Brenda Geers may have to revisit Step One in her Alcoholic Anonymous program. Geers not only hit an eighteen-year-old college student in Boulder, Colorado but crashed into St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church while driving drunk to her Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
Geers first hit a food truck in the parking lot and then hit Eric Anderson who was sitting at a table. She then continued on to smash into the church. Thankfully, Anderson survived.
Geers now faces charges of vehicular assault and DUI. These cases often raise the tension of punishing such heinous crimes and acknowledging that a defendant has an addiction and was in a program trying to overcome it. Should Geers to to jail in your view?
Source: CBS
Geers now faces charges of vehicular assault and DUI. These cases often raise the tension of punishing such heinous crimes and acknowledging that a defendant has an addiction and was in a program trying to overcome it. Should Geers to to jail in your view?
===============================
Geers first hit a food truck in the parking lot and then hit Eric Anderson who was sitting at a table. She then continued on to smash into the church. Thankfully, Anderson survived.
=========================
If she didn’t hit Anderson on purpose, she shouldn’t have to go to jail.
Malisha, Sounds like it was a lovely wedding!
i did notice that on the list of crimes driving with a suspended/revoked license wasn’t there.
and yes she should go to jail. she needs to own her actions.
Interesting. BIG distinction between drinking too much and drinking/driving. I have taken people’s keys before when they were drunk and acted like they thought they were OK to drive. One time I remember, I was at a wedding, friend of the bride’s mother, and a guy who was a guest of the groom’s family got totally smashed and then decided to drive himself and his family home. He had been in conversation with me and I saw the picture. I said, “You’re too drunk to drive, let your wife drive.” He answered, “she’s worse drunk’n ME, are you kiddin’?” I saw her come up with a big silly smile on her face and said, “OK, then, you need to give me your keys and sit and have a cup of coffee with me,” and he agreed. THEN someone from the groom’s family got the mother of the bride to come over and verbally attack me for humiliating someone at their big event. Then, surprise surprise, the guy himself started up arguing for ME and insisting that it was right for me to take his keys! He stood up unsteadily and shouted, “See this?” Pointing to a scar on his forehead. “Know how I got THIS?” he demanded. I imagined he was going to say he got that in a crash when he had been driving DUI but no, he said he got that scar taking away a drunk’s keys. “She’s RIGHT!” he shouted.
Do you know those idiots demanded his keys back and acted like I was a criminal and then they gave the keys to him and told him to leave? I have no idea how he got home or if there was an accident; they would never have told me, if there was one.
But it was interesting because although he was too drunk to know he should not drive, he was not too drunk to know that I was more qualified than he was at that moment to make the determination. And he was right. I’d say you HAVE to punish for drunk driving without regard to the “impaired capacity” to make a good judgment as to the drunk individual’s drunkenness, or there will be no way at all to enforce the law fairly. That endangers everyone.
Candy Picker.
I invite you to perhaps read my post a little more carefully. In it, you might discover that I stated it was not illegal to become intoxicated, but rather the illegal act was to drive after intoxication. The elements of the crime are the same for an alcoholic as well as a person who drank for the first time. I was simply pointing out the statutory nuances of the law. If others choose to bring in the medical effects of alcohol, that is another discussion.
the choice part you mention might be correct with regard to addiction itself, but that is not the topic of my post, that woudl be what legislatures in the US states tend to recognize. I don’t myself see that the consumption of alcohol causes a medical desire to operate a car or use any other tool or object.
Additionally, the last time I saw a person claim in court “I can’t stop driving after I have been drinking.” The judge put the guy away for an entire year behind bars, the maximum punishment then.
And, you are correct I am not being self righteous,
Me think that there are too many drunks to know the count of real alcoholics.
Darren,
You think it’s a choice to drink after addiction has taken hold? Have you not been keeping up with the trend of addiction causes. Leave it to a cop to tell you what it is all about.
Are you the same Darren that was a cop that now owns a liquor store? A little self righteous are you not!
I believe regardless of the illness alcoholics might suffer, there is the notion of voluntary intoxication as far as the legal culpability goes.
The defense of intoxication generally holds that a person was incapacitated and unable to make a proper decision legally. In other words, a person would generally be immune from harassment charges if they made threats to another person while she was recovering from the effects of general anesthesia post surgery.
Voluntary intoxication holds that the actor took the intoxicant upon her own free will, knowing the effect and wishing this to happen. Since the person then put themselves into the situation that led to the guilty act or omission, the intoxication defense is not often fully available.
There are some circumstances where the voluntary intoxication might mitigate the punishment or degree of the crime, but generally with DUI and Vehicular Assault charges, the intoxication is the essential element of the crime and the punishment proscribed is in theory built in.
Generally the legislative intents behind DUI/DWI and Vehiclular Assault laws in each state is to offer a strong deterrant to commission of the driving crimes prior to the act. The intoxication is not the crime, it is driving under this influence that is. The legislature does not criminalize intoxication for persons not otherwise restricted from consuming intoxicants, which this might be more arguable of a defense toward not being able to control its usage due to the addiction medical condition, the legislature is instead trying to prevent driving under the influence. This is the more important distinction in my view.
This woman, when she gets out of jail, needs probation time. She needs to lose her driver’s license and continue with AA. When she gets her driver’s license back, she needs an alcohol detector on her vehicle.
Kraaken 1, October 8, 2012 at 3:28 pm
“Hymee: Pedophile priests don’t kill people”
The pedophiles just kill the souls of those they abuse. They abuse their position of power and respect to steal innocence. They belong is prison.
Malisha, There was a few AA groups in Leavenworth when I worked there. They were well attrended, but some of the inmates were required to attend.
Wow Hymee, that was “One giant leap”, but not for mankind. If your point is there are more heinous crimes you could have made it more succintly. No one would disagree w/ that but it’s tangential to this post.
There are in fact very good AA units in most if not all prisons; in fact, prison is one of the few places where you can COUNT on being able to get to an AA meeting without driving! At the point where an addiction has reached the point where the addict [even accidentally] does serious harm to other people not even connected with her addiction (as in someone who has not been enabling her, drinking with her, selling her liquor, etc.), punishment in accordance with law is appropriate. Perhaps she will get a lighter sentence if there is a record of strenuous efforts to get ahead of her problem, or of past efforts to make amends to others her habits have hurt. One hopes (perhaps against hope) for wisdom and mercy in the courts.
Texters who drive also kill people. Texters are heinous criminals.
Hymee: Pedophile priests don’t kill people.The putting of Shamus’ kennel on the roof of the care, while stupid, and showing a lack of character, doesn’t kill people. Drunks DO.
Almost every one of you beat up on her in your comments. She is going to AA. She should not have gone drunk. The author of the article (JT) refers to this as “heinous crimes”. On a scale of things I think that this is down the list a bit. Pedophile priests dont get the denigration that this lady gets in the comments here. Then there are people who torture dogs. Some schmuck is running for President who put a dog in a crate and strapped it to the roof of his car and drove across country. He is not even thought of by JT and the commenters as a criminal or a pervert. Water boarding comes to mind as on the genre of heinous crimes. Beating the old guy in the wheelchair in the ER was close to heinous. Using a deadly weapon when deadly force is not necessary to stop a criminal from doing worse is heinous– as in tasers. A police department which issues tasers to cops and allows them to shoot anyone, even for fun, is a heinous organization. To characterize this set of facts as a heinous crime makes me wonder where the author is coming from. Perhaps the author/ lawyer was trying to stir us up in our comments. If this is a law professor perhaps he should give us a list of heinous crimes that are recognized in the American legal system. If we could start with some Nazi Nuremberg defendants who were convicted of killing millions and go downhill from there, perhaps we could have a ladder of heinous crimes.
Perhaps we bloggers could vote on whether this lady AA driver is worse than the cops who electrocutes someone with a taser who is not life threatening at the time or with the waterboarders at Gitmo.
Yes Nick, you are correct. On BOTH points.
Is that made from real Jesus?
Where was JESUS to protect the Lady when she really needed him? After all, she only had Jesus Juice before her AA meeting.
Kraaken, One might point out that Otis was on foot, not behind the wheel. However, statistically you are more likely to die walking drunk, than driving drunk.