DRINKING: A 16-year-old receives only ten years of probation in an expensive rehabilitation center for driving drunk and killing four people.
by Chance Ornelas-Skarin, Staff Writer
Welcome to the wonderful land of hypothetical situations. Imagine one day you get a call from a family member, perhaps your sister or cousin, and she says she had a blowout. She says, “I love you. Please hurry,” and then the conversation ends. You immediately go to help her. When you get there, you find not your loved one, but instead a crime scene. You ask onlookers what happened and they just point. You go to the center of the commotion and you see dead bodies, most conspicuously the body of the loved one you were speaking to only moments ago. At first the scene disgusts you; it visually tortures you with its gruesome appearance. Then it hits you: your loved one is gone and that conversation you had only minutes ago was the last you will ever have with her. The life that once inhabited her body is gone, extinguished.
This is the situation one mother found herself in, as a local news station (WFAA-8) reported. Not only was her 24-year-old daughter, Breanne Mitchell, killed in an accident, but also three of the four good samaritans who tried to help her on the side of the road. The fourth was paralyzed. This incident, horrific to say the least, is one of many caused by drunk driving. About 112 million of these incidents occur every year. This means there are about 300,000 incidents of drunk driving per day, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Sadly, Breanne Mitchell’s accident is not exclusive in its cause or its tragedy, as 28 people every day die from these accidents, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
No, what makes Ms. Mitchell’s case so special is the person who committed the crime and his punishment. Steven Couch, a 16-year-old with a father who owns a metal works company (Cleburne Sheet Metal), was the one behind the wheel of the truck that ran into these poor victims. Not only was he drinking illegally and driving with three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood, but he also killed these four innocent people and paralyzed another. This kid went to court and guess what? Instead of a 20-year sentence of prison time for the lives he took, he received ten years in a cushy psychiatric treatment facility.
Why the lenience and what does he need treatment for? Could it possibly be because his father’s metal works makes 17 million dollars a year? Yes, it is true. The defense had a psychologist testify and give Couch a diagnosis of “affluenza.” The first thing one would ask would be: what is “affluenza” and how did it get him off the hook? Well, “affluenza,” according to Oxford Dictionaries, is “a psychological malaise supposedly affecting wealthy young people, symptoms of which include a lack of motivation, feelings of guilt, and a sense of isolation.” The part that the defense used for Couch was that he had a life where he was not constricted or disciplined enough by his wealthy parents and therefore lacked the care to avoid drunk driving. This defense basically made the argument that his wealthy background and upbringing gave him an excuse to not care enough to feel responsibility for his actions. Can I get treated
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for irresponsibility? Can I get sentenced with treatment for it rather than serving prison time if I have parents who are rich and do not set enough limits on my life?
They blamed his actions on parents who did not raise him to be responsible enough to drive safely, yet his parents did not get any punishment. The residue of death fills the courtroom and nobody seems to actually be held responsible for the deaths, especially the one who is really to blame.
One might not find this outcome surprising since our world is not exactly ideal. But for the sake of the future, should we not attempt to move ever closer to what is ideal for society, especially the execution of the laws that keep it safe? We should attempt to build a society in which people are held responsible for the harm they cause and cannot use excuses, like wealthy lifestyles, to avoid the consequences for killing four innocent people. Neither Couch’s money nor his parents made him drink too much and drive afterwards. He chose his own actions that day, and he alone should be held responsible.