Boating Accident/Death off Diamond Island

[Mee-n-Mac]

Originally Posted by sa meredith

Well guys, I'm not sure where to fall on this one. While I am not "blood thirsty", I do find some things troublesome.
First of all, I just don't think, at this point, it is speculation to say her actions caused the death of another person. This seems obvious.
Secondly, she was mostly likely under the influence during these actions. This seems clear because of the motions to suppress the blood sample evidence. (I don't think you would try to suppress evidence that worked in your favor)
{snip}
Just my thoughts....

Let me play contrarian. What if the BAC evidence says she was at 0.025. While not meeting the legal definition for being "intoxicated" the prosecutor might argue that she was impaired (which is the term bandied about in the story). The defense now has to defuse a hot button issue and I suspect any jury is predisposed to be more negative when alcohol is involved. So the, well a, question becomes how impaired was she and then did this impairment even factor into the incident. I know people who get stupid after a couple of drinks and others who aren't overly affected. Imagine a case where you have 2 beers with lunch and then as you leave the parking lot you are hit by another car. The state decides to prosecute you for driving impaired (in addition to whatever else happens to the other guy). You claim it was only 2 beers ! The state claims that you might have avoided the other car except for the alcohol and besides you were still "impaired". What would you want your attorney to do ?

As for hitting the island I wonder when does it become a crime and when is it an accident ? Some years ago an ederly man hit Rattlesnake I (very low speed) and broke some bones IIRC. Pretend it had been a broken neck and not his. I think the stated cause was that a neighbor had turned on some lights which the boater had confused for his own and thus he came into the wrong part of the island. So was this an accident or was his speed excessive for the situation, resulting in hitting the island with (in our newly revised scenario) severe injuries (or a death is you care to equalize the 2 situations) ? No matter what the skipper screwed up and is culpable but is he/she guilty of a crime ?

In this case I just don't know enough to make an informed judgement. If the rain and/or fog had knocked visibilty down enough then she shouldn't have been on plane. I lean in that direction. But I don't know what the conditions were there and then. I know that 3 hours earlier the cloud cover was hovering over the lake making it dark but there wasn't a problem seeing, at lake level, up Alton Bay.

If I've understood her course that night (and I'm not sure I do, I think she was running the slot between Diamond and Rattlesnake coming from Wolfeboro) then I find it hard to understand how she misjudged her position relative to the NW end of Rattlesnake so much as to hit Diamond I. FL 25 is there to help. Did she not see it ? If so why not ? Did she just misjudge the turn needed to clear Diamond or did she see some lights on shore and mistakenly think she was in the clear when she wasn't. Was she paying attention at the helm or gabbing it up with her friends ? Did any alcohol in her affect any of her abilities or would the same thing have happened if she hadn't touched a drop ?

I just don't know enough to make a call.