Drunk Driving Death In Baltimore County
The Baltimore Sun reported this week that Baltimore County judge sentenced a man to three years in prison for crashing through a concrete barrier last January on the Baltimore Beltway and killing a construction worker who was described as a hardworking man who had taken overtime shifts on the Beltway project to earn extra money.
The drunk driver, a 29 year-old Towson resident who drove off after the crash, received a sentence of six years in prison but three years of the term was suspended. He is also required to serve 18 months of probation and pay $670 in fines and fees.
We are not criminal lawyers but I have had a number of cases representing victims who died in car accidents at the hands of drunk drivers. What I found surprising is that the prosecutor who handled the case, a representative of Mothers Against Drunk Driving who was available for comment after the verdict, and the victim's co-workers were all pleased with what was considered a tough sentence for first-time offenders convicted of vehicular manslaughter. Nancy Kelly, a Maryland public policy liaison with MADD, was quoted as saying that "What you usually see in Baltimore County is everything suspended but 18 months, so they usually serve less than a year."
This is obviously a difficult issue for everyone involved. As I mentioned on this blog recently, I am currently representing the family of a fine man who was killed by a drunk driver that also happened to be his best friend. In this case, the drunk driver will likely serve less than six months in jail. In this case and in the Baltimore County case referenced above, my prayers go out to the drunk driver and his family just as they do for the victim and his family. But are these sentences long enough for killing another human being? I don't know. Obviously, it is important to realize that in individual cases, the judge is in a better position to weigh the exacerbating and mitigating factors then a lawyer reading a snapshot article in the Baltimore Sun. But maybe generally stiffer sentences would help lower the amount of people (17,000 annually in the United States) who are killed in drunken-driving car crashes.
