The Drunk Defense

I've had this one stored for a couple of days and have to use it because the kids are off this week so I didn't watch too much television.


There was a news story a couple of days ago about a murder trial in Virginia, a fairly open and shut case because he admitted to it without coercion.  They were talking to the attorney for the defense and he started talking about how the defendant was drunk so he didn't know what he was doing and it should be excused.  Before I could go completely nuts with that statement, the started talking to some other attorney (could have been the DA for all I know) who started to explain that it was a legal defense in Virginia.  If you are drunk when you commit the crime, there is a chance you will get away with it.  Basically they related it to being psychotic!  I can't believe that a law like this exists in this day and age, or maybe I should...


I have talked before about how much this country is about lawsuits and that no one can take responsibility for their own actions.  This is an example of this being legalized.  In this particular case, who was the one that forced this person to drink to the point that he was so drunk he was completely unable to control his thoughts.  I'm going to guess that he did, no one else.  The closest that you could come to an argument on this was that a bartender kept serving him.  The flaw there is that the bartender was doing their job, with the only possible flaw on their part being letting him drive (though I don't know if this person actually did that).  So once again, it falls back to the defendant's own actions.  But this law makes it so that it isn't his fault.  He will probably have to go to AA or something like that but will get away with murder.


I'm sure there has to be something in the law stating how they need to prove that he was this drunk, but my problem isn't with the details of the law, it is the law itself.  I can see some perpetual drunk finally getting caught driving because he killed someone in an accident and using this law.  Imagine how you would feel if this person killed was someone you cared about.  What would you think of the law then?  Or how about all of the sniper shootings that happened a few years back.  Would this law apply to them if they were drunk?  How would the country feel knowing that a couple of people who randomly killed someone for walking in the parking lot got a free pass because they were drunk when they did it?


Giving people a way to get out of consequences for their actions is not what we should be doing.  I understand that prisons are getting over-crowded but there are other things that we can do to alleviate that issue, but that's another rant for another day...