Another example of actually not committing a crime but being charged anyway?

EMNofSeattle said:

can't see what? the constitutional right to surrender control of a dangerous object to someone not capable of using it?

no this is exactly the type of conduct that the reckless endangerment statute was legislated to restrict. there is no affirmative duty to stop a crime from happened, there is also no right to provide the means to commit a crime to someone else who otherwise didn't have those means.

these kids need to plead guilty, it's the right thing to do, and whatever level of punishment they get will be a bargain. They will be found guilty and no court will overturn that ruling.....

Click to expand...

They will probably be found not guilty, and rightly so, unless of course these teenage boys breathylyzed this girl right before giving her the keys, there's no way even a retarded public defender could lose the case. It's ridiculous on its face.

77zach said:

They will probably be found not guilty, and rightly so, unless of course these teenage boys breathylyzed this girl right before giving her the keys, there's no way even a retarded public defender could lose the case. It's ridiculous on its face.

Click to expand...

if you need a breathylyzer to tell when someone who is BAC .27 is too drunk to drive then please surrender your drivers license, all firearms, and automobiles... there is no way any reasonable person of average intelligence would believe that someone .27 is "borderline" or ok to drive. no way in hell....

EMNofSeattle said:

if you need a breathylyzer to tell when someone who is BAC .27 is too drunk to drive then please surrender your drivers license, all firearms, and automobiles... there is no way any reasonable person of average intelligence would believe that someone .27 is "borderline" or ok to drive. no way in hell....

Click to expand...

Believe it or not, that's actually not true.

Regardless, these kids have no legal liability to the state. Depending on the totality of the circumstances, the parents of the dead girl might have a civil claim against the adult who purchased the alcohol for the kids. Could see that for sure.

77zach said:

Believe it or not, that's actually not true.

Regardless, these kids have no legal liability to the state. Depending on the totality of the circumstances, the parents of the dead girl might have a civil claim against the adult who purchased the alcohol for the kids. Could see that for sure.

Click to expand...

a negligent death is always legal liability to the state..... they don't always prosecute, but I consider any death caused by negligence to be a legal liability to the state.

.27 is when people start dying of alcohol poisoning or need their stomach pumped. if this girl didn't need help to stand at that level she won the big genetic lottery. again, the boys had no duty to give her the car keys, it was not her car, it was his parents, he gave her possession of the car she otherwise had no ownership interest in.

a civil claim is not good enough when someone is dead. if my relative dies due to extreme negligence of another party I don't want their blood money, I want their ass in prison.

is the girl responsible for driving drunk? absolutely, and if she was stopped before crashing she'd have gone to jail.

but the boys are also responsible for surrendering the car that she had no interest in.

EMNofSeattle said:

a negligent death is always legal liability to the state..... they don't always prosecute, but I consider any death caused by negligence to be a legal liability to the state.

.27 is when people start dying of alcohol poisoning or need their stomach pumped. if this girl didn't need help to stand at that level she won the big genetic lottery. again, the boys had no duty to give her the car keys, it was not her car, it was his parents, he gave her possession of the car she otherwise had no ownership interest in.

a civil claim is not good enough when someone is dead. if my relative dies due to extreme negligence of another party I don't want their blood money, I want their ass in prison.

is the girl responsible for driving drunk? absolutely, and if she was stopped before crashing she'd have gone to jail.

but the boys are also responsible for surrendering the car that she had no interest in.

Click to expand...

Some moral responsibility? Most likely. Criminal liability????? Why do you think this made the news? Has this never happened before? I really don't have the will to break this whole thing down, but it made the news because this is the state being way too aggressive

Do you believe bartenders should be prosecuted if a guy comes into a bar to have some shots and drives away? After 1 shot? 7 shots? 9? 13?

If I buy that Audi A8 I'm lusting after and I kill myself with it, should the dealership be held responsible? After all, I told the salesman I wanted it because it can go 200 mph?

name the victims....

name the intent

name the action

eye95 said:

Exactly. Generally giving a gun to someone at a range will result in nothing bad happening. It would be rare and surprising if it did.

However, handing the keys for a car to a .24 drunk does not make you wonder IF something bad will happen, but what will happen and how bad will it be!

The charge is correct, but will likely be pleaded down.

Click to expand...

I'll gloss over the fact that the other people had actually no idea that the BAC was 0.24 ... being impaired themselves

Now, did the driver state that the driver was going to drive recklessly? So give me your keys so I can commit a crime or civil offense?

No. Just because it was a drunk driver incident, people get all huffy and puffy..as if drinking and driving is like murder.

If you give a hammer to someone who kills with it, then you'll be charged with murder? You may win the case but have a fun ride.

Cases like these need not to be allowed to stand.

what's next? Someone sober asks to borrow your car, telling you hit wants to go to a bar .. can you be then charged as well? Why not?

Any good lawyer will get these kids off. That same good lawyer needs to get the parents of the wronged kids to sue the cops for all sorts of rights violations and malicious prosecution by the DA. Every cop that sees a citizen leave a bar and does not immediately stop that citizen is doing the same exact crimes. Though, that logic will elude some folks.

On reading the story from both the OP's link and the news story that in turn links to, I can't see any mention that any of the other kids

handed the keys to her

Click to expand...

They merely state that people got out of the car and left it to the next person to make their own decision to get into the driver's seat. The easiest thing to do with the keys is leave them in the ignition, either with the motor either still running or turned off.

I've switched drivers in rest areas and hotel parking lots more times than I care to remember back in my days of driving charter buses up and down the east coast. Never once did we switch off the motor and hand the keys to the next driver, we left it running every single time.

The ONLY thing any of us here have to go on is what is written in the story. It doesn't mention handing the keys to anyone, doesn't mention that one time. In fact the logistics of trying to operate a motor vehicle when drunk would suggest they'd leave the keys in the ignition simply so the next person wouldn't need the complicated (when impaired) fine motor skills of inserting them again.

With that all pointed out, yes they're all stupid for driving in that condition but the ultimate responsibility for her actions lies with the deceased individual herself. If she needed her friends to tell her she's incapable of making the rational decision not to drive then those friends, who were quite probably just as drunk, would need someone else's help to make the decision to tell her that she's too drunk.

There is a difference between the suggested positive action of physically handing over the keys and the passive action of merely vacating the driver's seat and leaving it available for someone else to make their own choice.

They're all stupid, they've all got to live with the knowledge their friend died after they left her, BUT she was the one who decided to drink, she was the one who decided to drive, ultimately the responsibility is her own

Of course she handed the keys to another ... she was drunk. I thought that this behavior was encouraged.

OC for ME said:

Any good lawyer will get these kids off. That same good lawyer needs to get the parents of the wronged kids to sue the cops for all sorts of rights violations and malicious prosecution by the DA. Every cop that sees a citizen leave a bar and does not immediately stop that citizen is doing the same exact crimes. Though, that logic will elude some folks.

Click to expand...

No, the cops aren't, unless they observe something (other than simply exiting a bar, which I did last night, sober as hell) that gives them RAS that the person is over the limit and operating a vehicle.

In this case, regardless of their levels of inebriation, they had to know that the girl was in no condition to drive, and then one of them gave her the keys to a car (not hers) with the undeniable expectation that she would drive it grossly impaired.

Oh, and even if one claims that they would not have noticed her drunkenness because of their own, that excuse does not legally wash, otherwise "I was too drunk to know how drunk I was" would become a workable defense to all drunk driving charges. Nor do I believe for a second that her drunkmates could claim, "I thought she was sober enough to drive!"

My prediction? The case gets pleaded down to a lesser charge. If the kids refuse the deal, they will be convicted of the crime for which they are charged--as well they should be.

It is reasonable to assume that a fella walking out of a bar has been drinking.

She, in her drunkedness, chose to drive. The kids need to walk and live with the results of her deciding to drive. I am not responsible for preventing a drunk from driving his/a car. I am responsible for me and mine. I will not drive drunk, others make a different choice.

Actually, I would disagree that such an assumption would be reasonable, especially not from a RAS perspective. However, even granting that such would be reasonable, it still would not be reasonable to assume that the person was over the limit!

These kids had to KNOW that the girl was absolutely wrecked. One of them handed her car keys (not her own car) in the certain knowledge that she would drive that car, recklessly endangering her--and everyone else on the road near her.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

<o>

Of course they knew. Should they be held to account for her choice, no.

If she was considered too impaired to be responsible for her own actions then those boys must be granted that same presumption, and should not be held to account for her actions.

Charge them for drinking under age and those other two silly nanny-state-eastcoast-liberal-laws.

Then you disagree with the law. This law exists precisely for the kind of reckless endangerment that putting those keys in her hand was.

I happen to think that such a law is right and proper.

OK

OC for ME said:

Of course they knew. Should they be held to account for her choice, no.

If she was considered too impaired to be responsible for her own actions then those boys must be granted that same presumption, and should not be held to account for her actions.

Charge them for drinking under age and those other two silly nanny-state-eastcoast-liberal-laws.

Click to expand...

they don't need to held accountable for her death, they need to be accountable for endangering the public. reckless endangerment does not strictly require someone be hurt, only that someone could have been hurt and a reasonable person would've known such.

you are accountable for your own actions, when your own actions include endangering the motoring public by granting access to a car by someone not able to drive you certainly should be held accountable.

77zach said:

Some moral responsibility? Most likely. Criminal liability????? Why do you think this made the news? Has this never happened before? I really don't have the will to break this whole thing down, but it made the news because this is the state being way too aggressive

Do you believe bartenders should be prosecuted if a guy comes into a bar to have some shots and drives away? After 1 shot? 7 shots? 9? 13?

If I buy that Audi A8 I'm lusting after and I kill myself with it, should the dealership be held responsible? After all, I told the salesman I wanted it because it can go 200 mph?

Click to expand...

It made the news because it's a local event, then it went viral through social media, mainly among people who prefer less government involvement.

If the bartender supplies an inebriated man with a vehicle that doesn't belong to the drunk then why not? if the bartender serves a man too much and he leaves and causes a wreck in his own car... not at all. there's a standard of reasonableness.

if you buy the Audi, and you're sober, have a driver's license and proof of insurance, and legally purcahse the car, the dealer has no liability what you do with it. if they furnish you a car and allow you to drive on a public roadway with their car and you're obviously drunk or stoned or don't have a valid license then they should have liability...

neither scenario is anywhere close to what happened though. alot of people buy fast cars because they're fast and they don't crash them, drive responsibly, only speed on the freeway or race track, etc. but on the other hand, people who are drunk and never ok to drive cars. plus Audi won't sell you a car if you're drunk and they won't sell to you without checking your DL and the like. so they have some due dilligence.

I'm not saying to put these kids in prison for forever, and if any one circumstance were the slightest bit different I'd say no criminal liability was warranted. if it were her car, if she stole the key, if she was only .1 or .07 or something where someone might've been "boderline" but that's aside the point, the narrative here is that these teens are being prosecuted for failing to prevent drunk driving, that's not true, they're being prosecuted for actively assisting someone in driving drunk. they were not passive observers.

The state won't hold a dead girl responsible for her actions, bad PR. The state will hold some of the boys responsible for her actions, good PR. A complete exoneration is in order or the families of those three boys will suffer imeasurable harm via a civil proceeding. But, this seems to be par for the course where the state is concerned. If these boys are found responsible for her actions then a civil proceeding is all but a certainty and the parents of those three boys will be out in the cold, in more ways than one.

OC for ME said:

The state won't hold a dead girl responsible for her actions, bad PR. The state will hold some of the boys responsible for her actions, good PR. A complete exoneration is in order or the families of those three boys will suffer imeasurable harm via a civil proceeding. But, this seems to be par for the course where the state is concerned. If these boys are found responsible for her actions then a civil proceeding is all but a certainty and the parents of those three boys will be out in the cold, in more ways than one.

Click to expand...

The State is not attempting to hold the boys responsible for her actions. If anyone was damaged as a result of her actions, that will be a civil suit, and going after the boys would be reasonable.

No, the State is going after the boys for their own actions (giving her the keys to a car that was not hers when it was clear that she would drive it, but was in no condition to do so) which created a hazard, not just to the girl, but to those around her. It was the act of putting the keys into her hand that amounted to reckless endangerment.