Mochaloca

I caught the tail end of a news item on CNN last night about a disturbing DUI case. I don't have the who or where, but IIRC, the "what" is as follows:

A man was arrested for DUI and several hours later, released by the police into the custody of the man's friend. The friend drove the man back to his car and left him there. The man ended up drinking some more, getting back in his car. The man was then involved in a traffic accident that resulted in killing a young boy who had just graduated from the Naval academy, as well as killing the man himself.

As the man is no longer available for prosecution, the state is prosecuting the friend for DUI & manslaughter. The friend, apparently, did not provide any alcohol to the man & was NOT in the car when the accident happened.

The so-called legal expert on the news show seemed to think the friend should be held responsible on the theory of the bible's idea of everyone being their "brother's keeper."

My question is, do people here think that the state is doing the right thing in prosecuting the friend? And if so, on what theory? AFAIK, the jury in the case is still out.

Just curious,

M.

Philosoft

Bible silliness aside, unless it can be shown that 1) the man was legally drunk while in the friend's custody; and 2) the friend should have known the man was legally drunk, I can't see any grounds to prosecute, certainly not for DUI manslaughter.

Consider this situation:
A man threatens his wife with a gun. The wife calls the cops and they come and arrest the man. Several hours later, the man is released to a friend's custody who drives him home, where he promptly stabs his wife to death with a chef's knife and kills himself by overdosing on barbituates. Could the friend be charged with murder?

[edited to add]
If you find the story, please share it. I'd like to know who was this so-called "legal expert."

[ August 08, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]</p>

southernhybrid

No, I don't think the man should have been charged. He may have made a poor decision in giving the drunk friend his keys back but he should not be help responsible for the deaths, IMO. If anyone has some responsibility it should be the state police who allowed the man out while he was still so impaired.

This story was all over MSNBC yesterday. You could probably find more info at their website. The case is in New Jersey and a new law resulted as a result. I think the law mandates that a DUI suspect must be held for 12 hours prior to release. I'm not sure if I have the details correct.

Mochaloca

Philosoft: Unfortunately, I can't find the name of the legal expert used for this story. However, I'm pretty sure it was the same guy who spoke on the "pledge" issue & said he didn't hear any "rational" arguments suppporting the Ninth Circuit's opinion.

My problem with his analysis is that it flies in the face of legal precedent stating that in order to hold someone criminally liable, that person must have notice that his action is legally prohibited, or that his FAILURE to act is illegal. Here, there was no legal duty (prior to the new law being passed) for him to keep his friend from drinking & driving again. In my opinion, the police could not impose that criminal liability on him by releasing the man to his custody.

If I understand you correctly, your view seems to be that the friend should be held criminally liable if it could be proved that he knew the man was drunk. I guess my question in this case is whether it really is in the best interest of society to make people criminally responsible for someone else's actions?

As you indicated by your hypothetical, how far can we carry this concept? Initially, my gut reaction was that Mr. Powell (the friend) had a moral responsibility to ensure that Mr. Pangle (the drunk driver)not drive. And possibly society should encourage this by imposing criminal liability. However, upon reflection, I don't know how practical this is.

I mean, how far was Mr. Powell supposed to go to prevent Mr. Pangle from driving? Was he supposed to stay with him all night, until his court hearing? I'm just wondering how far we should go in actually forcing people to be their brother's keeper.

Southernhybrid: I agree that if responsibility is be assigned out to those other than the drunk driver, there was plenty to go around that night.

M.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

An adult is responsible for his or her own behaviour, until they have proven that they cannot be held responsible. At such time, the State provides a representative to make decisions on their behalf.

In no way is this friend responsible for the drunk's actions.

As adults, we are each responsible for being aware that alchol exists, and that (as adults) alcohol is available to us. We are responsible for either avoiding alcohol altogether, or--if we choose to imbibe--for discovering what our own individual tolerance for it is.

At no point did the drunk's responsibility for his own actions transfer to his friend. IMO that kind of transfer can only take place in a court of law, based on the determination of a judge or other state-appointed court official with experience in such matters.

We are each responsible for our own actions; that is what it means to be an 'adult'. We are not--nor should we be--our brother's keeper.

Keith.

echidna

I agree with the sentiments so far. The precedents set are unworkable. I’m also curious if the police released the man while he was intoxicated, and how clearly conditions were explained to and acknowledged by Powell when Pangle was released.

Possibly Powell is guilty of a lesser charge.

Over here police will often drive home drunk drivers to deliberately separate them from their cars until they’ve sobered up.

But once one transfers a free individual’s responsibility away from that individual, where does it end ?

The police who released him
The friend who didn’t stop him driving
The law which legalises alcohol
The legal system who didn’t force an alcohol tester to be fitted to his car
The makers of the alcohol
The man in the carpark who saw him get into the car while drunk
The other friends who encouraged him to drink
The pub who served him alcohol
His boss who sacked him causing him to drink
His parents who gave him the alcohol problem

I generally see the legal system as being cynically self-interested & I see this as no exception. By impossibly complicating the situation, they guarantee themselves endless controversy, all very richly paid-by-the-hour.

Philosoft

<strong>Quoth Mochaloca:

If I understand you correctly, your view seems to be that the friend should be held criminally liable if it could be proved that he knew the man was drunk. I guess my question in this case is whether it really is in the best interest of society to make people criminally responsible for someone else's actions?</strong>

No, not really. My exceedingly poorly worded paragraph was meant to indicate that the state must show those things even to have a prima facie case for charges. Certainly there are hundreds of failure-to-act statutes in place in many states, so precedent isn't necessarily hard to come by. If the state is to show criminal negligence, it must at least show that the things I mentioned are true. I, however, absolutely don't agree that those things are necessarily grounds for a failure-to-act charge.

Arrowman

&lt;self-righteous rant&gt;
Taking a friend back to their car after they've just been arrested for DUI is an unbelievably idiotic and irresponsible thing to do. If I did that, and he went on to drive and kill someone, I'd vomit for a month.
&lt;\self-righteous rant&gt;

But I don't think there's a place for legal liability. "Failure to act", "reckless indifference" etc might apply but IMHO only in more extreme circumstances.

This sounds like the sort of case that Jack McCoy might run in Law and Order...

NialScorva

Dunno, it seems reckless endangerment on the part of the friend. There's no way he *couldn't* have known that Pangle was incapable of driving, as that is why he picked him up. What are the legal ramifications of "being released into the custody of...", that implies that there's at least an implicit recognition of responsibility. There's no causal chain involved in his crime, so far that I see, he accepted responsibility for his friend. The way I see it:

1) Pangle had already endagered lives by driving.
2) He was arrested for this.
3) Powell picked up his friend, presumably with the knowledge that he was intoxicated and had driven.
4) Immediately afterwards, and *knowing* the past behavior of Pangle, he returned him to an environment that encouraged the same behavior.

In my view this is somewhat akin to having your rabid dog found in a park, picking it up, and releasing it back into the park. If it'd hurt someone the first time, then it's chance, but because you reintroduced it into a dangerous environment contrary to *any* modicrum of common sense, *you* failed to take appropriate preventitive action for a situation you *knew* could occur.

If he's not guilty of killing the person in the car, he's definately guilty of killing his friend, assumming no mitigating facts of course.

RogerLeeCooke

As a legal matter, I'd need to know what was explained to the friend when he bailed the guy out of jail. At a minimum, I would think he undertook to be responsible for the near-term behavior of the miscreant. Without knowing any more than that, I'd say they've got a legal case against him.

As for the kind of pragmatic grounds that everyone ought to be held responsible for everyone else, I will fight to the last breath in my body to keep this idea from becoming law. We have explicitly formulated laws precisely to prevent that kind of arbitrary abuse of police power, the idea that one can just look around and seize anybody whose behavior is disapproved of and prosecute legally.