Chris Smith: The context of the judge's remarks to the DUI driver

News stories last week quoted a judge as telling the woman who drank alcohol and took prescription medication before she drove into two fellow Oakmont residents on a sidewalk, “you didn’t mean to do it.”

I wasn’t alone in perceiving that Judge Jamie Thistlethwaite was sending the wrong message to someone who, of course, intended no specific harm, but who should have known she posed a lethal threat when she started her car while under the influence.

There was a legal context to Thistlethwaite’s remarks to Gayle Gray, a repeat DUI offender, that I didn’t understand.

Though I still think the judge came off rather consolingly, the issue she addressed at that moment was not whether Gray intentionally drove into Jackie Simon, 85, and Josephine Ross, 91. Simon died from her injuries and Ross was seriously hurt.

The question before the court just then was more limited: Had Gray willfully caused “great bodily harm?” When someone is convicted of inflicting such harm, a judge must find whether it was or wasn’t intentional.

This is a nuanced, legal matter. But the conclusion for me is that I took Thistlethwaite to task for making a sweeping, minimizing statement about Gray’s intentions that tragic day in January, when in fact she was addressing just an aspect of one criminal charge.

To those who think I’m being awfully harsh on a 77-year-old woman who intended only to drive to the market, I’d suggest that all of this is less about her than about the need to signal to everyone else that if they injure or kill while under the influence, their having not intended to do it won’t protect them from being held entirely responsible.

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EX-SGT. STEFAN LeROY is at Walt Disney World in Orlando this week with Prince Harry, George W. Bush, Michelle Obama and Morgan Freeman.

What a ride Stefan is on. Four years after the Maria Carrillo High alum lost most of both legs to a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan, and not even a month after he ran the Boston Marathon on prostheses, he’s competing in several sports in the world Invictus Games.

Prince Harry founded the event so that wounded or ailing vets can have some fun and show what they can do at paralympics-style games.

Stefan, 25, is there to run, swim, row, cycle and play seated volleyball.

At the opening ceremony, the prince, a military vet himself, lauded more than 500 Invictus Games competitors for focusing “on what can be achieved, rather than what can’t.”

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LYTLE OFF THE TOP: Happy birthday to a family-owned business in part responsible for Sonoma County looking as lovely and well-groomed as it does.

It was 40 years ago that a former Navy barber named Ed Lytle bought the Redwood Empire Beauty College, located then behind Johnny and Red’s Pizza on Summerfield Road.

Ed passed the bustling Lytle’s Beauty College, for many years now in Larkfield’s Wikiup neighborhood, to his daughter, Kathy.

Ed died in 2003. Kathy honors him not only through her approach to training cosmetologists and estheticians, but by how she and her staff and students give back at events such as high school grad nights and displays of caring for people who are homeless.

Kathy’s son, Austin, now clips, colors and curls at his late grandfather’s college of beauty.

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