drunk kid kils 4 injures 11 no jail time

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by sifreak21, Dec 18, 2013.

  1. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

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    http://m.nydailynews.com/1.1544508

    Are you fucking kidding me..

    Wonder why the he's to poor to know right from wrong doesn't work

    This really pisses me off. I'm not mad he's rich couldn't care less about that but the fact that he was drunk "and high I believe" killed multiple people injured even more and gets off with a slap on the wrist
     
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  3. Bells Staff Member

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    I think what made so many people angry about this story is that his lawyers argued that he did not know better because he is so rich and because of the family wealth, his parents never taught him right from wrong, and the judge allowed that to stand as a valid defense.

    The law is clear. It is illegal to drive under the influence. Whether his parents taught him right from wrong is beside the point, when you consider the clarity of the law in saying that is wrong. The law also clearly says that theft is illegal and thus, wrong. He stole the beer he drank to put him over the limit. He also consumed drugs. On a prior occasion, he was found with an unconscious naked 14 year old girl in his car, he was let off then as well.

    The judge's ruling sets a dangerous precedent. That if you are rich, then you simply cannot know better while if you are poor, then you should know better. It is absolutely abhorrent.

    It's not only the US public that has expressed outrage at the decision.

    Psychologists are also up in arms.

    Dr. G. Dick Miller argued to the court that Couch's life could be 'turned around' with one to two years' treatment - and no contact with his rich parents.

    Dr Miller said Couch's parents gave him "freedoms no young person should have." He said Couch suffered from "affluenza": His family felt that wealth bought privilege and there was no link between behaviour and consequences.

    As a result, the teen was unable to understand or control his own behaviour.

    It wasn't the first time Couch had been let of for being a spoilt little rich kid.

    Dr Miller pointed to an instance where the then-15-year-old was found in a pick-up truck with a drunk, unconscious and undressed 14-year-old girl. He went unpunished.

    It was "affluenza" that made the teen emotionally flat,. The "condition" needed years of therapy, he said.

    But his professional colleagues are crying "bunk".

    Affluenza is not an illness.

    It is not defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) used as the basis of all psychiatric diagnosis.

    [HR][/HR]

    "Unfortunately, given the fact that this was successful, it's more likely that more attorneys are going to pick it up and wave it as their banner," said Gary Buffone, a Florida psychologist.

    Perhaps the real issue is that the US court system is suffering "affluenza" itself.

    Only affluent people can afford the best attorneys who can dig-up psychologists such as Dr Miller to help their clients get off serious charges.


    Well, being a supposed victim of a made up condition because of his wealth, and because he was let off, the families of the victims are going to sue. And sue they should. While it cannot bring back their loved one's, they are doing it to teach him a lesson. He was drunk, stoned and driving 50km over the speed limit. They have every right to be angry and upset and every right to want or expect the law to hold him responsible for his actions. To claim that he cannot be because he is rich is ridiculous. The law is not written with the explicit protection of the wealthy.
     
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  5. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you for the informative post Bells, that new info just pisses me off even more
     
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  7. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, it's the spoiled rich kid defense. He gets to kill 4 people, injure 11 and walk away. If they aren't going to throw the kid in jail they should at least throw the parents in jail.

    What is interesting is this judgment occurred in Texas - the state that has no qualms about executing people from wrong side of tracks. Texas is responsible for 37+% of the nation's executions since 1976.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...que_of_the_psychology_of_no_consequences.html

    http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/number-executions-state-and-region-1976
     
  8. Mazulu Banned Banned

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    One could argue that, if you want to be a serial killer,you don't need a gun. You need a car. So much for anti-gun legislation.
     
  9. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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  10. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I might buy that if the judge had sent his parents to prison.

    Sounds like his rich parents have a lot of influence in the community. They probably know where all the bodies are buried so no one dares to challenge them.

    Nonetheless, there's some truth in this. Rich parents bail their kids out of trouble all the time. Usually it's paying for things they break, but a sufficiently rich person could conceivably convince a sufficiently poor person to accept money for the family dog that was squashed by a Rolls-Royce, or even the daughter who was raped.

    But to be fair for a moment, not all rich kids are morons and many of them rise above this bizarre disadvantage and grow up to be good citizens. Some of them even run away from home to escape from the sleaze.

    So far it's not an epidemic, but it does happen. Still, in general, in a jury trial wealth is not an advantage for the defendant.

    American juries appreciate psychologists almost as much as they like rich people. Fortunately they are discerning consumers. When psychologists discovered that eye-witness testimony ain't worthy doodley-squat, we read the studies and agreed. DNA testing has exonerated hundreds of people who were convicted primarily by eye-witness testimony.

    Nope. 2011 was the first year in which more Americans were killed by guns than by cars.

    More than half of those deaths were suicides, but why shouldn't suicides count? A gun in your desk drawer makes it so easy to decide to die. If you have to find the right pills or slit your wrists or hang yourself or fill your garage with motor exhaust or jump off of a roof, it will take you so long to set up that you'll have second thoughts and then third and fourth thoughts. Primarily because all of those methods have a very high chance of failure, and in many cases (especially hanging) you can end up alive but with the IQ of a watermelon.
     
  11. Mazulu Banned Banned

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    Sounds like you've put a lot of thought into this.
     
  12. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    And if your parents are rich, you can walk away with out any jail time.
     
  13. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

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    Fraggle regardless of what the parents do the child know even thru school drinking and driving are bad or wrong and killing people is wrong
     
  14. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I'm 70. Time to decide how I'm going to die, before the accountants and attorneys who run a nursing home siphon off my entire estate in a quixotic attempt to keep my body alive for as long as possible.

    When's the last time you heard of a child resisting peer pressure and doing what's right instead? Especially if they're drunk!

    Children are famous for believing that they're immortal.

    Since we've wiped out the worst childhood diseases, the leading causes of death for teenagers are now road accidents, suicide, homicide, and overdosing on legal drugs they find in their momma's medicine cabinet. (I don't have those in sequential order, but I'm pretty sure road accidents are #1.)

    Oddly, the one risk about which teenagers are wiser than their parents is driving while texting. They've lived their entire lives with computer technology, so apparently they understand its effect on other cognitive skills better than their elders.

    Texting makes you four times as likely to die in a road accident. This means that if you do it, the probability is 1 in 25 that the cause of your death will be a road accident.
     
  15. Mazulu Banned Banned

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    So you've had a happy life, and now you want to blow your head off because your bones are achy. This is what "realism" is all about. You make me sick. Scumbags like you disparage people like me for trying to live "in the light", according to spiritual ideals. You disparage me because I resist reality. You gloat about how wonderful your life is, and then you want to end it with a gun? You offend me and you are an offense to nature.

    You make me sick.
     
  16. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    ah poor thing your sickened by someone who wants to control their fate. Before you mouth off about something don't because I assure you you have the slightest clue about what your talking about
     
  17. Mazulu Banned Banned

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    Atheists make me sick. You suck out all the hope in the world. You destroy the moral framework of our civilization. And then when you get old and you can't piss as far as you used to, you decide to kill yourself. One priest, one crystal toting new ager, one good human being has more worth than a million useless atheists. Atheist scum!!!
     
  18. Mazulu Banned Banned

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    Killing yourself is not taking control of your fate. That kind of thinking is what's wrong with atheism. That's why atheism is a mental disorder.
     
  19. Mazulu Banned Banned

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    Let's call it what it really is. Atheism is hopelessness. Atheism is a potentially fatal mental illness that can end in suicide.
     
  20. Bells Staff Member

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    Quite the contrary, death is normal and expected in nature. Fraggle has determined that he would like to have come control over his life whenever that time comes. It has nothing to do with his religious belief, or lack thereof, but one steeped in not wanting to be kept alive on a machine for heaven knows how long. My parents, both strict Catholics have also left explicit instructions in their living wills requesting that they are not left on life support if something were to happen to them, because that is not how they want to live the rest of their days. While it is not an easy thing for me, as their only child, to want to contemplate, they made sure the decision is not in my hands. I have known their wishes since I was a teenager, but they wanted to make sure that if something like that were to happen to either or both of them, then it would not be up to me to make that decision. They just wanted me to know so that I would not counter the decision for my own personal reasons. They wanted me to know so that I would respect their decision.

    Mazulu, in nature, if an animal knows it is unwell and about to die, it will often go to a place where it can die.

    Also, your dishonesty knows no bounds. The irony that you claim atheists make you sick, as though being a theist makes you better, while you sit here and lie through your teeth. Where did he say he wanted to end it with a gun? Fraggle is anti-gun for one thing, so please, stop lying and making things up. You claim to be a Christian and you lie like this? Some Christian you are.

    Do you know, that is the very argument that Hitler made against Jews and the Roma and the disabled before he murdered millions of people? It was also the same argument the Hutu made against the Tutsi before the Tutsi were murdered.

    What is despicable is that you claim to be a believer, a Christian but you are nothing but hate. You are violent and hateful and a stupid sociopath.

    You have been warned repeatedly about this visceral hatred you have for people who do not believe as you do. This is a science forum, why you feel the need to come here to insult and abuse people because they do not share your religious beliefs is beyond me. But I am warning you Mazulu, I have absolutely no qualms in removing you from this site. Not because you are a Christian, but because of your visceral hatred and disrespect and your inability to respect and allow people to be who they are.
     
  21. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not an theist. I belong to a religious group that does more than teach hate
     
  22. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Not at all. I'm talking about the point at which my brain is no longer working, so there's no "me" anymore. In the USA, there is an entire industry of companies who will keep a body like that "alive" for as long as they can continue to bill the person's bank account for as much as two hundred dollars per day. I want that money to go to my heirs, so they can get a good education, or to certain charities who will put it to good use. Keeping my body alive when there's no one inside it is too damn creepy.

    In many cases, even if the body that used to be a person has no assets, they can continue billing. If the person had medical insurance, they can continue to suck money out of the insurance company. This raises everyone's insurance rates, making life difficult for the people who are still living. My mother-in-law was the widow of a disabled veteran, so her bills were paid by the U.S. government--about $200,000 by the time they could finally no longer keep her body alive! This raises everyone's taxes--or maybe they don't raise taxes so the deficit increases--or maybe they take the money out of some other program like education or the rebuilding of our crumbling infrastructure.

    The feeling is mutual. Right-to-die is a big issue in the USA, because the Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), a huge population, are all reaching retirement age. If we continue to deal with end-of-life issues the way we have been dealing with them, the country will go bankrupt keeping them all alive with respirators, tube-feeding, and other extraordinary measures.

    Do you want your children to live in an impoverished country, so the hearts of a hundred million Baby Boomers who are otherwise dead can continue beating for no reason?

    And as Bells already noted, I hate guns. There are several much more peaceful ways for a person with no future to end his life. But ideally, it should be permissible for his family and/or friends to help him.

    If you honestly believe that God wants all of our bodies to keep functioning by artificial means after we lose our cognitive powers, then next time you talk to him please ask him who the fuck is supposed to pay for it?
     
  23. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    Here Here FR
    Right to determine medical care is something which should be an intrinsic right and yet even countries and states which HAVE this legislation like South Australia still have people in the health care sector who think its ok to ignore these orders. Not DNRs which are orders written by a doctor but directives written under legislation like the Consent to medical treatment and palliative care Act, written by the people themselves and even Guardianship orders which are issued by the courts

    I have seen HCPs trying to find ways AROUND them rather than trying to find ways to honor a patients wishes and this gets even worse when you talk to HCPs in the US

    Oh and BTW, helium is supposed to work quite well and painlessly and wont harm the emergency service workers and the undertakers as long as the room is properly ventilated afterwards
     

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