Woman sentenced 6 years for fatal texting crash

Please do not text or even use your cell when you are driving. People who do that crap scare the hell out of me.

Brainless.

And the phone bill crusade she thought was so urgent suddenly changed to, - "Honey? I just killed someone due to gross negligence. I may be charged with something."

Brainless. They never learn, do they?

A Mythbusters episode tested the relative effect of drinking vs. talking on a cell-phone while driving. Roughly equivalent. But just talking allows one to keep eyes on the road. Wonder how the experiment would have worked out if eyes were off the road and focused on a tiny screen?

Check this (you'll have to scroll down a tad):

http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/06/mythbusters_killer_brace_posit.html

WTF is wrong with people?

Why are they appealing? The woman admitted to speeding AND texting; you are GUILTY. Accept your complete and utter douchebaggery and be happy that it wasn't you that burst into flames because obviously it should have been!

I really really need to stop doing this. I think this is probably more than good enough reason to do it. And my car is manual too.

serves her right, if you keep doing stupid things long enough, they'll come back to bite you in the ass.

6 years in jail? For a negligent crime? The punishment does not fit the crime whatsoever in this case. This woman is probably a middle class, soccer mom type. What purpose does it serve to put her in prison with violent criminals who actually pose a direct threat to the general population? I'm not saying what she did wasn't wrong, but I imagine she's probably extremely remorseful (I can't even imagine how guilty I would feel after something like that).

Rather, it would be more fitting to take away her drivers' license for the rest of her life, and have her do some sort of community service related to negligent driving. This was a negligent crime. They give rapists more lenient sentences than 6 years. I think the justice system is long overdue for a reevaluation. Most of the punishments don't make any sense in relation with the actual crime committed. Violent offenders should be jailed, in order to protect the rest of society, but non-violent offenders need different freedoms revoked in order for the punishment to be effective.

quixotic12 tells us,

"6 years in jail? For a negligent crime? The punishment does not fit the crime whatsoever in this case. This woman is probably a middle class, soccer mom type."

Breathtaking sophistry, isn't it?

To quixotic12 - what's all the fuss about?

Big deal. Some aging soccer mom drove around, paying no attention to the road ahead, her eyes glued to a phone to apply herself to the vital task of paying -- phone bills? And she killed another human being?

Is that so bad?

Vital Issue #1. Middle class soccer moms, regardless of what harm they do, by their very status in our community are "Innocent." Exceptional. Untouchable.

Be reasonable, that measly "negligent crime" (whose specific nature "vehicular homicide" quixotic12 carefully avoids) is just not that awful. Except to some unhappy relatives of the victim..

The wrongful extinction of a human life is a matter of bad luck, not personal responsibility. Recognizing this, it should result in two sets of laws.

Vital Issue #2. When messy things like this happen middle class people (and above) should be severely scolded (at the very least, once!) asked to wear ankle bracelets, and do telephonic community service -- from the comforts of Home.

But those "lower orders"? They must be treated differently and exposed to the maximum penalty the law provides.

Vital Issue #3. Its simple really, when a soccer mom kills someone it's because she busy being a Really Good Citizen. But when some dolt down the income scale commits the same crime, it is because they are violent and inferior. The crime must be weighed against the income-level of the offender.

Vital Issue #4. The idea of Equal Justice Before The Law is just sooo last century.

Stylish aristocrats and their acolytes see it all very clearly. To apply law to all offenders equally is an abrogation of "Rights" to inadvertently kill others and not be abused for so doing.

As President Bush in his esteemed judgment, so poignantly observed about The Constitution, laws are just words on goddamn pieces of paper and important folks should select which ones are best ignored based on income prejudices and what suits us at the moment.

Surely that's what the Founding Fathers intended. Probably.

So, why should anyone be in the least offended by the notion that an offender whose negligence killed someone is thought "non-violent."

The reality that another person is dead because an ignoramus elected to put others at risk, needs to weighed against raising embarrassing questions about the base intelligence of soccer moms in general..

All that said, I agree with the judge. Except that, were it up to me, Deborah Matis-Engle would have gotten 12 years in a maximum security prison. No parole.

Why?

Because every day the same class of morons does exactly the same thing, with predictable results.

Where such carelessness and pathological stupidity persist, only a really hard shock, like the threat of very stiff prison sentences, will keep countless more imbeciles from killing more soccer moms - people who had zero reason to die that day, so that some twit could pay a bill.

Great, 12 years for a crime commited by carelesness and stupidity. Why not the death sentence? After all it's "an eye for an eye right"?
What a strange sense of justice. In the end 2 people's lives are ruined (+families).

As horrible as this is, it was still an accident. 6 years for this is a joke.. but so is our legal system.

Sure seems to be a lot more sympathy here for the killer than for the victim.

quixotic12, thegreatsod,

I know Scarabus has, but have you never heard of reductio ad absurdum?

Reducing an argument to demonstrate the inherent absurdity of its positions?

My bias is with the victim's family, for justice and restitution.

This dim bulb you are so anxious to defend didn't merely make a "mistake" or two, she killed someone. Horribly.

I'm curious, how much more severe can an offense be beyond wrongful death?

Further, where do you get the information you base your conclusions upon?

Do you think the judge who passed sentence simply counted the fingers on one hand, saw that he had a thumb and shouted, "SIX YEARS!"

Were you present at trial? Can you use remote-viewing to conjure up the details of what was heard in court? Have you read the transcript?

The punishment obviously does fit the crime or the judge wouldn't have passed a sentence which could be overturned on appeal and review..

Your argument is with what you dislike about our system of Justice.

You think it can be too harsh to suit your taste. You want people "reformed" and ready to "rejoin" society in a nice antiseptic way..

A nice myth, until you actually meet the people sentenced to prison and wonder whether anything ever could reform them.

quixotic goes so far as to say, "Demanding an eye for an eye lowers us to the level of the perpetrator."

Following your logic, perpetrator Deborah Matis-Engle, would have to be judicially murdered, by accident. The punishment matching the crime.

Did that actually happen in your view?

Pls advise...

i hope someone can update this one with the "basis of the appeal"....

like, abject stupidity, or what?
or reduce the charges to "speeding"?

a co-worker of mine was killed by a three-time DUI person doing at least 60 in a 35 many years ago. makes me sick.