I think Mike makes a very valid point regarding the other "accident" and the resulting sentence. One could argue the fairness of our legal system depends too much on the amount of money spent to prosecute or defend, and on the jury selection process. But I don't want to argue with a lawyer on this :^) But I think what bothers many bikers in this case is not whether the legal system worked, but rather that the hung jury reflects all too well the current state of opinion in society. (Majority opinion after all is what (kind of) drives the laws that the system tries to uphold.) For a lot of people (maybe half if this case is an indication) someone taking their eyes off the road for 12 seconds is unspeakable and criminally negligent. But unfortunately for many people it's not, which is a scary proposition when your life depends on drivers paying attention. And unfortunately there are also those who feel that biking on roads is dangerous, so if you do you are taking your life into your own hands which is why it's your own damn fault if you get hit. (That was my own mother BTW.) So if you are bothered by the outcome of this case, work for change. Start by bending the ear of whoever will listen - you'll be surprised (I was) at how many people don't feel it was criminal. Give them something to think about. Give a worthwhile e-mail back to those relatives that send you the chain e-mail. And write your leaders requesting gas taxes be put to work on REAL driver education and safety programs. Uh-oh. Looks like I just gave myself more stuff to do. Doug Adler A: Because we read top to bottom, and already read the stuff at the bottom. Q: Why does top posting make sense? ====================================== On bikies, "Robert F. Nagel" <rnagel at nagel-law.com> said: >...The issue isn't whether there was negligence for civil liability. The issue was whether there was negligence that was criminal and that someone should perhaps lose their liberty over. The jury could not agree unanimously that there was such a level of negligence. We should neither rejoice nor despair in such a disposition. But, we should rejoice in a justice system that, at least this one time, stood between the preservation or loss of liberty for a single individual. ...one thing in this county that actually works pretty well for individuals, the jury system. > I beg to differ. Here we have a jury which couldn't decide if this guy was guilty - despite the fact that earlier this year, a truck driver named James Sharp was sentenced to a year in jail and six years of probation for a similar crash, one that killed a DeForest woman and her granddaughter in a rear end collision on the Beltline under similar circumstances? In the Beltline crash, Sharp had bent down to pick up a pack of cigarettes from the passenger side floor of his truck and in doing so failed to notice the slowed traffic in front of him, and ended up crashing into the rear of the vehicle carrying Peggy Hanson, 51, and her 4-year-old granddaughter, Lilyana Thomas, killing them. The judge said that while he considered the crash to be an "accident", the driver's negligence justified the jail sentence. So here we have a similar situation where the driver takes his eyes off the road for a full 12 seconds to check his throat out in his mirror and as a result crashes into a bicyclist and kills her and the jury fails to find the driver guilty of negligence? Or maybe the judge in the previous case was wrong? This is a good example of a justice system that's screwed up in my opinion, not one that's working fairly. Mike Neuman |
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