Glob-a-log

Now, here’s a conundrum: A story about an unfit mother and a seriously incompetent Superior Court judge. So, which one of them is the most stupid and most dangerous waste of space?

A San Carlos woman was sentenced today to 90 days in jail after she left her young children at home alone, got behind the wheel drunk, rear-ended another car, ran from the scene and later scuffled with police as they tried to arrest her. She was so intoxicated she almost fell down doing field sobriety tests.

The judge recommended that Sara Haderle, 36, who is pregnant, perform light labor in the San Mateo County sheriff’s work program to fulfill her sentence. She is unlikely to spend any time behind bars. “I sort of doubt you’ll be back here again,” Superior Court Judge Clifford Cretan said.

Let’s not waste any more time on that San Carlos woman. Luckily, children are tougher than most child agencies think but I’m afraid these kids will need all the mental strength and lots of luck to survive the tender care of their mother.

Still, what strikes me most is the blithe optimism of that aptly named judge Cretin, who ’sort of doubts’ that the woman will behave as criminally stupid again. You’d have thought that a judge would be aware of the fact that most people don’t change. A useless, selfish drunk will remain a useless, selfish drunk until the moment he or she gets hit by a sudden blast of true self-awareness & irreversible self-loathing or hits some tree at enough miles per hour to end his or her stupid life - and only a fool would place a serious bet on the first outcome.

You can understand why a judge would prefer not to give a long and mandatory prison sentence to a pregnant woman but in this case the judge is dead wrong and acting almost as irresponsibly as the drunk driver herself. He is, to use the proper jargon, facilitating her behaviour – and the one thing a criminally stupid drunk doesn’t need is facilitating.

By letting this woman off the hook he is not helping her unborn child, or the young children she left to fend for themselves, so that she could go on a drinking and drunk driving spree. He is, in fact, condemning all these children to more of the same behaviour a little bit further down the road.

Down that road, of course, the woman – with all those children aboard – may very well meet, head-on, a tree, a lamppost or another car, filled with another, entirely sober family.

When that happens, will Judge Cretin, who sent this drunk the message that she could, more or less, get away with her behaviour, get fired – let alone prosecuted for aiding and abetting the accused in a vehicular murder case? To use the judge’s own words, ‘I sort of doubt it – alas…’

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 20:46 and is filed under Columns, Crime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.