My lack of understanding must be excused. There must be some unmentioned legal technicality or significant factor to explain such an anomaly as charging a person who has imbibed alcohol in a quantity that provides a blood alcohol level “more than three times the legal limit for driving” with involuntary manslaughter.
Drinking to that extent and choosing to drive are voluntary acts. Using almost any other means to kill someone is called premeditated murder or murder in the first degree. Why is there such meticulous discrimination in cases such as the recent Calvin Yarbrough indictment?
Contemplate what charge would be placed against a pilot who drank and crashed a plane, killing several people and injuring others. Would such injuries be labeled “second-degree assault”?
Where is the evenhandedness, the justice, in providing diminished capacity for crimes because the persons charged have chosen to impair themselves with a drug?
Labeling the crime involuntary is oxymoronic!
Fred Dunn
Grove, Okla.
Columns
October 23, 2009
Voices: Involuntary insanity
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Federal stimulus money allows Cherokee County to buy foreclosed houses
COLUMBUS, Kan. — A grant through the federal stimulus program will allow the Cherokee County Commission to buy three foreclosed houses from a county bank.
Nancy Lamb, deputy emergency management director for the county, provided information Monday about that grant and other grants on which she has been working. - Guest column, Allen Shirley: Copy a winning example Last October, I published a column in The Joplin Globe documenting three failed attempts involving the states of Maine, Massachusetts and Tennessee and their efforts to implement “Obamacare” in their states.
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Anson burlingame, guest columnist: Living within our means
“Mainly, we are going to have to live within our means and be very careful.”
That is the most resounding sound bite I have heard from a politician in a long time. If only that sentiment can grow and resonate, politically, to turn the tide of incessant and extraordinarily dangerous growth beyond our means in government. - Jim Stone, guest columnist: Paranoia shouldn’t impede freedom The afternoon of Dec. 30 brought news that eight American CIA agents and four Canadian soldiers at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan had been killed by a suicide bomber.
- Dan Ray, guest columnist: Bills can still be terminated We still have an opportunity to terminate the health care bills that have been passed in the Senate and the House.
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Dave Woods: Global warming fires up debate
on Adams doesn’t believe in global warming.
I have to say, when it’s 3 degrees below zero outside in Joplin and we’re headed for our third week without a thaw, global warming theory is a tough concept to wrap my head around. -
Jack Kaminsky, guest columnist: Remembering a ‘classic’
Last week Editor Carol Stark asked me to write something about my dad and the Kaminsky Classic, the annual Joplin High School basketball tournament which ended on Saturday.
Even as I started writing, I began crying, and have had tears in my eyes all day. - Carol Stark: We all need someone’s hand to hold I was always a nervous little kid and while others my age went through life without a care, I held back, imagining that the worst was about to happen.
- Dave Woods: Harsh note sounds over parade trip By the time you read this column, the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif., will only be a memory.
- Bob Steere, guest columnist: Still looking for some answers Don Ray’s frustration in obtaining answers from his leaders in Congress (Globe, Dec. 22) is certainly shared by this letter sender.
- More Columns Headlines
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Federal stimulus money allows Cherokee County to buy foreclosed houses
COLUMBUS, Kan. — A grant through the federal stimulus program will allow the Cherokee County Commission to buy three foreclosed houses from a county bank.
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