Chris Smith: Sonoma County judge’s dated view of deadly Oakmont DUI

Some readers checked the date on their newspaper upon reading that a Sonoma County judge gave a repeat DUI offender a measure of credit for not having specifically intended to mow down two people on a sidewalk.

Decades ago, people who caused injuries or deaths when driving while self-impaired were routinely cut slack: Accidents happen. We’ve all been there. The driver is a good person temporarily muddled by drink and/or drugs.

My read on the legal system’s current, improved attitude is that if you or I choose to start the car while intoxicated, then we’ve knowingly activated a deadly machine and we’re fully responsible for whatever harm we may cause.

What Judge Jamie Thistle- thwaite said in court to the woman whose car struck two seniors in Oakmont seems an unfortunate throwback.

She told Gayle Gray, “This was a totally avoidable situation, but you had no specific intent to hurt anybody.”

No specific intent.

Of course Gray had no specific intent to injure or kill. No intoxicated driver specifically intends to do that. That afternoon in January, Gray presumably intended only to drive to a market to buy wine, pasta sauce and mayonnaise.

When she formed her potentially lethal intent was when she picked up her car keys.

She’d taken prescription medication and when her blood-alcohol level was tested it was .05. That’s not high enough for a presumption of impairment but it showed she’d been drinking.

Gray killed 85-year-old Jackie Simon and seriously injured Josephine Ross, 91.

One person disappointed by Judge Thistlethwaite’s saying that at least Gray didn’t do it with specific intent is Aaron Wade of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. To him, it makes no sense to be found free of criminal intent when “you’re intentionally drinking, you’re intentionally taking prescription drugs and you’re intentionally driving a car.”

Gray pleaded no-contest to felony vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and to DUI. She’s 77 and has issues that a judge might appropriately consider when sentencing her.

But her “specific intent” should make no more difference to the sentence than it did to the women she ran down.

HHHHH

THERE’S A STARFISH pin on the lapel of the jacket my friend Chris Coursey wore at last Tuesday’s heated Santa Rosa City Council meeting.

The pin is visible in a photo that ran with the story on the 4-3 vote to craft an ordinance to limit some landlords to annual rent increases of 3 percent.

Chris said he wears the pin because it symbolizes the story of the child who following a storm finds the beach laden for miles with dying starfish. The child begins to toss beached starfish back into the water.

A man remarks to the kid that there are so many starfish, even a entire day’s work won’t make a difference. Tossing back another starfish, the child replies, “It made a difference to that one.”

Chris said he knows a rent-control law would be imperfect.

“It creates a two-tier system, where some tenants get rent control and others don’t, based on an arbitrary date. Same goes for landlords: Some are subject to the ordinance, some aren’t.”

He said the council can’t help everyone in crisis because of rising rents. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help the ones you can.”

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.