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MINEOLA, N.Y. (Sept. 25) - Kathleen Rice's eyes begin to well up when she talks about the victims of drunken driving.
She cannot fathom why so many people - more than 4,100 arrested in her community last year - turn the ignition after having a few drinks. More troublesome, she said, is that one-third have been caught before.
Rice, however, can do something about it: As Nassau County district attorney, she has launched an aggressive assault on drunken driving in one of the nation's busiest traffic corridors.
She does not allow plea deals in DWI cases. She put a man on trial for murder in a horrific drunken-driving crash. And she plans to slap alcohol-sensors on the ankles of admitted alcoholics.
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Defense attorney Thomas Liotti held a news conference in August claiming Rice's refusal to yield on plea bargains is too stringent. "She's basically looking at this as a black-and-white issue," he said. "People need some degree of hope, and under Kathleen Rice's policies, they're not getting it."
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I know it's the defense atty's job to get his client off as light as possible, but I don't understand why drunk drivers need "a degree of hope". Drunk driving is a choice, and it's not something you can "accidentally" do. He complains that she's looking at it as "black & white", but I personally don't see much grey area there - you drove drunk or you didn't.
I also applaud her for going after murder charges on the guy who was 3x the legal limit and killed a 7-year old.
Am I the only one here who thinks this woman is right on target??
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