Guess which driver's facing 21 years in prison — the drunk , rich, white one or the sober,...

[jayfish]

poor, black one?"

http://phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-01-24/news/the-wrong-driver/

Instead of charging the affluent white girl, the sheriff's officers arrested the other driver, a black man, a guy who wasn't even legally drunk.

Bryant Wilkerson was a 28-year-old postal service clerk with nothing on his record worse than a fender-bender. That day, he was merely making a U-turn, in a place where U-turns are permitted, when a 17-year-old party girl in her daddy's SUV tried to speed around him.

Wilkerson's life has been upended. He's been charged with nine felony counts, including manslaughter and aggravated assault. He spent three months in jail because he didn't have the money to post bail, and he lost his job because of that. Now under strict curfew and random alcohol and drug screenings for the past five months, he has to get permission from the court just to attend his daughter's band concerts in the evening.

He's facing 21 years in prison.

Meanwhile, Laura Varker is posing on her MySpace page in a bikini.

Just a little something to make you all sicker than you already might be on this Thursday afternoon.


ON EDIT: The site that hosts the story is being bombarded right now so give it a little time to load.

[Maat]

1. I can't get to the link, but that is sickening on its face (n/t).

[jayfish]

2. Give It Some Time To Load...

and read the whole thing. You will be furious.

[Maat]

3. Time to start a legal defense fund.

Hopefully, he will get an aggressive defense lawyer, who will fight to end the injustice.

[tabasco]

4. The rich girl had caused another "failure to stop" accident in the past.

The drunk, rich girl should be in trouble for causing the accident. The poor, legally sober guy should be in trouble for fleeing the scene. I hope that's the way it shakes out. Good thing a local paper has pointed out the injustice.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Maricopa County, eh? Figgers.

[Mithreal]

6. He admitted to smoking pot and drinking that morning and fled the scene

Varker should be in jail for the manslaughter though.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Then charge him with fleeing the scene.

:shrug:

[Mithreal]

17. Of course. the authorities were unjust. nt

[dionysus]

huh? he was sober at the time of the crash, wtf are you missing?

[Mithreal]

19. The authorities may be freaking about the mix of alcohol, marijuana, and fleeing the scene

I agree with you, that is an outrageous miscarriage of justice, the problem is the admitted weed use, alcohol use and fleeing the scene. He should never had admitted to anything, but he may just be an honest man who made several mistakes. Anyway, I have absolutely no problem with marijuana use, I posted only because anyone who gets sickened by the outrageousness of the story really needs to read the whole article. The original op is appropriately sensational imo, but if you don't read the whole story you might think it was just some racist pig cops. I think the cops were faced with a hard decision in this arrest. I want to believe that there is some hope for him and I am hostile to the decision to not arrest the girl.

Put yourself in the place of those cops for just a moment. My brother is a cop, father-in-law retired state trooper and have another family member that was killed in the line of duty. Not all cops are bad, I am holding back judgment at the moment is all I am saying. For some perspective, there are non-violent offenders that because of the 3 strikes law have life sentences in my state. The drivers here are not the only ones that deserve our outrage with the 'justice' system.

[dionysus]

22. can't argue with that. if he got busted for fleeing the scene that's okay

but those are trumped up BS charges!

[Selatius]

42. oops, wrong spot. n/t

[Initech]

7. Holy crap!

This story is quite sickening. I am a white guy and I think the drunk white girl is the one who should have been arrested. :wow:

[PunkPop]

9. I'm going to have to go with one of the commenters at the end

that said they both f*cked up and should be in legal trouble.

The fact that she is walking around free with no charges IS outrageous but he did have alcohol in his blood and left the scene of an accident - a BAD accident.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

11. According to the article, he was not legally drunk.

Drivers are allowed to drink provided they do not have a blood alcohol level above .08. He didn't.

[pitohui]

12. they are not allowed to mix alcohol and weed or other medications

he was legally impaired

[NashVegas]

15. .05 Is Not Quite Two Beers

For a normal-weight female.

[pitohui]

23. two beers PLUS weed AND he acknowledged he was impaired

he knew he was at fault, his friends knew he was at fault, it's obvious that he was impaired, that's why he fled the scene

both drivers were impaired, and both should go to jail, but there is no "sober" guy in this story

in our state even one beer and a legal allergy medication and you're impaired, according to a cop who tried to arrest a friend, friend wasn't stupid, he didn't admit to taking his perfectly legal medication, he would have been arrested for DUI if he had -- and he didn't kill anyone or even cause an accident, he was just "weaving" a.k.a. driving an old truck in a better neighborhood

[NashVegas]

27. .05 on a 200 lb Guy vs .09 on a 17 Year Old Girl?

As for the MJ, there were only trace amounts.

He'd initially been so shocked by the accident, he says, that he figured he must be to blame.

Key word: shock. Leaving the scene was wrong, his friends were wrong, he was wrong to listen to them, but shock makes you do funny things.

He was not at fault.

The girl, at a very minimum, was:

following too closely
making an illegal pass

Both are ticketable offenses, IIRC.

When you rear end someone, you are automatically considered at fault. Ask a traffic cop why, if you disbelieve. The center lane of any highway is not for passing. The center lane is for people making left turns.

[pitohui]

10. i read the link, neither driver was sober

the "sober" driver blew 0.05 and admitted to also smoking weed before he took the wheel, he fled the scene and had accepted his guilt for some time until hearing that the teen driver was also drunk

the "drunk" blew 0.09

they were both at fault and both should be charged

[jayfish]

14. How Is The "Sober" Driver AT Fault?

Fault is rear-end collisions is always assigned to the driver to the rear.

Jay

[NashVegas]

16. Jayfish Is Correct

Regarding fault in rear-end collisions.

I think what happened was Missy saw him slowing down and decided she was going to pass him in the meridian - which is illegal, last I heard.

[pitohui]

25. no he isn't correct

fault is USUALLY assigned to the driver at the rear, but not always

for example, in cases of aggressive driving, where the driver in front stomps on the pedal to deliberately cause an accident, the fault goes to the driver in front

in this case, the minute a guy who smells of booze, who admits he was also smoking pot, flees the scene after hitting the car, it's pretty self-evident that the guy is loaded and i don't blame the officers for arresting him, they would have been delinquent not to

i don't know why he blew 0.05 when his behavior (and odor) suggests he was much drunker at the time of the accident, i assume the mix of drug with the alcohol allowed him to get stupid with fewer drinks than usual, but it could also be that because he fled he had time to sweat off some of the booze, who knows

either way, the guy is guilty, he knows he is guilty, and it's pretty ridiculous for us to come back and say he isn't guilty

yes, the girl is guilty too, but there is no way that this guy shouldn't be doing some time

[NashVegas]

30. Nope.

Even with that sort of aggressive driving, you are expected to be in control of your car, YOU are expected to be able to make it stop.

[jayfish]

34. I Used The Word Always In Place Of Universally...

because I wasn't prepared to comb through the traffic code of every state to confirm that it is. I can pretty confidently say it is universal though. If you hit a car in the rear end you are at fault, regardless of the circumstances. I could stop my car in the middle of the road to sight-see and if another driver hits me, it is their fault. In some cases, like the hypothetical you mention, it may suck but that's the way it is.

[Rob H.]

35. That's not always true--here are two examples

I was involved in an accident where I was hit from behind and was ticketed for failure to yield right of way; the guy who hit me wasn't assigned fault for the accident, but he was drunk and got carted off to jail. (He was three sheets to the wind at 11:30 in the morning!) I went to court and got the ticket thrown out--here's why:

I was pulling onto a highway behind a pickup truck that was behind another pickup truck pulling a trailer. The driver who hit me was in the fast lane when the three of us pulled onto the highway, but the truck directly in front of me moved over into the fast lane to go around the slower truck pulling the trailer.

The approaching driver, seeing that, swerved over into my lane to try to go around him on the right. I was already squarely in the lane and had accelerated to about 45 mph (the speed limit was 55 mph, but I couldn't go any faster because of the slow truck in front of me). When the oncoming driver locked his brakes, I heard the screech of tires on asphalt just in time to try to gun it for the shoulder, but the oncoming driver still hit me. Neither of the truck drivers stuck around.

I have to assume that the fact that I was driving a black car on a newly-paved stretch of road--not to mention the fact that the guy was drunk and speeding--was why he didn't see me until it was too late.

Even though I got the ticket thrown out, I still had to pay my deductible and pay for my own rental car. I wasn't reimbursed until almost a year later, when the driver who hit me got convicted for DUI. He fought it as long as he could because he'd been convicted of drunk driving in another state and that was his third DUI conviction.

A little over a year earlier I hit someone from behind because he lost control of his car on wet pavement, spun out, and wound up in my lane. He'd originally been traveling in the opposite direction when the woman driving the car in front of him (that he'd been following too closely) hit her brakes to try to stop for a yellow light. When he hit his brakes, he lost control. The other driver, who imo caused the accident, drove on; even if the road hadn't been wet there was no way she would have been able to stop for that light. Both of us were fine (physically, anyway--my car was just over a year old and it was the first new car I'd ever bought) and he got the ticket and admitted that he was at fault.

Both accidents took place in Tennessee.

Edited for clarity.

[jayfish]

36. In The First Case, You Were Ticketed For Failing To Yeild; But...

were you assigned fault for the accident? Having to pay your deductible makes it seem as though you were but you were reimbursed for it later. The driver of the other vehicle should have been ticked for failure to stop in the safe, clear distance and assigned sole fault for the accident. Also if you had already merged into traffic, where does the failure to yield come into play? You have the right to your space in your current lane. In the second case, if he had hit the woman at the light that would have been his fault too. As a driver you must (not that anyone does) travel at a speed and give yourself enough room to stop at that speed no matter the circumstances.

Jay

[Rob H.]

39. Yeah, I was assigned fault initially based on the police report

but it still took a year to get reimbursed by my insurance company even after I fought the ticket and won. IIRC, at the time there was a bill being proposed that would've changed TN law to ignore drunk driving convictions in other states. Had the bill passed the driver who hit me wouldn't have faced the same consequences as a result of his conviction. The bill never made it into law, but his lawyer kept getting continuances in order to wait to see whether the bill would pass. Why I had to wait until after he got convicted to get reimbursed by my insurance company even after the ticket was thrown out is still a mystery to me.

I only wish the cops who showed up at the scene would've seen things the way you just presented them! Unlike you, they just didn't get it. I kept telling them over and over that I was already squarely in the lane and that when I got hit I was going for the shoulder but they weren't hearing any of it.

[NashVegas]

44. Tennessee

I think the cop in the first scenario either hadn't read his own codes books or was out to hit a ticket quota. It was here, in Tennessee, where I was specifically told (by a traffic court judge) that the person who does the rear-ending is always considered at fault.

Had you pulled in front of him and cut him off in his own lane, that's the only circumstance I'm aware of where you could be found at fault.

[blondeatlast]

18. Exactly. nt

[shanti]

45. that depends!

you'd THINK that was the case, but i remember an incident when i was a young (17) year old driver. i was charged when i was rear-ended by this guy when i was making a left hand turn, then a quick left into a gas station. they said my blinker wasn't on - what? you know how one's blinker clicks off after the turn, then you have to put it on again? there's really no time to do that with two quick turns. HOWEVER, it was still the person's fault who rear-ended me! i remember having to go to juvenile traffic court over that and felt it was unfair.

[NashVegas]

13. Charges That Weren't Filed Against Her

Easy ones:

failure to yield right-of-way
making an illegal pass
(likely) speeding
DUI

In my state, if you rear end someone, even if it's because they've slammed on their brakes, you are at fault; you are expected to have control of your car and follow at a reasonable distance.

As for Wilkerson, he needs a different set of friends.

[jayfish]

21. Don't Forget Negligent Homicide. -NT-

[Selatius]

41. Varker should be convicted of negligent homicide as well for killing her friend. n/t

[Alexander]

20. Sounds like Wilkerson was convicted of DWB.

Driving While Black.

Here in Maricopa County, that kind of disgusting racism is the norm. This place elected Sheriff Joe, for God's sake.

[pitohui]

24. he fled the scene because he believed he was high/drunk and his friends did too

this isn't DWB, this is a guy who was drinking, had smoked weed, and caused a fatal accident, knowing he was guilty, his friends urged him to flee the scene, and he did so

yes, they both were impaired, they both should have been charged, but he's the one who fled the scene and left a girl there for dead

ANY sheriff's department would have arrested an impaired driver who fled the scene after leaving someone for dead

certainly the other driver is at fault as well, as far as i can tell, they are BOTH guilty of manslaughter, it is possible for two people to be involved in a crime, yanno

[Pavulon]

26. Reads like op-ed

That is an odd article. Interesting to see how it plays out. Never a good idea to leave the scene.

[NashVegas]

31. It's Advocacy Journalism

There's a long tradition of it, pre-corporate era.

[jayfish]

37. I Found That A Bit Unprofessional Myself. -NT-

[lonestarnot]

28. WTF?!!!!!!

K & R!

[tchunter]

29. no one has asked the important questions here....

where can we find the link the bikini pictures on her myspace?

[alcibiades_mystery]

40. LOL

Zactly...

[The Backlash Cometh]

32. People "out there" don't care.

It only become an issue, if the media makes it an issue.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

33. Maricopa is bad

K&R

[Richard Steele]

38. Kicked and grrrecommended

[Selatius]

43. If Varker isn't indicted at all for any crime, you have yourself a 14th Amendment violation.

It's would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment demanding equal treatment under the law. You can't get away with selectively applying laws on one individual and letting another individual off even though the other individual also broke laws.

As far as I know, it looks like it would be a 14th Amendment violation if Maricopa County did not indict Varker.

[Bright Eyes]

46. Someone needs to send this to Keith Olbermann