Sunday, June 4, 2023

Conflicted About Sentences

I'm not an attorney and I don't understand the ins and outs of sentencing guidelines. I also don't believe prison is the way to solve the problem of criminality.

But I do believe in consistency, and that motor vehicles are dangerous weapons, even though the law doesn't seem to understand that well enough.

I'm writing this because of four recent convictions of people for killing other people with their cars/SUVs and getting what appears to be disparate "justice."

Minnesota has several statutes that could cover this circumstance. They are, from least to most serious:

  • Criminal vehicular homicide: According to statute, sentences can be not more than 10 years or require payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both. It requires causing death with a vehicle, which can be the result of a number of factors (alcohol use or controlled substances) or knowingly driving a defective vehicle. It also has the catch-all "in a grossly negligent manner" and leaving the scene.
  • Manslaughter 2: This carries the same level of penalty as CVH: a sentence of not more than 10 years or payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both. Its description includes phrases like "culpable negligence," "unreasonable risk" and "consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another." (The fact that CVH and manslaughter 2 have the same penalties in statute make me wonder why CVH exists: is it because it's hard to convince juries to convict drivers of a crime called manslaughter?)
  • Manslaughter 1: The maximum sentence is 15 years and the fine $30,000. It includes this among its reasons for a guilty verdict: "causes the death of another in committing or attempting to commit a misdemeanor or gross misdemeanor offense with such force and violence that death of or great bodily harm to any person was reasonably foreseeable." So if a person is driving in such a way that they're also committing a misdemeanor, it seems as though this would apply.
  • Murder 3: The maximum sentence is 25 years. The first clause describing the crime is this: "Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life..." (emphasis added).

Now I'm going to tell you about three crashes that happened in Minnesota in the past few years. See if you can tell which level of crime each driver was found guilty of, and which sentence each one got.

Story 1
A 40-year-old unlicensed driver (man) ran a red light in Minneapolis at 85mph on a 30mph street. His blood alcohol level was .236%, vs. the legal limit of .08 in Minnesota. He killed a 22-year-old man.

At the time, the driver's license was revoked. He had a 2019 conviction for drunken driving (when his blood alcohol was .19%). At that time, he rear-ended a car at red light. He got a six-month jail sentence but it was set aside; he was on probation for two years (which probably ended not long before his lethal crash, if my date calculations are correct).

Story 2
A 26-year-old unlicensed driver (man), ran a red light in Minneapolis going 75mph on a 30mph street. His blood alcohol level was almost twice the Minnesota limit. According to a Star Tribune story, he "never had a Minnesota driver's license before the crash, according to the state Department of Public Safety. Since April 2018, he has been convicted five times for driving without a license in Minnesota — once while traveling 104 mph in a 50 mph zone — once for auto theft and once for fleeing police in a vehicle." His 75mph crash killed a 24-year-old woman who was on her way home. She held two jobs: a doctor's assistant at the University of Minnesota hospital and a pancreatic cancer researcher at the University. She was preparing for a career in medicine.

Story 3
A 17-year-old brother and 19-year-old sister, driving two different cars, each with a passenger, were side by side at a red light in Burnsville (a suburb south of Minneapolis). The brother told the sister he wanted to see whose car could get to 50mph first. They raced out of the light and went a lot faster than 50: he was going 93–100mph when he ran a red light and crashed into an SUV that had the right of way. One story about the situation said "He saw the SUV in plenty of time to avoid a collision but chose instead to speed through the intersection in hopes of avoiding a crash." The SUV held a 22-year-old couple from a nearby town; they were killed instantly.

The 19-year-old sister, driving the other car, did not hit the SUV, and in the stories I saw, her car's top speed was never reported.

What happened in their cases?

None of these are people I want driving on a street near me. 

Unfortunately, our country has organized itself so that having access to a car is almost essential to participate in a meaningful way. People with revoked licenses drive all the time because they feel as though they have to; and licenses are suspended for spurious reasons, too (remembering the case of Philando Castile).

The outcomes of their criminal cases should be fairly consistent, however. They all killed one or more people. They all behaved in clearly negligent ways.

But the outcomes are not.

Story 1: The revoked, very drunk 40-year-old who was going 85mph pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular homicide–gross negligence and will probably be sentenced to four years. His final sentencing hasn't happened yet; his victim's family is objecting (not a surprise!).

Story 2: The never-licensed, drunk 26-year-old with the extensive record who was going 75mph pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular homicide. The prosecution asked for 4–5 years (which is the current guideline, despite the statute), but the judge sentenced him to 3.5. "Judge Lisa Janzen acknowledged during sentencing Spencer's acceptance of responsibility and his genuine remorse in deciding on a term near the lower of state sentencing guidelines..." His defense attorney made him sound like a model for reform, despite his recent record. He will be out in less than 2 years. In his case, I particularly don't understand the light sentence because the CVH statute includes an additional sentencing guideline for people (like him!):

(b) If a person is sentenced under paragraph (a) for a violation under paragraph (a), clauses (2) to (6), occurring within ten years of a qualified prior driving offense, the statutory maximum sentence of imprisonment is 15 years.

His victim's father is also not accepting of this outcome.

Story 3: The 17-year-old (now 19-year-old) street racer pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in the third degree. Dakota County prosecutors attempted to try him as an adult, but the judge denied their application, which means:

[his] sentence includes probation until he turns 21, a "long-term" stay in the Red Wing juvenile facility and other conditions. His stayed, 25-year adult jail sentence will not be imposed unless he violates his extended juvenile probation.

His sister, however, took her case to a jury before her brother made his plea deal. She was found guilty of two counts of third degree murder, plus two of CVH, one of criminal vehicular operation resulting in great bodily harm, and one of careless driving. The judge sentenced her to 15 years; with credit for time she has already served, she is "expected to serve nearly 9¾ years in prison and the balance on supervised release."

It seems wrong to me that being drunk is a legal excuse that gets you a lighter sentence when you kill someone. Driving 45 or 55mph above the speed limit on a city street and running a red light meets the definition of eminently dangerous, depraved mind, and without regard to human life even if you're drunk.

I note that most of the statutes related to killing someone have a clause about drugs: if you sell or otherwise transfer a drug to another person and it kills them, you are guilty of third degree murder! It doesn't seem to make an exception for people who do that when they are on drugs themselves. But alcohol makes you less guilty.

I don't know enough about the specifics of the Bloomington sister's case to be sure, but it seems additionally wrong to me that the only person who didn't directly kill anyone is the one who will serve the most time — by far. 

She's also the only one who took her case to trial. The pressure to plead guilty in our system of "justice" is bad in many ways, and the comparison of these four cases' sentences shows part of how that pressure is a reality, whether you are guilty or not.



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