BLAMING JESSICA: DRUG USE, DUI OR RECKLESS DRIVING?

Jessica Williams had supposedly not slept for 24 hours before she got
behind the wheel and was involved in a tragic accident that left six
teen-agers dead. Newspaper accounts have treated this as an afterthought,
while her attorney practically regarded such behavior as a virtue, using it
as a defense at her recent trial.

Apparently, we are to believe that while one is to be held responsible for
driving after imbibing alcohol or smoking marijuana, one is not to be held
responsible for driving while half asleep. We have made laws to fit these
silly premises.

In fact, falling asleep at the wheel is a factor in at least as many
vehicular accidents as driving while intoxicated.

Our obsession with alcohol and drugs when it comes to law enforcement and
driving is hypocritical as well as ineffective. Las Vegas has thousands of
bars open 24 hours a day. Yet every once in awhile, television newscasters
report that the police have set up a DUI checkpoint on some street or
highway. If we were serious about this, we would set up the checkpoint just
outside the exit ramp of a casino parking structure -- or in some bar
parking lot. For obvious reasons regarding business interests and the
welfare of our local economy, we do not do this.

At the same time, we ignore other factors that may contribute to dangerous
driving. We could set up checkpoints to test drivers for drowsiness. But I
am not suggesting that we now single out this and countless other factors
and create new laws. That would be the road to a police state.

Rather, police should focus on dangerous driving, no matter what the cause.

If law enforcement were to focus on dangerous performance, no matter the
contributors to it, we would be better able to get dangerous drivers off
the road.

Dangerous driving was the immediate cause of death in the Jessica Williams
case. No matter what other factors may have contributed to the tragic
event, at the moment the tragedy took place, both the necessary and
sufficient condition for its occurrence was the driver's action.

At that point, she was the sole causal agent, not something in her blood.

Without her action at that point, no matter how much we might argue that
the "stage" had been set, and no matter whether her action can be
characterized as deliberate or unintentional, the tragedy would not have
happened.

Even if one or another factor -- such as using a cell phone -- is present
in a particular incident of reckless driving, and even if a statistical
relationship could be found between that factor and driving impairment, we
cannot be certain that it caused that particular incident.

Ironically, under our system, a successful legal defense based on
technicalities related to a breath test can prevent prosecutors from
obtaining a conviction for reckless driving.

In other words, drivers are often stopped because of the reckless driving
itself, yet factors related to that dangerous act in only a statistical
sense are the focus of the court's deliberations. Thus drunken driving laws
may actually interfere with the prosecution and prevention of dangerous
driving.

A similar obsession with presumed contributing factors seems to have been
at work in the Williams trial.

She was convicted, not on reckless driving charges, but on the grounds that
she was driving with a level of marijuana in her system that exceeded the
designated limit in a recently instituted law.

For this case and for the future, we should reconsider what we want the
goals of the criminal justice system to be. If the individual is found to
be a locus of causation in a criminal case -- and the legalities in the
Williams case are so convoluted that it can be argued the verdict did not
bear on this point -- then we must contemplate taking preventive measures
toward the individual. In criminal terms, the goal of prevention might take
the form of imprisonment, in that an imprisoned person will not have the
opportunity to drive dangerously. But if prevention is the goal, we might
just as well bar the person from ever driving a motor vehicle again -- if
we could be assured that such a prohibition could be effectively enforced.

I believe prevention should be the main goal of the criminal justice
system. In reality, however, this goal of prevention is intertwined with
another goal -- that of retribution. Still, we must focus on preventing
tragedies from recurring, because we cannot undo the past. Retribution
cannot compensate nor restore the victims.

However, if a collective desire for retribution is to be addressed, we
should recognize that our thoughts about it in a particular case are
greatly susceptible to emotion.

Thus, we should at least temper our consideration of the extent of
retribution to be meted out with thought given to its limited purpose and
meaning.

Prevention in the first instance must be pursued primarily outside of the
criminal justice system and therefore should involve noncoercive means.

It is in this arena -- and not the criminal justice system -- that we
should pay attention to the multitude of factors that contribute to
dangerous driving. This should be done not only through vigorous
educational campaigns that warn of the dangers of driving while drunk or
drowsy, but through programs that provide designated drivers and, perhaps
most effectively, through the installation of passive devices such as those
that can detect drowsiness and set off an alarm or that can obviate the
need to hold a cell phone in one's hand while using it. With these
examples, I merely scratch the surface of the possible forms of primary
prevention that can be applied noncoercively.

Finally, surely we know that if the youngsters had not been cleaning up the
median of the highway they would not have died. Miraculously, we all have
perfect 20/20 vision in hindsight.

But we do not live in a world free of risk, and this program and these
types of programs have been in operation in Las Vegas and other parts of
the country for many years without severe incident. It is ironic and sad
that in our attempts to deal humanely and wisely with youth in a preventive
manner, the consequence in this instance was tragedy.

Certainly, we must learn what we can from the past as well as from
research, and adjust our practices accordingly. But to focus our attention
on who or what is to "blame" -- as distinct from addressing responsibility
for the future -- is unproductive in regard to prevention. We should focus
on responsibility for the purpose of prevention, and not "blame" for the
purpose of retribution. We must redouble our efforts in terms of prevention
- -- but to do this, we should rethink our approaches to criminal justice as
well as to prevention in a broader context.