5000 dead people don't vote (unless in Lake County) but millions out out-of-work people do. Welcome to the reality of politics.
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