Your freind drives drunk, you get charged with manslaughter

One major fault in the case here is that in New Jersey, there is no good samaritan law. You are not legally required to step and prevent a crime from taken place. And if a good samaritan law was in place, what happens if you have to use force to stop a crime? Are you then guilty of assault?

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who is drunk knows he is getting intoxicated from the alcohol, and the condition he will be in after drinking. Unless a drink was forced down his throat, he should be liable for his actions while under the influence

I think you are misunderstanding Good Samaritan laws. IFAIK, what are generically known as Good Samaritan laws don't obligate you to do anything. What they are is a shield to civil tort liability (not criminal law) if you voluntarily involve yourself by trying to rescue somebody.

The traditional common law principal is that uninvolved third parties have no duty to intervene if they see someone in trouble unless there is already some special relationship between the parties that creates a duty. So if you see some perfect stranger drowning, you can't be sued if you let them drown. In contrast, if you involve yourself by trying to rescue them and botch it, you can be sued. That sets up a perverse incentive not to be a Good Samaritan.

Good Samaritan laws try to neutralize that incentive by providing a limited shield to liability, but AFAIK, many of them only apply to off-duty medical personnel. They act as a shield to malpractice for failed resuscitations and so forth.

I seem to remember there is an exception in Vermont that does require action by third parties. But remember, I am not a lawyer in Vermont or anywhere else!

Too late! I already have a bad impression of law school and the clique that runs it. All I'm doing is going through the motions and attempting (often unsucessfully) to bite my tongue.

I'll do what is expected of me. For example, this fall I will be starting on a journal. But I don't feel any obligation to pretend that law school isn't anything but a game and mostly for the benefit of the law school and the desire of employers to have a simple way to rank their applicants.

I thought that was made up just for the last episode of Sienfield.

The problem that I have the case is that is seems to have been brought about by social or emotional reactions to method by which Dude A caused the deaths and injuries rather than being based on existing law or legal principles. Driving drunk is not the only way to commit manslaughter or vehicular homicide. Would these charges have been brought against Dude B if the same deaths and injuries had occured under different circumstances? Say for example Dude B loaned his motorcycle to Dude A knowing that Dude A likes to ride fast and dangerously. Then Dude A has a wreck. Or lets say Dude A has a known tendancy to get into fights after drinking but Dude B takes him to a bar anyways and the same deaths and injuries result. Unless you are going to give everyone breathalyzer kits (how else are you going to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that somone knew another person was not fit to drive) and the power to arrest or detain others I just don't see how you can make a crime out of the actions of Dude B.

Well, it was mentioned in my case book (the VT statute, not Sienfeld).

A fair assessment. I went to work for a guy who never even asked me what school I went to, much less my class rank. I ended up with him for 15 years.

In NJ if you drive drunk and hit someone, even if you paralize the person, as long as they don't die, and it's your first offense, you will be back on the road in 30 days (or less in some cases if you sweet talk the judge). Happens all the time here. It's just life.


In many civilized countries, you lose your license for a year just for driving drunk, in some you lose it for several years or life.

Others offer the death penalty.


I want to move there.


All my friends drive drunk constantly just for kicks. They know all that happens is they get a fine. Even if someone dies as a result, they most likely won't be prosicuted.

Kind of sick.


Also note that NJ has the most F***ed up laws of all states. Only here has the law actually been modified to create a legal avenue to charge someone who attempted suicide with attempted manslaughter. Seems like some lawmakers need to get a clue and think about what they devote their time to.

There's a lot of pressure on prosecutors and judges to bring the hammer down on drunk driving, and this is one result. I appreciate the sentiment but it could have some unintended consequences.

Just to be clear, they aren't trying to make new law, they're trying to apply existing law (the manslaughter statute) in a creative way - to someone who facilitated a drunk driver rather than the driver himself (who is dead). However, if they succeed, it will encourage other prosecutors to pursue such cases, so in that sense it would be a precedent.

When they tried Charles Manson, they had to apply existing criminal statutes in a creative way, because Manson himself never actually killed anybody and wasn't even at the scene of the crimes. They had to argue that his psychological influence on the others made him an accomplice or co-conspirator. They weren't really sure if they could nail him or not.

It's true that the law traditionally provides that one adult is not legally responsible for the independent actions of another adult. But there's a point at which one becomes an accomplice even if one doesn't directly participate in the criminal act. If you hand an arsonist a match (or provide him with gasoline), you can be convicted as an accomplice if you had reason to know that the arsonist was going to use it to start a fire. This case is a lot fuzzier, which is why we have juries - they had to make a judgment as to whether Dude B was culpable within the scope of the existing statute.

I sure wish we had a better account of the underlying facts - the news reports are very ambiguous.

I'm not sure where you got that information. If you did injure someone the penalties would be even stiffer. The only way in hell you'll get off on 30 days suspension is if you refuse to take a breath test and/or have a damn good DUI lawyer.

6 months suspension = 1st offense
2 year suspension = 2nd offesne
10 year suspension = 3rd offesne

These don't even include the fines, insurance surcharges, mandatory in or outpatient rehabilitation (on your dime not the states).

And those are just for getting cought, nevermind if you actually do injure, or kill someone.

Here's some more about the NJ DUI penalties from NJ Motor Vehicle Services (scroll down):
NJ DUI Penalty Information

MikeM32

You may both be right. The penalties for DUI are stiff, but a DWI lawyer will often get the charges reduced to a simple moving violation or some such. They know that the prosecutors and courts don't have time to take every case DWI case to trial.

Of course, if you kill or seriously injure someone, it's harder to make a deal. MADD is more likely to get involved in those cases, and the prosecutors and judges don't like to offend MADD. Oddly enough, there's no countervailing group lobbying on behalf of drunk drivers.

Results from the trial originally posted about:
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index...70612245676.xml



Yes you could hire a lawyer. The DUI lawyers make a killing however. For many it's simply not worth fighting it.

MikeM32

Thanks for the link. Finally a reporter who knows what he's doing. Although we still don't know what condition Dude A was allegedly in at the time Dude B dropped him off at his car. The implication is that he was still hammered.

Interesting that, as a result of this case, they passed a law requiring "Dude B's" to accept legal responsibility for "Dude A's" when they get them out of jail. A lot of "Dude A's" will be sitting in jail a lot longer - who's going to want to accept legal responsibility for them?

You know, I seriously wonder whether or not this would've happened if Party A had survived the crash. If that were the case, Person A could've been sent to trial on charges of drunk driving, manslaughter, etc., and been sent to jail, and the families of the victim can go home feeling that all's well and that their missing son has been avenged. However, in this case, the culprit was killed by his own stupidity, and thus could not be put to justice. As is human nature, it's unsatisfying to see a villian escape, even through death, from your vengeance, thus this charge arises, or at least is brought to the forefront. It's likely this issue would'nt have arisen at all had this not been a fatal accident for both parties.

And how many cases has that been applied? I can't think of one that has gotten more than 30 days. It's the sad truth.

Just like the "strict environmental laws" that Whitman passed in NJ.... a whole bunch of BS that is not enforced causing more problems than there were before.

This was a great debate. Frankly I think if Dude A wasn't drunk, and left, and Dude B was asked by Dude A to bail him, why should Dude B be held responsible?

Welcome back Mike.. It's good to see you posting again, I hope all is going well with you!

euch

I would be checking the dates - another thread pulled from the archive....

I've always been told, at least here in NJ, when you bail someone out, you take liability that they are no longer a threat for whatever action/problem put them in jail.

Not sure how well that's been tested in the courts, but that's been the common assumed stance on the issue for at least my entire life.



I've always told friends that they can go do what they want, but never call me to bail them out. I just won't do it. If your dumb enough to get your butt in jail, you can figure it out. Unless your imediate family, no dice. Not even if I know your good for the cash it's not about money.

Assault, drunk driving, whatever. Don't matter.

None of my pals have ever even tried calling. Very few have been arrested though. So that's a good sign. Lets hope it stays like that.

Sorry for the false alarm but that's an old post. I wonder how Mike's doing myself

I was going to ask :|

Ohhh man... I didn't look at the date, that's too bad. It would have been cool if he just posted out of the blue like that, not announcing he was back, just getting back in. Oh, well, I hope he's doing fine.