Reading Scott Greenfield’s indispensible Simple Justice blog this morning, like I do every morning, I saw his post on the new DWI law passed at warp speed by the New York legislature, which makes DWI with a minor 15 years old or younger in the car an automatic felony with no possibility for reduction. The original story ran on Gothamist (full disclosure: I’m an editor for Gothamist's Austin-based site, Austinist) and boy, the comments there – as per usual for comments on the Internet in response to just about anything – are pretty frustrating, full of strident comments from people who only half-understand what they’ve just read.

To be certain, driving while intoxicated is very serious. The casual attitude around the legal blogosphere (I can’t bring myself to spell it “blawgosphere”) that sometimes accompanies it is something I’ve struggled with in the past. But the self-righteous stridency with which it’s condemned has always struck me as the gentlemen doth protesting too much. DWI cases, so often, aren’t clear-cut situations in which someone is totally wasted and opted to get behind the wheel anyway. So many of them are situations in which a driver who’s well under the legal limit is driving, stopped for any of a zillion reasons that have nothing to do with the beer he had with dinner, and arrested because the officer smelled alcohol on his breath. It’s not a crime to drive with the smell of alcohol on your breath, but now – if there’s a kid in the car – it’s going to see everyone arrested for it facing down a felony, with the ability of judges and prosecutors to use their discretion removed.

And all of those people in the comments who are celebrating the lighting-quick passage of this legislation – I’m willing to bet if any of them were arrested, they’d miss the ability of the courts to use discretion in their cases more than they’d suffer from the occasional person who’s actually guilty of DWI being charged with a misdemeanor when they really, really want a felony.

Labels: dwi, internet commenters, mandates, simple justice

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