Insult to injury

The March 19 edition of the Bangor Daily News carried an article about the recent tragedies in Eastbrook. I felt something close to horror when I read that Thomas Fiore was unemployed and had recently lost his license due to an OUI conviction — a contributing factor toward his girlfriend’s murder and his suicide. Hopelessness makes people do some pretty desperate things. I recall another story recently in Waldo County where a young man took his life rather than face the heavy consequences of an OUI conviction.

I want to make it clear that I do not believe drinking and driving is right by any stretch of the imagination — I also believe the punishment should fit the crime. But I do feel in some circumstances Maine’s OUI law goes beyond the bounds of reason and logic. In cases where injury, death, or property damage occur to someone or something else, then prosecution and restitution is a must. In those cases I support the law 100 percent. But somewhere a line needs to be drawn whereby the punishment does not far outweigh the crime….

For someone unemployed to begin with, dealing with whatever battles are present daily, to also know that they were responsible for the destruction of what little they may have and had left and then to face the monetary consequences, the physical pain and emotional trauma — how can a jail sentence, a 90-plus day loss of license, and the huge sum required to get the licesne restored, plus the higher insurance rates and the stigma, how can all this be justified? How can the system justifuy ripping away what little an individual may have left? Especially when the crime has hurt no one but themselves? …

I know the bodies and the lives destroyed by drinking and driving are real. But not every person drinking and driving is bad or responsible for hurting or killing others. There has to be an alternative for the first-time offender who faces loosing everything, including hope, if they are convicted. Many people will disagree with me on this.

You can say all you want about justification, responsibility, the law, fine lines and the proverbial “someone else could have been hurt.” So be it. But is this type of a conviction worth suicide? Is a life worth license suspension and jail? I guess in Maine it is. A sad place to live, where a conviction is worth more than a life.

Linda A. Bucklin

Belfast