Too ill to go to jail...?

[Ping898]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061120/ap_on_re_us/market_accident

LOS ANGELES - An 89-year-old man whose car hurtled through a farmers market, killing 10 people, was let off on probation Monday by a judge who said he believed the defendant deserved to go prison but was too ill.
....
George Russell Weller was convicted Oct. 20 of 10 counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence in a case that renewed debate over whether elderly people should lose their driver's licenses.
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Weller could have received up to 18 years in prison, but the judge said Weller's health problems, including severe heart disease, would make him a burden on prison authorities and taxpayers, and that imprisonment would most likely kill Weller.

Does this send the wrong message? Commit a crime when you are old and ill and there are minimal reprocussions? Not to mention it feels like tells all the other old folks out there who should have had their liscences revoked years ago that there is little penalty for continuing to drive even if you kill someone....
It seems to me, even if he is ill, if he has been convicted of 10 counts of manslaughter he deserves some jail time even if it is nominal, even if it kills him. Not like he gave the 10 people he killed much of a chance....

 

[Rich Parsons]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061120/ap_on_re_us/market_accident



Does this send the wrong message? Commit a crime when you are old and ill and there are minimal reprocussions? Not to mention it feels like tells all the other old folks out there who should have had their liscences revoked years ago that there is little penalty for continuing to drive even if you kill someone....
It seems to me, even if he is ill, if he has been convicted of 10 counts of manslaughter he deserves some jail time even if it is nominal, even if it kills him. Not like he gave the 10 people he killed much of a chance....

While I honestly think it could send the wrong message, but I have been following this and the judge stated that it would be an unecessary burden to the prison system and the taxpayers to start picking up his health care as part of his decision making process. I think he honestly did not mean to do it, and even those who lost family members or survived the accident were not calling for him to go to prison. This makes a big difference.

i.e. I was a witness the a pick-up truck and full size car accident. The driver of the car ended up dying later at the hospital, so I was subpoenaed to go to court and testify in a vehiclur man-slaughter case. I had to give my testimony first to the ADA with the surviving spouse in the room. The case was of one way streets at an intersection that caused four intersections. I turned left on a red from one street to another, just behind the truck. I looked up and the light he was going to go through no way he could stop was red. There was a car coming the other way (* not visible do to tall building with no windows *). Intersection was about 150 to 175 feet apart from one to the other. The lights have always been in sync when ever I was through there before. After my testimony and questioning in the court room by the ADA, the Judge started to ask me questions, before the defendants attorney could. Then the defendant's lawyer asked me questions. When all was said and done, the surviving spouse was sad and grieved over loosing her husband, but she also understood that it was an accident, and that the man had already spent time in jail and had paid fines, and health care costs, and ..., so she asked the court/judge for time served to be his punishment. the judge gave him time served, with probation and community service and court costs, as well as an order for restitution of cost of health care (* which he had paid what he could already, by taking a second mortgage on his home, and had laid out a plan to pay the rest, but this made it legally his responsisbility. *) She did not have to do this, but as she saw the person's grief over the death of another and was not sure what else he could, she also did not want to take another wife's husband away for an accident.

So, while each case is unique and it should be judged as so, it could most definitly send a bad message.