Da Goddess

Hey - you changed the title of the post while I was linking to it. The first title was very appropriate. That judge has no guts. She deserved the maximum punishment allowed for that offense.

Donkey/Donkers and her husband are fucking jackasses, to put it extremely mildly. This whole story makes me want to take the two of them and beat them to a bloody pulp? Because that's what MY religion, the Synagogue of No Tolerance for Bullshit, tells me to do.

Damn it, I did not mean "?" after "pulp". I meant "!"

There is no question that I want to beat them to a pulp!

Yeah. We've got some real winners here in Ohio don't we? These people should not even be allowed to have children, let alone drive a car without a license. In fact, as Acidman might say, they should be hauled off and shot...right along with that pansy assed court jester. I'm as disgusted as you are over this one.

I so, so totally agree with you. Once the "R" word was brought into this, all common sense went right out the door.

I don't get it. Why isn't this a busybody law? Everybody in a car is always at risk, has always been at risk, and will always be at risk. The risk is low enough so that nobody worries about it except busybodies, hand-wringers and hysterics. In other words except for the target of TV news. Here we see an example. The outrage is the law. Basically it says common sense isn't good enough.

There have never been vast numbers of infants crushed in breast collisions. Who knows, it might be protective.

To hell with the child, she's endangering other people.
Child clamps its little gums down a little too hard or she answers the cellphone and next thing you know she's swerving across four lanes and taking out seven other cars.

Amen, Joan. There was a case here in Texas where a woman didn't have her kid's seatbelt on, but only briefly because he had unsnapped it to retrieve something from the floor of the car and she was pulled over by a state trooper (if memory serves me correctly), and hauled to jail in front of her kid(s). It was outrageous. Why are they pussyfooting around this? Are they going to wait until there's a fatality involving another stupid cow at the wheel of a car while breatfeeding? There have already been countless fatalities involving people on cell phones. I fail to see how this is any different. A distraction is a distraction. You get into your vehicle to go from point A to point B. Period. Your sole focus should be on the task of driving; not on your titties, his dick, your CD playlist, the cell phone, the movie that's playing.... (Now that last one really is going too far, in a car. Cripes!)

Ron - Had she been involved in a front end collision and the driver's side airbag deployed, that child would have been instantly killed. There's a reason child safety seats are mandated. Don't like it, don't drive on Ohio roadways.

But what pisses me off even more about this is that she refused to pull over for a fully marked state trooper vehicle. It's not like he was driving some unmarked crown vic with a little kojak light on the dash. (In Ohio it's illegal to use an unmarked car for traffic enforcement. While you are required to yield the right of way for red and/or blue lights and siren, you do NOT have to stop for a vehilce that is not marked.) After that she was uncooperative and just a downright bitch. I think the troopers involved showed more restraint than I would have. If it were me at that traffic stop the following things would have happened immedately:

1) That cell phone would have been removed from her and switched off.
2) Child services would have been contacted to come and pick up the baby. Let the husband duke it out with them.
3) She'd have been a collar. Off you go for a night in the pokey and you can post bail in the morning. And a top of da morning to ya ma'am when you deal with the folks at child services.
4) The car would have been impounded, only to be released to someone holding a valid operator's license.

As it was, the troopers at the scene didn't even book her on felony child endangerment, the prosecutor decided to amend the indictment. All she was charged with originally was driving without a license (1st degree misdemeanor), failing to use a child restraint device (minor misdemeanor, the legal equivalent of a parking ticket), and obstructing official business (2nd degree misdemeanor.) Any of those would have allowed her to be released on her own recognizance after finding a licensed driver for the vehicle or impounding it.
I certainly wouldn't have bothered engaging the husband in conversation or giving him the opportunity to come out and pick up the child and the car.

Oh, and if there were any confusion on if it were a real law enforcement officer, as opposed to someone who was going to assault her... here's the current vehicle styles and paint jobs in service:

http://lavender.fortunecity.com/westside/563/ohio.htm

She may be a stupid woman, but it's a stupid law, too. I don't need Big Brother minding my affairs or protecting the idiotic from themselves. Let's clean the gene pool.

All I can say is, as long as these people, judges and idiots, keep doing what they do, the folks that do the "Darwin Awards" will always have a job.

Ummm... If she didn't "hear" or "notice" the sirens telling her to pull over, cos of phone, notetaking and breastfeeding then one must agree, that her mind was elsewhere - ie not on driving.

Take her licence to drive away, take the kid she could have killed away, knock some sense into her and the religious shit out of her and let her grow some balls and let her make her own decisions and not rely on a bloke.

For goodness sake. THere's enough idiots on the roads. We don't need religion as an excuse to act like a f*ckwit.

Donkers. Rhymes with "bonkers". How could she be found not guilty of endangering her child yet guilty of violating the state's child restraint law? Why do we have child restraint laws? So that kids aren't put in greater danger while riding in a car.

To carry this judge's (faulty) logic to it's natural conclusion, we should get rid of any and all child restraint laws because a child is obviously in no greater danger if they're riding outside of a car seat.

What a maroon. Freedom of religion doesn't always mean freedom to get your way. After all, you can't kill a person just because your religion demands human sacrifice.

Cam - Failing to use a child restraint device was already addresses in one of the misdemeanor counts. While there is a judicial precedent in Ohio (Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, to be precise), to persue endangering children on parents who failed to use a child restraint device, the actions leading up to the citation need to be particularly egregious.

The section of the Ohio Revised Code I imagine she was indicted under states:

(2919.22 Ohio Revised Code)
(A) No person, who is the parent, guardian, custodian, person having custody or control, or person in loco parentis of a child under eighteen years of age or a mentally or physically handicapped child under twenty-one years of age, shall create a substantial risk to the health or safety of the child, by violating a duty of care, protection, or support. It is not a violation of a duty of care, protection, or support under this division when the parent, guardian, custodian, or person having custody or control of a child treats the physical or mental illness or defect of the child by spiritual means through prayer alone, in accordance with the tenets of a recognized religious body.

The rub here is that she was operating a motor vehicle with Michigan license plates, and breast-feeding while driving is permissable in the state of Michigan. So the judge needs to weigh the responsibility of convicting on a felony child endangerment statue that wouldn't be illegal in Michigan against the "full faith and credit clause" of the U.S. Constitution which basically provides that each state must recognize the public laws, records, and judicial proceedings of the other states.

In this case, it's easier to convict on the misdemeanor charge than convict on a felony that will likely be either overturned on appeal, or turn into a civil rights violation suit in a federal district court and open a potential can of worms the precedent might set.