On average, 2 out of 3 people will be involved in a drunk driving crash in their lifetime
Again this past weekend Amherst police took three impaired drivers off the road -- Amanda Gray, age 27; Claudimila Deoliveiramartin, age 22 and Michael Lewandowski, age 36. All three had pleas of not guilty entered in their behalf this morning in Eastern Hampshire District Court and their cases were continued until next month.
And since all of them took and flunked the Breathalyzer test back at APD headquarters -- the one that is admissible in Court -- they all would be wise to accept the Commonwealth's standard offer of a 24D disposition.
Amanda Gray
Claudimila Deoliveiramartin
Click to enlarge/read
Michael Lewandowski
6 comments:
Scumbags.
The implicit condemnation and singling out, conveyed by this blog, of people arrested locally for this one specific crime, who are, after all, presumed innocent in our justice system, seems a bit harsh to me. I assume that these three people today were all first offenders, which can be inferred also from the fact that they did not refuse the breath test.
As someone who prosecuted OUI cases over and over for 4 years in District Court, and then occasionally of multiple offenders after that in Superior Court, I know that the experience of being arrested for OUI is in and of itself a truly miserable one, that ideally involves some painful self-examination and regret by the accused. I know from years of looking at CORI checks that many people get arrested for this particular offense, and never get in trouble with the law again. I doubt that the additional kick in the head of public, permanent shaming on this blog (and then the anonymous name-calling like that featured above by Anon 9:46 pm) serves any additional worthwhile deterrence interest.
I suspect that, if we think about it, the vast majority of us, including Anon 9:46 p.m, can think of instances when we did something similarly stupid and dangerous. We didn't end up with our names and pictures on-line forever....and we didn't do it again.
Rich Morse
I posted 'scumbags,' as I often do, knowing full well that I've driven drunk before and probably have put more people in danger than these people at some point or another. But I am a scumbag, too, and I would expect that I would be viewed as such were I caught. I dish it out, but I can take it, too.
Bonus points for honesty I guess.
That's one hell of a name for a kid to learn how to spell.
It takes a big man to admit he's a scumbag. And no one ever denied that he's a very big man. Or woman.
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