Drunken driver who snapped photo going 141 mph before deadly collision imprisoned for 17 years
Darryl Anderson was drunk behind the wheel of his Audi SUV, had his accelerator pressed to the floor and was barreling toward a car ahead of him when he snapped a photo of his speedometer. The picture showed a car in the foreground, a collision warning light on his dashboard and a speed of 141 mph (227 kph).
An instant later, he slammed into the car in the photo. The driver, Shalorna Warner, was not seriously injured but her 8-month-old son and her sister were killed instantly, authorities said. Evidence showed Anderson never braked.
Anderson, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years in prison for the May 31 crash in northern England that killed little Zackary Blades and Karlene Warner. Anderson pleaded guilty last week in Durham Crown Court to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.
Bad drivers need harsher punishments if you ask me.
17 years is a seriously life-altering prison sentence sentence.
Quite frankly, this flavor of irresponsibility can be corrected in just a few years time, you just need a justice system that's interested in correction rather than punishment.
Kinda hard to accomplish when you have people cheering from the sidelines for more punishment...
I get it, but also when I think about if that happened to my sister, let alone my child, no amount of time would be enough. 2 years for ripping two people out of your life feels like a pittance. How do you separate the emotion from the practicality?
With all due respect, the justice system shouldn't exist for you to experience vengeance. It's easy to get angry and to wish harm against people who would hurt our loved ones, but at scale we just end up with a punitive justice system that begets even more violence and misery.
If a person can be reformed after committing a profound injustice to the point where we can trust that they won't repeat their crimes, why would we want their sentence to be lengthy and cruel when it could instead be compassionate and effective?
Forgiveness is a powerful thing. If you can't even think of forgiving this hypothetical transgression you've come up with, how can you ever hope to have a positive influence on this world that might actually protect others from the kind of tragedy you've described?
Not vengeance but justice. 2 years in prison then off you go is not justice. Now two years and 15 years paying support to the family you have wronged can be justice.
But just two years till you're good is not how it's supposed to work. There needs to be consequences otherwise there is no difference between somone going into rehab voluntarily for two years and somone killing two people and then being forced to go to rehab.
How do you know when a person is reformed versus playing the part to get out earlier? Is there a risk of the system being abused by those who commit a crime knowing that they can get out in a couple years' time?
I'm sorry but I'm not sure I see the connection here. How does forgiveness prevent such tragedies?
Imagine having your children killed - probably hard if you don't have children and the reading your comment.
I anything ,the justice system should be more punishing for such cases. How can you even mention forgiveness for drunk driving,showing off,killing people and then asking for it with such a worryingly easiness?
Forgiveness for what,for being a blatant sociopath? Really? If I were that lady I would have preferred enjoying the rest of my life with my children as opposed to forgiving a murderer and knowing he might do it again,cause it's easy to forgive and "Forgiveness is a powerful thing". This is not a case for forgiveness,but harsher punishment.
Again: you're asking for forgiveness for a drunk driving murderer of people and children.
This is just an appeal to emotion. There's absolutely no reason to care about this. I care about real solutions to real problems. While having one of my children killed by some irresponsible person would be horrible and life-altering, and I would want consequences for the person responsible, I would not want their life ruined. I wouldn't wish suffering upon them. I am not a cruel person.
I would want whatever solution would offer the best chances of protecting others from the same tragedy I have had to bear, and I know for a fact that ruining the life of the person who wronged me will never accomplish that.
You sound like a cruel and vindictive person. You care more about personally feeling a sense of retribution (for a hypothetical crime that nobody has committed against you or anyone you know), and you've already worked yourself up to the point of fantasizing about another person's torment. That speaks a lot for your state of mind...
In every situation in life, you have the choice to follow the path of reason, or the path of emotion. You have not chosen the path of reason.
So, death sentence? Eye for an eye?
No,not death sentence,but i noticed people here are worryingly apologetic for murder. It is murder,not in the 1st degree off,but still murder.
25 years with no parole and that's that. I'm sorry,I just can't find excuses for drunk driving murders like some people do. It's my belief system,not a standard.
Thought terminator detected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_entitled_to_my_opinion
Do you base all your thought system on what the internet says? Poor kid...
THAT'S HIS OPINION. Don't attack someone else's beliefs, bro.
You're gonna debate the encyclopedia? C'mon now...
Some people are just that irresponsible. Also the human brain is notoriously bad at risk assessment, so some people truly don't realize how likely they are to cause suffering and death when they do shit like this. Harsh punishments won't change that because this guy probably didn't think he was gonna accidentally murder 2 people that night
This was no accident.
He drove while drunk. He made a decision to become impaired. While impaired, he decided to get behind the wheel of a vehicle. He made a decision to drive unreasonably fast, beyond the speed limit and beyond his ability to safely operate the vehicle. He further made a decision to take a photo while operating his vehicle.
All were his choice to make, and thus the repercussions of his choices were no accident.
Does society want a person inclined to make such decisions roaming about freely? How many years of incarceration are likely to eliminate his continuation of such behavior?
I'm not saying that 17 years behind bars is too much here, I'm saying it's definitely not too little. Unless it can be proven that this idiot actually thought he was likely to get in an accident by acting the way he did
What person, arguing in good faith, could state that they believe driving while drunk, at high speeds, while operating a cell phone, would likely not result in an accident? I'd love to see the train of thought laid out for that argument.
A pretty stupid and/or egotistical person, which is not illegal. I have literally met people who think like that. Also that's arguably the most dangerous part of drunk driving: impaired judgement makes you think you've got everything under control, and you're not that drunk anyway, and you're a good driver... Combine that with someone whose brain isn't exactly firing up on all cylinders when they're sober and you've got a deadly cocktail, and also probably someone who is more likely to get too drunk to legally drive (and not give up on driving home after that line is crossed)
Right,let's release all murderers on purely the fact they didn't think they were going to kill someone. Jeez and I thought Lemmy would be a better place...
You keep using the word "murderer" to describe someone who kills another person in a car accident. This is rarely murder. This is almost always manslaughter, even when people were reckless and stupid.
You seem to be using the word "murderer" because you want to sensationalize things. You're deliberately using a word more severe than the actual situation warrants because you think you will earn sympathy for your position by being hyperbolic.
Unfortunately for you, Lemmy et al is generally a community of critical thinkers, and we don't fall for that shit so easily.
Justice requires clarity and understanding, and so insisting that anyone who kills someone in a car should be treated as though they did it in purpose absolutely does not serve the interests of justice.
You're also never going to win people over with this scorched earth strategy against drunk driving. Over 100 million Americans admit to have driven drunk at least once in their lives. That's nearly a third of the population. Way too many people empathize with people who have made this very bad decision, and understand that the only difference was whether or not a fatal accident occurred.
Consequences are deserved, but I don't see the value is demanding maximum suffering.
Yes.
It's funny how Christians cling to the "eye for an eye" thing, even though the Bible specifically says that it is unjust, and implores on to "turn the other cheek" (Sermon on the mount).
But spiteful Christofacists like you (presumably, given your endorsement of old testament barbarism) never actually follow the loving forgiving attitude taught by Jesus, they just want to stone people to death.
The people today who line up at the sidelines to cheer on the worst possible outcomes for their enemies are no different in attitude from those people who gathered in the streets to cast stones at an accused criminal, in hopes that you get to participate in their demise.
If your view of justice is based on vengeance, you don't believe in justice at all.
Which is why we don’t come up with our own punishments.
People shouldn't be locked in cages just because of someone's emotions.
I don't know that emotion is so easily divorced from justice. How do you define what a just punishment is for a crime? Or does the magnitude of the crime not matter?
We learn over and over again from our various texts-of-wisdom, be it fables or scripture or novels or movies, that revenge is a primitive response to problems. It's the moral of so many stories, right?
Yet we organize society to satisfy these immature desires. Punishment, for the most part, is neither deterrent nor corrective, and a paltry form of redress.
Do you want justice? Start with redress. You can't fix the problem of a dead child but the victims need proper support, to alleviate all the other issues caused by the crime. In Canada the prison system is called "corrections" but it mostly fails at that... rehabilitation requires an evidence-based system to succeed, and ours is built on punishment, an emotional response.
If you want deterrence, well that requires eliminating poverty and supplying real education, backed by proactive and robust mental health services.
I define justice as the best possible outcome of a bad situation.
So the crime committed and the effect on the victims, if any, doesn't affect the sentencing?
Uh, sure it does, in the sense that if someone is unable to be rehabilitated, they should be kept away from the public? Not sure what you're asking except maybe "can I please just have a little revenge?"
I'm confused on how you quantify rehabilitation. How do you know someone has changed?
And yeah I guess I'm genuinely having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that first degree murder and shoplifting could result in the same sentence.
Why would they result in the same sentence? That's a strange proposal that I have never heard before.
Regarding rehab, well that's a procedural question more than legislative. Ask experts in the field. It's not like the problem is new, even if it's evident we are going about it fundamentally wrong.
Now I'm confused, I thought the premise of this thread is that jail time should be based not on the severity of the crime, but only how long it takes to rehabilitate the offender. Did I misunderstand that?
Yeah I was pointing out that the prison system may be completely ineffective where it's based on punishment. It's a critical view, not prescriptive, and designing a new system requires a revolutionary approach, with consideration for the needs of the victims as well as the mental state of the perpetrators.
I wasn't proposing anything pat and simple like one-size-fits-all incarceration, completely the opposite, actually. Maybe forever in prison, maybe no jail time. Justice, in terms of repairing things for a victim, might mean a lifelong burden for the convicted, or something else entirely. It would necessarily be complex. More emotional, less rational people would have a problem with that since they can't see justice without punishment.
There is no harsher punishment than this. It's literally 1/4th of your life gone. Getting out of prison after this time and realizing what you lost and you got nothing - no friends, no family (probably), no relationships - must be soul crushing.
I'd rather die honestly.
This might qualify as murder in Germany, especially the "did not brake" part: It's not necessary to have intent to kill someone, it is only necessary to willingly hazard the consequences. That's how those street racers got convicted of murder.
OTOH that's the kind of murder that gives you a life-long sentence where parole after just the minimum time (15 years) is definitely not just on the table but the norm.
"life-long" in Germany is 25 years, normally with the option for parole after 15. However there is "Sicherheitsverwahrung", which doesn't count as punishment but is instead justified with protecting the rest of the public from a certain person, and can be applied indefinitely.
The average imprisonment for life-long is 25 years. There's no actual corresponding timed-sentence for lifelong as that is in fact technically lifelong, though with constitutional guarantee to have a chance at resocialisation. And § 66 StGB is most certainly not applicable to this kind of manslaughter. The dangerous part - recklessly driving a vehicle - can be mitigated by revoking and blocking the driving licence
Dangerous Offender status is what they call it in Canada. It's reserved for the confirmed sociopaths.
Murder in germany requires intent and malice. Neither is given here.
Dolus eventualis aka Eventualvorsatz, which can indeed be summed up as "willingly hazarding the consequences". AFAIU in English that's not a type of intent but recklessness. It certainly is not intent to kill someone, just intent to not give a fuck whether someone dies, there's a difference there.
Trying to sum up the stuff that distinguishes Totschlag from Mord with "malice" is also rather... vague. The key factor in this case (or at least the aspect that's easiest to establish) is killing by using means that are a danger to public safety, to wit, a car going 226km/h. Certainly doesn't fit the dictionary definition of "malice".
That's why it's not murder in this case.
Murder would be if I kill you for your car, as an example. Or a child killing his parents for faster inheritance. In Germany, we'd call these "niederer Beweggrund", so ... "Greed-based motive"? Idk how to properly translate it.
In this case, its definitely no murder tho because neither of the three characteristics for murder are given.
"niederer Beweggrund" would be "base motive", Habgier is greed. And they're only one possible way to qualify murder. As I emphasised there, using means that are a danger to public safety is another.
17 years is harsh but fair. Anything beyond that is just punitive.
Americans are in a very weird bubble when it comes to punishment/correction compared to most of the developed world and they don't seem to notice it.
Insane punishments, death penalty, imprisoning drug users, imprisoning sex workers, private prisons, normalized prison violence/sex violence. It's bonkers.
Ironic considering in the USA this person would likely have a much more linent sentence for this specific crime
Wouldn't be a Lemmy post if it weren't for someone shitting on America or Americans even when the story has nothing to do with America.
It was a response to a comment asking for harsher punishment. And that sort of comment tends to pop up in most discussions involving somewhat reasonable punishments being mentioned.
Punishments in the US tend to be excessive though and people in the US somehow normalized it.
As an American I completely agree. People lose sight of just how much time the amount of years actually can be, and just want to feel better about punishing bad people.
Most people who do something like this will live with the guilt for their entire lives. It will always come up in job interviews, it will hurt their social situations. Nightmares forever. But we just have to pile even more shit on so that the rest of us can ride the high horse.
And before anyone shows up, no, getting a longer or shorter prison sentence does nothing for the victim. They're already in as bad of a spot as they could be.
Which has precisely zero to do with the submission.
I mean, 17 years for a car accident, drunk or not, is completely draconian. Murderers and child rapists regularly get lesser sentences, and their crimes were malicious not negligent.
There's no benefit to society to lock anyone up that long for something that can be corrected with a compassionate justice system. If we can release them with confidence that they won't make the same reckless decisions again, is there any point to locking them up for that long other than to make them suffer?