Let’s send all the victims to jail! That’ll teach them
Jesus.
On April 10, 2010, Raquel Nelson lost her 4-year-old son. Nelson was crossing a busy Marietta, Georgia, street with her son and his two siblings when they were struck by a hit-and-run driver. Police were able to track down the driver, Jerry Guy, who later admitted he had been drinking and had taken painkillers the night of the accident. He was also mostly blind in one eye. Guy had already been convicted of two prior hit-and-runs. He pleaded guilty, served six months of his five-year sentence, and was released last October.
…Last week Nelson herself was convicted on three charges related to her son’s death: reckless conduct, improperly crossing a roadway and second-degree homicide by vehicle. Each is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 12 months in prison. Nelson could spend up to six times as many months in jail as the man who struck her son and then fled the scene. Nelson’s crime: jaywalking.
“Jaywalking” – because the bus stop is on the other side of a busy street from Nelson’s apartment building, and there is no crosswalk nearby, so people who get off the bus at that stop cross outside a crosswalk, in other words they “jaywalk.”
And then they get prosecuted for it, and convicted (by people who never take the bus). The rich hate the poor; whites hate blacks; everybody hates women.
Unstinkingbelievable.
There’s a petition you can sign if you want to. It asks the judge not to send Nelson to jail.
I skimmed this the first run through and thought: I wonder what country this was from? Saudi Arabia, perhaps? Oooh, maybe Singapore, I hear they have really harsh jaywalking laws in that country.
So I read again, more carefully this time.
…
GEORGIA?
???
*blink*
Wut?
Well, yeah.
This is the intersection of a whole bunch of issues: race, class, social responsibility, the sociopathy of right-wingers. All kinds of issues. As a society, we cut taxes to benefit rich white people at the expense of everyone else. Those tax cuts hurt people who rely on those taxes to provide things like safe crosswalks, schools close to where people live, public transportation, and better enforcement of laws preventing drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel. When things like this happen, instead of realizing the chain of events that put a mother in the middle of a non-crosswalk with her kids, we blame her for it to avoid connecting the dots. Someone has to pay, and it sure as shit won’t be the person who put a bus stop in an unsafe location, or even the guy who actually killed that kid. Blame the working class lack woman… it is easier to make the problem disappear that way.
I would like to see how far these Georgian jaywalking enforces would get in Italy. If you don’t jaywalk there, you don’t cross the bloody street!
As a committed pedestrian and mass transit user, I understand the need to enforce jaywalking rules, as they affect drivers that are thoughtful and careful.
I’ve done the mad dash across a street for the bus more than once, although never when there is actual moving vehicles coming my way. I would never even consider doing so if I had a 4-yr kid in tow, as kids may not understand the urgency, might dawdle or freeze. While one might say she had no other options, the facts remain that she was endangering her children
All that said, I don’t think she should get any jail time. Whatever sentence is given should be commuted. It serves no one to put this woman in jail.
From reading the whole article the problem here would be piss poor city planning that didn’t have a crosswalk within reasonable distance, or a light or STOP sign, or even an elevated walkway.
Caffeeine – but you do think she should have been prosecuted? Really?
I was going to say that I do, on general principles think that she should have, based on the excerpt you have and a pinch of googling. A mother that jaywalks with four kids is doing harm to them and to others, and we shouldn’t let the emotional issue blind us from that.
I just however looked up and read Balko’s extended take on it on the HuffPo and if accurate, this is not what happened in this case, so the above doesn’t apply here. I don’t think she should have been prosecuted, and that the reasons for her being so were rather shady.
I stand by my previous comment, and the piss poor planning part is even more of an issue.
But even granting that jaywalking with children is risking harm to them (surely it’s risking harm rather than doing harm – they’re not harmed if they make it safely across), we don’t as a society prosecute every instance of doing harm to children. It would make sense to give her a ticket, possibly (although really, when her alternative is walking 6/10 of a mile with the children and the shopping, I’m not sure it would), but not to prosecute. That’s just punishing someone for being poor.
Another thing we shouldn’t let blind us is the role of moral luck. A mistake doesn’t become morally worse because it leads to a horrible outcome.
That’s actually the way it is in some parts of Georgia, too. Jaywalking enforcement in Georgia is completely ridiculous because it is done so haphazardly, because pedestrians (usually the underprivileged and poor) were not taken into consideration for the most part when the roads were first put down (lack of sidewalks and crosswalks), and because EVERYBODY does it. To make this situation of her being prosecuted even weirder, it is state law in Georgia that vehicles must stop for pedestrians crossing no matter where they are. If anything, she should get a ticket and nothing more. Isn’t having a child die enough of a detractor for others thinking of dragging their children across the street where they shouldn’t?
And it’s not like a crosswalk would have made the child’s chances any better against a drunk, one-eyed, drugged up maniac!
“If the law supposes that, then the law is a ass, a idiot!”
That’s from Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”. It somehow seems appropriate here.
This somehow reminds me of my last jury duty.
(My apologies, as this post has become a philosophizing one. As I agree now that this case shouldn’t have gone to court, Im arguing about jaywalking on more general grounds.)
A mistake doesn’t become morally worse because it leads to a horrible outcome, but neither does it become morally better if a probable horrible outcome doesn’t occur. Jaywalking is risky behavior. I can attest to that.
Even if we say its only risking harm there are several laws against child endangerment, but I think this behavior its doing harm on a basic level, even if they avoid any major accidents (possibly especially so, since it reinforces the point) because it teaches kids that traffic law is optional, a view they will carry with them later on as solo pedestrians and drivers.
I’m having trouble with your justification of behavior here. One might make the same case for parking in a handcapped spot (“the alternative was a far away parking space, and I would walk 0.6 miles with the kids and my shopping”) and I doubt you’d agree with that. Since when is personal expedience a reason to break the law? To endanger kids?
This of course is all dependent on the road traffic system and how much it takes notice of pedestrians. This is why I think the issue should be to make a pedestrian-friendly traffic system so this shouldn’t be a problem and the main reason I think Nelson shouldn’t have been prosecuted
Finally, I don’t think the comparison of sentences works. I wouldn’t be surprised in the guy’s 6-mo commuted sentence would have been a much bigger one if the victims had been on a crosswalk, crossing legally.
This is a rebuttable presumption in every legal system of which I am aware, and the standard required for the rebuttal to take effect is a high one, due to the unequal distribution of risk between pedestrian and motorist.
This was a hit-and-run driver. A hit-and-run driver who had two previous convictions for being a hit-and-run driver. A hit-and-run driver who drove while partially blind, drunk and drugged. So this man knowingly collided with a small child, and drove away. And he killed the son of a perfectly rational woman who was simply crossing the road. And he gets 6 months. And she gets 3 years, because she wasn’t using a crossing?
It’s like:
She was raped, but he couldn’t help it, because she was wearing a skirt.
A skirt?
Well, you know, she had legs, know what I mean?
She had legs?
Hey, yeah, so, obviously, he couldn’t help it, could he?
You mean, he couldn’t help it, because she had legs…?
Hey, now you’re getting it!
…?
Lets not get ahead of ourselves. The driver got 5 years (but got out in six months) and 3 years (3 x12 months) is the maximum possible for Nelson, who as I understand it hasn’t been sentenced yet.
I’m actually conflicted on this, I see this all the time where I live, sometimes mothers with children crossing just a few hundred feet from a crosswalk and light.
I was driving last month with my children in the car and a lady and her child were crossing a 2 lane road in the middle of the night wearing dark clothing. To avoid them I almost crashed head-on into another car. Who’s fault would it have been if me and my children had died?
The drunk hit and run driver should obviously be held primarily responsible, but what if it was not a hit and run but just some poor guy heading home from work?
Okay, first off, I think jaywalking laws must be written according to the type of roadway and availability of safe crossing areas. You can’t judge someone who walks blithely out in front of moving cars without pausing or looking (as is the norm around UNC campus in nearby Chapel Hill) the same as someone trying to get across a busy street with no traffic lights or nearby safe crossings, and high speed traffic.
But let’s compare apples to apples here. Guy (the impaired fuck) could have received a life sentence for first-degree homicide – that precedent was set here in NC. He did receive a five year sentence. He was released early from the sentence on probation.
Thus, Nelson could receive up to three years; what she will most likely receive is a suspended or commuted sentence. Perhaps still something to get angry about, but this was written by a typical New Journalist to stir up emotions, not to present facts.
A little slow behind Cafeeine, sorry ;-)
@ Cafeeine
Yes, but why should he not have served at least 5 years (I think he should have got life), and why should she be liable to serve any time at all?
“Yes, but why should he not have served at least 5 years (I think he should have got life), and why should she be liable to serve any time at all?”
I cant find a link to the story with any real detail, was she crossing a 4 lane highway with cars going 60+ mph or was it a 25mph zone? There really is a difference.
What Ophelia’s link says is
That doesn’t sound like “a 4 lane highway with cars going 60+ mph”. The driver had two previous convictions and admitted he was under the influence of alcohol and painkillers and was blind in one eye.
http://t4america.org/blog/2011/07/18/prosecuting-the-victim-absolving-the-perpetrators/
Here is a link that shows where she crossed, it is a 4 lane highway with a large median in the middle. The nearest place to cross was 1500 feet up the road. She was crossing the road with three small children, should she go to jail for this? I don’t know, but what she did was at the very least child endangerment.
Ophelia,
I understand the WTF aspect of this. The poor woman lost her 4year old!!! But how does one go from that to:
“…and convicted (by people who never take the bus). The rich hate the poor; whites hate blacks; everybody hates women.” add-on?
That wasn’t called for…
@severalspeciesof
I’m only speculating based on past history but it is very likely that if she were white or rich (besides the fact that she wouldn’t be on a bus in the first place) she would not have been charged.
This reminds me of my stay in Orlando, Florida. We were at a resort on the other side of the highway from a grocery store, and we wanted to buy some food and beer. We quickly discovered that walking is illegal in Florida, and that the only safe way to get across the street is to drive. I have since noticed that this applies to many American cities. It seems that the goal of urban planners in America is to make the world safe for cars.
Your city planners are not just incompetent. They are stark raving mad!
@Gordonwillis
According to the article, he got probation. Im not qualified to judge whether thats fair according to GA law or not. it seems too lenient to me.
I’ve laid out my case as to why a jaywalker should ostensibly face charges and why I agree that this is not one of those cases. From the information I’ve got (30 minutes worth of google research) it is possible she got charged for political reasons (there was an article about jaywalking that mentioned her by name, according to Balko See here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/raquel-nelson-jail-for-jaywalking_b_905925.html). Talking about racism here seems an iffy situation, since the hit-n-run driver is also black.
Thanks for the link, David. Yes, it’s a four-lane highway, in a residential area. If cars are allowed to go at 60 mph in such an area there is something seriously wrong with traffic regulations. Clearly, Nelson did what anyone would do in the same circumstances. The whole business seems crazy to me.
Thank you, Cafeeine. I note that the charges were brought against Nelson three days after the appearance of a newspaper article about jaywalking, and more than a month after the accident. Very odd. Surely if the police had thought there was a case against her she would have been charged much sooner. Opportunism on someone’s part, as your linked article might be taken to suggest? Anyway, it’s odd.
@David….
I wouldn’t know with absolute knowledge that that would be the case. Though odds are, it was probably the case here. But ‘absolute’ statements like: everybody hates women, the rich hate the poor and such just drives the ’emotion’ wheels, not the ‘reason’ wheels…
” Clearly, Nelson did what anyone would do in the same circumstances. ”
I do not think she should be charged with what she has been charged with, however if you think any parent would cross a busy street like that with 2 ,4 and 9 year old children you should not have kids. Its irresponsible and in my opinion criminal. I might have crossed a street like that were I alone years ago but to do so with not 1 not 2 but 3 small children in tow is just stupid to the point of being negligent.
I am however offended that the prosecution does seem politically motivated.
Folks… maybe re-read my first post here? A lot of you seem to be questioning the point of this whole issue being brought up, and I think I spelled it out pretty clearly. There’s a larger issue of American society being too cheap and too insensitive to care about poor children in poor neighborhoods, if some folks have to pay an extra few pennies per dollar on their millions and billions.
So, we put people in positions where the only transportation that they have drops them off on the wrong side of 6 lanes of highway, and there’s no money for a traffic light and crosswalk there because Paris Hilton needs another solid-gold bathtub. So a few children have to die, and maybe we convict a few parents, just so we don’t raise taxes 1% for the billionaires to build a crosswalk there, and Rupert Murdoch is only carried on a jewel-encrusted throne by nine bearers instead of twelve.
@ David
Well, we don’t know how busy the road was at that time, and other people were crossing at that point, too, so it presumably seemed relatively safe. She was waiting for one car to pass, not a dozen. It’s easy to condemn someone else, but I think your attitude is too rigid.
Oooh, maybe Singapore, I hear they have really harsh jaywalking laws in that country.
Hehe. I am from Singapore which is fucked up in many unique ways but we jaywalk all over the place and prosecutions are very rare. Even the authorities here would not be so anal as to go after a bereaved mother in this way. No way.
The US seems to be a place where the motorist is king and the pedestrian, nothing. I dont drive and am wholly reliant on public transport, so many parts of the US were daunting to me as a traveller. No sidewalks, few crossings, poor public transport options – and that was just the cities.
But, again, as a someone who frequently goes out with a large brood of nephews and nieces, you can never be too careful and it is taking a rather big risk to jaywalk with three small kids. Unless you can strap all 3 kids to yourself or maintain a death grip on all three…
I think most people are missing the obvious point. WHY is jaywalking the critical factor? Why should people on foot play second fiddle to some drunk in 2 tons of metal? Obviously you should take reasonable car when walking, but no car driver has ever been killed by a hit and run pedestrian. Except on motorways/freeways it is pedestrians who should have priority – certainly on any street fronted by residential and retail premises.
You answered your own question. The overriding principle here is that of safety. I may prefer to say that as a pedestrian I have priority, but since in a collision, I will be the worse off, I take that into perspective. Never mind the drunk guy, a sober driver driving the speed limit will not always be able to stop in time to avoid some schmuck that just pops into the street (I speak from experience, having been that schmuck). Pedestrians should have priority, but that entails a rigorous traffic system.
Morgan is the same prosecutor who,a few years ago, brought felony charges against a Cobb Co. high school senior who had a small swiss-army knife in his car while it was parked at the school. Not in his pocket, not waving it around, not threatening people with it;in his car FFS.
There seems to be a trend for prosecutors to press not reasonable charges but the absolutely most serious charges they think they can make stick. It is of a piece with new laws under which women who have miscarriages may be tried for murder – and some have been! One underlying cause of this, I think, is that in many states prosecutors are elected and, as they have learned by watching politicians in the legislative branch, so they are in permanent election mode being “tough on crime” and, more importantly, being seen to be so.
I wonder though how this prosecutor can be so fucking heartless as to press homicide charges against a mother who has suffered what must be the worst pain a mother can feel – the loss of a child! There is no point whatsoever in these charges – they are a disgrace to a “justice” system which apparently counts only notches on a prosecutors gun!
So your child gets killed by a motorist, you’re still trying to get over that, and some jerk decides that you need prosecuting for the death of said child. WTF! This poor woman will be going through all kinds of agonies and torment already, she will already be blaming herself for the death of her child, she doesn’t need the state to add to that grief. This is sick.
I will take a guess here that the prosecutor in question is an elected official.
Yet more ammunition for those who think electing prosecutors and judges is antithetical to good justice.
Mark at #25 surely hit the nail on the head.
I’m generally of the mindset that if you fuck up in a way that results in the accidental death of your own child, the law ought to lean heavily towards leniency there — because our need for deterrence and for the sensation of social justice have already been well-satisified, so what other point does punishment serve other than strict proceduralism?
Do we think that prosecuting Nelson is going to reduce her odds of jaywalking in the future? More so than having her 4-year-old son killed in a jaywalking accident? SRSLY?!?
Do we think other mothers who might be tempted to jaywalk looked at this situation before the charges were brought and said, “Oh, well, I was going to use the crosswalk, but now I see the only thing that happened to this woman is that her son was KILLED IN FRONT OF HER, she didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, so I guess it’s just fine to jaywalk.”?
And do we really think that Nelson is not suffering for her mistake? That we need to take some kind of vengeance on her to satisfy our instinctual need to see wrongdoers suffer for their wrongdoing?
If we want to use jaywalking laws as the tool to prevent incidents like this in the future (as opposed to, say, better urban planning…) then the key to that is consistent enforcement of the existing laws on people who are violating them and NOT suffering the most painful fucking consequence a parent can imagine.
Nelson’s already been duly punished and deterred. If you want to give someone a ticket, give it to the person who jaywalked with their still-living four-year-old.
I find the following comment simply absurd:
And saying that the woman’s sentence should be commuted, he merely compounds the absurdity. The woman should never have been prosecuted. To prosecute a woman for taking risks is simply mad, and if the problem is poor city planning, then in what sense has the woman taken an unreasonable risk? Many activities involving children involve risk: playing sports, boating, swimming, going for a drive, using the bus, travelling by air: you name it, there’s some risk attached. If it depends on how seriously risky the activity is, we have to ask how many times the woman crossed the street with her child without harm. Probably many times, since there was no convenient crosswalk. So, the fault here lies entirely with the drunk driver. To prosecute the woman for the death of her child, when the child was killed by a drunk driver, which is the factor that increased the risk disproportionately, is ludicrous. And Cafeeine, whether he thinks jaywalking should be an offence or not, is simply being foolish and pedantic. Of course the woman should not have been prosecuted for “vehicular homicide”. She was neither drunk nor operating a vehicle. Had she taken an unreasonable risk, perhaps she should be charged with wanton disregard for the safety of a child, whatever statute such an offence would fall under, but, in the event, it was the drunk driver who was the one who wantonly disregarded public safety. The offence was his alone, and, given the lightness of his actual penalty, it is quite clear (to those commenters who wonder about Ophelia’s conclusion) that the factor here is charging the mother with an offence is simply the consequence of her being a woman. There simply cannot be any other explanation for the idiocy of the prosecutor. Madness, sheer unadulterated madness!
# 23 –
The basis for that is in the linked article, not in the post itself; you’re right that I didn’t spell it out. I got there via the jury, which was all white and all car-owning. I think only one juror even had any experience of using public transportation.
David # 22
1500 feet – more than a quarter of a mile. She would have had to walk more than half a mile with shopping and 3 children in order to use a crosswalk. Who endangered whom here?
US city planning is notoriously biased toward the car and keeping traffic “flowing.” This is, obviously, at the expense of pedestrian convenience and safety.
The loss of a child is more punishment than any parent deserves.
@Matt Penfold. Yes. Morgan is serving his fourth electoral term as Cobb Co. prosecutor. In GA they also elect judges, all the way up to State Supreme court. Not much chance for impartial justice there…..Not that an appointment system necessarily works any better – for evidence of that look no further than the ‘SCOTUS’. My, what a public disgrace that has become lately……
Eric Macdonald’s comment is quite right. The tut-tutting about the woman taking “risks!” is inane. In a city with few crosswalks, jaywalking is a perfectly reasonable risk–as reasonable as driving above the speed limit when no one else is on the road. Nobody will be prosecuting a parent who drives above the speed limit “on general principles”, even if their child is in the car and gets killed in a car accident.
Your opinion is ignorant, then. Try living in a city like Atlanta with no car. There’s a reason why there is such popular outrage about this–because people who know what it’s like to rely on public transportation know that they absolutely WOULD do such a thing. I sure would, and have.
Also, Cafeeine, getting hit by a car isn’t a “probable” horrible result of jaywalking. It’s a possible one, but not a probable one. Certainly not probable enough for criminal liability, which requires a beyond-the-pale type of risk. Jaywalking in a city like Atlanta is not even approaching the pale.
sailor # 37 –
Indeed; that’s part of what I had in mind with the bit about hating women and the poor and the carless that got “severalspeciesof” upset. (Man that’s a clunky “name.”)