[*BCM*] Motorist gets slap on the wrist for killing a cyclist

[Dan Barrett]

For anyone interested in the problems caused by plea bargaining, Judge
Young of our very own Federal District Court for the District of
Massachusetts has written some very approachable discussions of the
problem at the federal level.  Although much of his ire is aimed at the
Federal Sentencing Guidelines, his discussion in this sentencing
memorandum is germane to our current thread (esp. the section marked
"Straight Talk About Federal Sentencing," beginning on page six), bearing
in mind that the state courts are entirely separate from the federal
courts:
http://pacer.mad.uscourts.gov/dc/cgi-bin/recentops.pl?filename=young/pdf/supersentencing%20memo.pdf


I suppose the only other thing to note is that the family of our departed
fellow-traveler is, following the driver's conviction, in a much more
advantageous position to extract a considerable civil judgment from the
driver.  Money won't bring the victim back, but it might fulfill the
retributive purpose that the driver's lenient sentence won't.

d.