Darryl Anderson was drunk behind the wheel of his Audi SUV, had his accelerator pressed to the floor and was barreling toward a car ahead of him when he snapped a photo of his speedometer. The picture showed a car in the foreground, a collision warning light on his dashboard and a speed of 141 mph (227 kph).
An instant later, he slammed into the car in the photo. The driver, Shalorna Warner, was not seriously injured but her 8-month-old son and her sister were killed instantly, authorities said. Evidence showed Anderson never braked.
Anderson, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years in prison for the May 31 crash in northern England that killed little Zackary Blades and Karlene Warner. Anderson pleaded guilty last week in Durham Crown Court to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.
Punishments in the US tend to be excessive though and people in the US somehow normalized it.
As an American I completely agree. People lose sight of just how much time the amount of years actually can be, and just want to feel better about punishing bad people.
Most people who do something like this will live with the guilt for their entire lives. It will always come up in job interviews, it will hurt their social situations. Nightmares forever. But we just have to pile even more shit on so that the rest of us can ride the high horse.
And before anyone shows up, no, getting a longer or shorter prison sentence does nothing for the victim. They’re already in as bad of a spot as they could be.
Which has precisely zero to do with the submission.
I mean, 17 years for a car accident, drunk or not, is completely draconian. Murderers and child rapists regularly get lesser sentences, and their crimes were malicious not negligent.
There’s no benefit to society to lock anyone up that long for something that can be corrected with a compassionate justice system. If we can release them with confidence that they won’t make the same reckless decisions again, is there any point to locking them up for that long other than to make them suffer?