Quote:
Originally Posted by jrc
Assuming the BAC is excluded and taken out of the equation, then she is charged with Negligent Homicide. There is a big gray area between broken mechnicals and negligence.
It's by no means a guarantee that a jury will find her guilty of negligence, it gets into a judgement call. Was she going too fast, did she have a proper lookout, was she distracted, it gets messy in a hurry. If you take booze out of the picture, this is a much different case.
An accident that causes a death is not automatically a homicide.
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I believe there is a concept in maritime law that you must do all you can to avoid a collision. The simple fact that she had a collision means she failed in her responsibilities as an operator. You can quibble over the specifics of exactly how that happened. Unless she could prove that she took all reasonable actions and was somehow prevented (someone grabbed the wheel, mechanical failure) from maneuvering the boat out of harm's way I think she will be shown responsible for the accident.
I agree juries are funny creatures and can do just about anything these days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SIKSUKR
I'll address 2 questions here:
First,If Erica's BAC was just under .08 she would still be considered impaired so I could understand why it would want to be excluded.
Second,do you believe that any vehicle accident that does not involve alchohol should punish the operator for said accident?
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1)You're probably right. Better to have nebulous information that she had "something to drink" than to to have factual information of alcohol use, even if it was under the limit.
2)I could postulate a scenario where a driver was going reasonably slow in winter conditions and hit glare ice and ended up killing someone. Do I think they should be "punished"? Probably not. The problem is that there is a major difference between operating a car and a boat. Operator responsibilities for cars are often very specific, you have lines on the road for Pete's sake. Operator responsibilities for a boat are much broader and easier to screw up. For example, what is a proper lookout? I think I could make a strong argument that hitting the island proves that the lookout was not "proper". I could also make the case that she hit the island because she was going too fast. Was there a GPS on the boat? Was she using it? There's no law that says you have to have a GPS or that you must use it but I could make the case that by not using available GPS, especially in fog, that she was not maintaining a proper lookout. The list is endless. Most of us make similar mistakes all the time but most of us don't end up running into an island. The collision changes everything.
I'm not trying to bash her. I'm very sympathetic to her. I just think once you have a boat collision of this magnitude it will be almost impossible to escape responsibility for it. And it you are responsible, legal consequences follow.
We'll see how it plays out.