Street racing punishment, random case.

gtrietsc

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Posting in the other thread regardign street racing, it reminded me of hearing about a street race several years back here in Dallas. I seem to remember a Honda Civic racing someone down Northwest Highway (which has a relatively low speed limit) and ending up going *backwards* into an innocent persons car - killing the Civic owner. I am not sure of more details. I think it happened sometime in 1999 or 2000.

Anyway, while I was Googling, I came across this story, from 2002:

A 23-year-old motorist has been charged in a collision in which two people in another vehicle were killed when his car veered out of control Sunday while racing on LBJ Freeway, Mesquite police reported.

Witnesses told police that the driver of a 1998 red Honda Civic was racing another car when he lost control and struck a 2001 Chevrolet Suburban that was carrying six people returning from a funeral.

The driver of the Honda, Rodney Michael Espiritu, 23, has been charged with two counts of manslaughter and three counts of aggravated assault, said Mesquite police Sgt. William Artesi. Mr. Espiritu was being held Monday in the Mesquite jail in lieu of $450,000 bail.

The impact of the crash flipped the SUV over the guardrail. It rolled into the northbound lanes and landed upside down in the 15800 block of southbound LBJ near Oates Drive. The driver, Luther Moore Burleson, 76, of Corpus Christi and passenger, Donna Marsh, 49, were thrown from the vehicle and killed.

Mr. Espiritu was not injured.

Police said they are also looking for the driver of a two-door black Nissan 240 SSX who sped away.

Those injured in the crash were: Jackie Burleson, 56, of Austin; Nannie Burleson, 86, of Corpus Christi; Inez Burleson, 75, of Waxahachie; and Mildred Massad, 75, of Corpus Christi. Police said they did not know Ms. Marsh's hometown.

Nannie Burleson, Jackie Burleson and Inez Burleson were treated atParkland Memorial Hospital and released. Ms. Massad remained at Parkland on Monday in fair condition.

I wondered: What happened to the racer? Its been long enough since this happened that it should have wound its way through the courts. So, I used public records access to see what I could learn.

Unless I am reading it wrong, and that is TOTALLY POSSIBLE, it looks like he got the following punishment:

10 or 12 years probation
$17238 in fines and court costs
2 Years in Prison

He may have gotten more, but if he did, it aint much more.

I think you get more prison time for defacing a web page in this country these days. :(
 
Posting in the other thread regardign street racing, it reminded me of hearing about a street race several years back here in Dallas. I seem to remember a Honda Civic racing someone down Northwest Highway (which has a relatively low speed limit) and ending up going *backwards* into an innocent persons car - killing the Civic owner. I am not sure of more details. I think it happened sometime in 1999 or 2000.

Anyway, while I was Googling, I came across this story, from 2002:



I wondered: What happened to the racer? Its been long enough since this happened that it should have wound its way through the courts. So, I used public records access to see what I could learn.

Unless I am reading it wrong, and that is TOTALLY POSSIBLE, it looks like he got the following punishment:

10 or 12 years probation
$17238 in fines and court costs
2 Years in Prison

He may have gotten more, but if he did, it aint much more.

I think you get more prison time for defacing a web page in this country these days. :(

That story (and others) is why the *2003* Legislature bumped up the laws to the point described in the other thread.
 
I'm simply amazed at how easy we are on people who kill others doing stupid things behind the wheel. A few years ago a 47 year old was driving drunk and killed two teenagers. It was his twelfth drunk driving conviction. How anyone can get that many convictions and still be walking free, let alone be allowed anywhere near a set of car keys, is simply beyond me. It took eleven convictions and two dead people to finally do something serious about it. There is no reason or excuse for why those kids had to die. I place just as much blame on the judges and lawmakers as the drunk driver himself. I can't honestly believe we pay these people money to do the shit poor jobs they do.

Here's what else gets me: They let repeatedly convicted drunk drivers get behind the wheel again because of weak punishments. But then they won't let law-abiding 18-20 years olds drink because something bad might happen. What. The. Fuck. :wall:

While on my rant of drunk driving I just remembered something new Ohio is doing to try and stop it. More checkpoints? No. More police out on patrol? No. Stiffer penalties? Nope. Their solution: advertise their conviction with special license plates. Seriously. What the hell good is that supposed to do? Am I supposed to fear for my life if I see a car with those plates coming? What if the offender's wife or child is driving the car? And the final icing on the stupid cake is that the special plates look almost exactly like ones from Alaska so it makes them look like drunk drivers. Nice job morons!
 
Spectre, I was hoping you would reply. Just out of curiousity, are you in the legal profession? Thats not a set up for anything, but you seem to have an interest in legal things.

Kajun - I am with you totally, the punishment needs to fit the crime. That said, I am not for DUI checkpoints. Driving down a particular street should not be enough cause to stop and subject you to search. You should be demonstrably impaired.
 
No, I'm not in the legal profession. What I *am* is a citizen who used to live in a far more oppressive state who moved to Texas; I therefore keep a wary eye on government to make sure that this place isn't going the way of California.

I also prefer to know the law, so that dealings with law enforcement are not so scary. Texas law, fortunately, in the things that affect every day life, isn't very complex.
 
And the final icing on the stupid cake is that the special plates look almost exactly like ones from Alaska so it makes them look like drunk drivers. Nice job morons!

:lol: This proves once and for all that all Alaskans are alcoholics. Can't blame them though!

Seriously though, good rant and it goes along with what I've been saying for years: it's ridiculous to have the drinking age still be so high because some incessant Puritanical busybodies took a few cases to heart and decided that this would be the greatest threat to mankind. Why we haven't lowered the drinking age yet is due to sheer pathetic laziness, because we have too much other crap to worry about, because we're too irrational. And it's infuriating.
 
:lol: This proves once and for all that all Alaskans are alcoholics. Can't blame them though!

Seriously though, good rant and it goes along with what I've been saying for years: it's ridiculous to have the drinking age still be so high because some incessant Puritanical busybodies took a few cases to heart and decided that this would be the greatest threat to mankind. Why we haven't lowered the drinking age yet is due to sheer pathetic laziness, because we have too much other crap to worry about, because we're too irrational. And it's infuriating.
You can't even go into a liquor store if your under 21 here in Indiana. Last Christmas my dad was at the local liquor store and said they made three kids all under 10 years old wait outside in negative temperatures for nearly 20 minutes while they're father waited in line to buy some beer. I'm sorry but If he was buying beer for his 10 year olds couldn't he just make the hand-off in the parking lot? It's just asinine. It's not about age, it's about maturity and being able to respect alcohol. Something many European countries have been instilling in their kids from a young age.

Anyways what were we talking about? Street racers are degenerate scum something like that?
 
Wait...Civic...destroys...Suburban...does not compute... :blink:

1. Being a Civic and street-raced, it was probably also street-riced.
2. Therefore ugly.
3. The Suburban was probably old, if it died.
4. Therefore OBVIOUSLY, the Suburban died from a heart attack, scared to death by the monstrosity that's your average Civic with a bodykit and a fartcan.
 
I don't think the car can wear its own seatbelts and even if it did, that's like wearing a bulletproof vest and getting shot in the face. :p

And yes, i'm glad that at least in my country they're upping the drink driving penalties along with speeding fines and other traffic violations. I'm all for safe driving and making the roads a safer place by getting rid of the individuals who can't adhere to the rules.
 
Why we haven't lowered the drinking age yet is due to sheer pathetic laziness, because we have too much other crap to worry about, because we're too irrational. And it's infuriating.
Could be that politicians are lazy, could be that they're apathetic to the plight of underage college students in desperate need of booze. I think that the legal drinking age hasn't been lowered for the same reason that the useless "war on drugs" continues: politicians are incapable of eating all the shit they've been spewing for decades. And god help us if they themselves actually believe any of it.

Well we kept trying to tell WannabeagiantaSS that just cause you're in a bigger car doesn't mean you're safer... I think shows that off nicely.
Definitely. From the sound of the article, they got t-boned off a retaining wall, and a couple of the Suburban passengers weren't wearing seatbelts. I don't think there are a whole lot of cars or trucks that would handle that well.
 
Could be that politicians are lazy, could be that they're apathetic to the plight of underage college students in desperate need of booze. I think that the legal drinking age hasn't been lowered for the same reason that the useless "war on drugs" continues: politicians are incapable of eating all the shit they've been spewing for decades. And god help us if they themselves actually believe any of it.


I think politicians would catch alot of flak in the US if they even proposed lowering the drinking age. Something I think they'd rather avoid altogether. I don't see it happening for a long time.
 
This was my grandfather that dies in the crash. After the trial, Rodney only recieved 10 yrs probation and 45 days in jail, in which he only served 15 days, because the judege let him out early to goto church camp. Also, Nannie Burleson died in the crash. My grandmother suffered head trauma and my father suffered internal injuries.
 
Something that is also quite wrong like this happened to one of my old friends in high school I don't talk to anymore. Nobody died, but a 5-times convicted drunk driver (before this particular case) was driving at night and crashed into her older Nissan that she was driving. She was driving home from work when it happened... This happened back in late 2006 I believe. (They couldn't prove he was doing anything else while driving, but they could prove he was drunk while driving.)

She spent about 4-5 months in the hospital and underwent about 10-13 surgeries to repair her body. She was severely injured, but she eventually recovered. I think even to this day she still limps around, but she used the opportunity to lose a ton of weight (She used to be a sizable lady. When she returned to school she was extremely skinny and extremely quiet [she used to be quite a loud person before that]).

I think that something's broken in the system when that's able to happen. He was "legally" able to drive at the point, he was given his license back and then shortly he drove drunk yet again. This guy was in his 30s or 40s I believe.

People really need to be punished for these types of crimes and not given back full privileges until they realize why their actions were bad and learned from them (I think this guy finally lost his license after this because this was the worst accident that happened from his drinking.) :sad:
 
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I think politicians would catch alot of flak in the US if they even proposed lowering the drinking age. Something I think they'd rather avoid altogether. I don't see it happening for a long time.

To be honest a trip to the states is enough to make me think it should be raised in the UK.

Amazing, walking around a city on a Saturday night and it doesn't resemble downtown Baghdad.
 
I think politicians would catch alot of flak in the US if they even proposed lowering the drinking age. Something I think they'd rather avoid altogether. I don't see it happening for a long time.

This. There are several factors that play a role in it pretty much never changing: (although the age limit is very arbitrary, who says a 20 year old is less mature than a 21 year old? etc.)

The elderly make up a large number of the voting public. To lose these people over something like drinking (which they would...an oldster was complaining about how Dover, PA is no longer a dry town as of a few weeks ago on the news) would be political suicide...just not a smart thing to do.

Parents also are influential, with more and more parents "helicoptering" over their children's lives, politicians would have a ear full if they lowered it. The whole "think of the children!" angle, although IMO parents should set the decisions for this in their family. While parents may vote a bit less than the elderly, they're still a force to be reckoned with.

Fear of the unknown: Ok so a possible scenario is that the lowering of the drinking age might cause a bit of a uptick in issues surrounding alcohol and teenagers, but over time, that should decrease as people learn that they don't need to drink as much as possible in a short timespan because it's illegal otherwise. Also, I feel that people won't feel the need to binge drink to "make up for lost time" etc.
 
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