http://crime.about.com/library/weekly/aa122198.htm
The Drunk Driver, the Jehovah's Witness, and Jean Valjean '98
Dateline: 12/21/98
[Last updated 03/12/99]
Yet again, two tough questions:
A drunk driver hits a woman standing by the side of the road. She's seriously injured, but she can be saved. However, as a Jehovah's Witness, she insists she'd rather die than have the necessary blood transfusion.
She doesn't have it, and she dies.
The driver is charged with murder, and his lawyer claims the victim died because of the choice she made, not because of the accident.
Does it matter? To post your comments on the Forum (or to read what others have said), please click here; or write to me.
FOLLOW-UP: A jury decided the driver wasn't guilty of the charge of second degree murder, but did convict him of manslaughter. In March (1999), he was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
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Twenty-five years ago, Alfred Martin, sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling $10 worth of marijuana, escaped from a Virginia prison farm. He started a new life in Michigan, but Virginia finally succeeded in extraditing him last week. He now faces a maximum of 25 years in jail.
Comments? Please either post your comments to the Bulletin Board, or write to me.
As with the drunk driver/Jehovah's Witness question, there were too many comments for me to post here, so please go to the Bulletin Board to read them. If you only want to read messages, you can log onto it without registering by just hitting the GUEST button. ***
As long as we're all here, I might as well mention a third case. I don't expect much comment about this one, because it seems to be a no-brainer:
Thirty-odd years ago, a young English girl named Mary Bell murdered two toddlers. She served some time in juvenile detention, then was set free and given a new identity. Last spring, the new identity came undone when she was paid by an author to collaborate on a book about her crimes (From start to finish, by the way, her story was ignored by the American press. If you want to read about the original case and the controversy -- and it's quite a story -- please click here).
Anyway... In the aftermath of this spring's events, the English people (and politicians) felt very strongly that no murderer should ever again be able to profit monetarily from his or her crimes.
Well, in 1993, two English 10-year-olds killed a toddler in a train station. This story did make the American press. Now, England's Lord Chancellor (the head of their judiciary) has gone on record that there's no law preventing the two killers from being paid for their stories, saying he is "hostile to censorship" and that such a book would "add to the sum total of human knowledge".
How obvious is this response: "Saying you can't get paid for it is not censorship!"
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On the December 7 page, I asked you how (or if) the man who raped and murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka could get a fair trial, and whether a prostitute, wrongly imprisoned for 25 years, should be compensated the same way you or I would be. Your responses are here.
