Tough, consistent sentences needed
For the third time in the last week I have read articles in which three people had killed someone while driving drunk. All had other DUIs on their records. The first one was in regards to a woman who received a 10-year prison sentence because she killed a construction worker. In another paper there are two articles; one is in regard to a man who received a 4½- year sentence for killing a young woman who was a passenger in his car. The second article is in regards to a young man, who at the age of 22, has killed two friends who were in the car with him. He faces a possible 28 years in prison, which would be 14 years for each life he took out.
I have a hard time understanding the sentences handed down by judges and juries when they give drunken drivers who kill someone a year or two or just probation when they take an innocent life, but when three people commit the same act and innocent people die, why is the sentence for killing a construction worker worth more than the life of killing someone who isn't?
Who made this rule anyway? Everyone's life is equal in my eyes, and the sentence should be the same regardless if you are a construction worker, police officer, tollway worker or the president. How can a judge sit on his bench and determine that someone's life was only worth a couple years?
One solution to the drinking-and-driving issues that is widespread in this country is villages need to limit the amount of stores that sell alcohol and the time they can sell it. If there were fewer places to get it, there would be a decline in DUI deaths on our roads, and innocent lives would be saved. As well, the sentencing needs to be tougher for drunken drivers. First offense is automatic five years in jail. Second, 10 years and so forth. If you kill someone it should be an automatic life sentence. I don't buy the line that "it was not pre-meditated" either. We all know we are not to drink and drive, and when you knowingly and willingly get into a vehicle and drive drunk and kill someone, that is pre-meditated. Too many times people have been given a light sentence only to do it again and then end up killing someone.
I recently lost my youngest brother as a result of an addiction to alcohol. He was not one to drink and drive, and we are grateful that we never got a call saying he had been in an accident that injured himself or an innocent person. As hard as we tried, we could not get him to stop, and I think if the alcohol had not been so easily available to him in so many places, maybe he would be here today, and I wouldn't be writing this.
Debbie Krueger
Grayslake