Finally, a judge who threw the book at someone who tried to pull a fast one in the courtroom (not a new concept).
On Monday, January 4, 2010, Massachusetts judge Matthew J. Nestor refused to "buy the claim" that disgraced Mass. Senator Anthony D. Galluccio's toothpaste caused the Breathalyzer to register alcohol content in Galluccio's body. Judge Nestor (thank you, thank you, thank you) sentenced Galluccio to one year in jail for violating probationary terms that Galluccio was to abstain from alcohol after a hit-and-run accident in October, 2009. Galluccio's drunk driving "transgressions" (love that word) go back to 1984 and until Judge Nestor threw the book at him, Galluccio seemed to have walked away from each DUI mishap without even a slap on his wrist.
Mass. drunk driving laws are useless. What is the worse these losers get? A year? Two years? Lifetime revocation of their driving license? Do these judges actually think that a piece of paper that says "you can't drive for the rest of your life" is going to stop people from actually (a) drinking and (b) getting back into their cars and driving - sober or drunk?
Nope.
Galluccio is obviously in denial about his alcohol problem. His toothpaste defense was so far beyond laughable it isn't funny anymore. Denial is commonplace for alcoholics. Trust me - I lived in that life first-hand with my ex-husband who battled an alcohol problem for years until he was diagnosed with colon cancer in September 2008 and was pretty much told if he kept drinking, he'd be dead within a year. I can't say for sure if he stopped drinking but my son tells me he never sees alcohol at his dad's house anymore. But that doesn't mean my ex has stopped drinking.
I went to Alanon meetings a long, long time ago and listened to people talk about their "addiction" and their "disease" and frankly, I sat there shaking my head at everyone because I felt like standing up and saying "Excuse me. Was anyone holding a gun to your head when you took that first drink? No. Was anyone holding a gun to your head when you got into your car and drove drunk?" No. And on and on and on. In my analytical brain, alcoholism is NOT a disease - it is simply a cop out, a way for people to be weak and hide their everyday troubles - whatever they may be - and then try to "defend" their drinking by claiming "I have a job. I pay my bills. I take care of my kids."
Oh really? And if you're off your rocker drunk at 2 a.m. and your child wakes up with a 103 fever and has to go to the ER, and you get in your car and drive into a tree and kill your child, what's your defense then, huh asshole?
Give me a break.
Maybe because I am so jaded, maybe because I am so cynical and unrelenting in my show of sympathy that I have none for drunk drivers. Everyone one of them should be put in jail for 10 years and the key tossed away.
I remember years ago a group of people (I can't name names or the group) talked about getting together for "cocktails" at 11 a.m. and this "cocktail hour" would include a "playgroup" for their children at the home of the person hosting this cocktail get together. I was just shocked and disgusted by how many of these "persons" thought nothing of driving to this person's home with their infants and toddlers in tow, ingesting 2 or 3 cocktails while their children played and then getting back into their cars to drive home.
I protested this absolutely irresponsible and disgusting behavior and was slammed to the wall for my comments. All of them thought it was perfectly fine to drink and drive with their kids in the car. Most of them said "Well, it's only 2 or 3 and I don't live very far away so it's no big deal."
I just could not pick up my jaw off the floor. Appalled just doesn't cover how I felt toward these so-called parents.
When I was 16 years old, I worked at a CVS. A guy named Greg came in on a Friday night - he was really handsome (and 18 years old), in his first year of college and asked me for my phone number. He called me later that night, we talked for a few minutes and we made tentative plans to go to the movies on Sunday. He told me was driving to the Cape that night to see his Mom and Dad.
Sunday morning, I opened the newspaper to see his face on the front page. He was dead, killed by a drunk driver. That driver got 2 years in prison for killing Greg. I was devastated by his death.
Now as a mother to a child whose father was an alcoholic (again, I do not know if my ex has truly stopped drinking - I can only hope he has), I would give anything to see stricter drunk driving laws enacted but it will never happen because the same people who make our laws drink alcohol, the same judges who give light sentences to drunk drivers drink alcohol - and I will bet a year's worth of paychecks that many of them have driven drunk but just never been caught.
Case in point: Early in April, 2009, Massachusetts Judge Christine M. McEvoy was charged with drunk driving. She made some lame statement about her "judgment" and blah blah blah.
Heard it all before. Save it, Judge. You and the rest of the judges and attorneys and cops and everyone who drinks and drives and thinks they are either above the law, immune to the penalties or simply blessed with immortality.
Wrong.
Another case in point: How about that wrong-way crash mother who was driving drunk in New York and killed eight people, including all 3 of her brother's children, 2 of her own, herself and 2 others in another car? I was just disgusted at how her family defended her to the hilt that she wasn't an alcoholic, she couldn't have been drinking, they were going to protest the autopsy results, blah blah blah.
Wake up you morons. Eight people are DEAD because this woman drank herself into oblivion, got into her mini van and drove the wrong way down a NY freeway and killed eight people, most of them children. How about thinking about that? She effectively wiped out her brother's family.
When is this going to end? When are people going to realize that drinking and driving - and perhaps not even just driving - but drinking alcohol period changes your chemical makeup of your body whether you have 1 or 100? You are NOT the same functioning person as you are if you have NO alcohol in your body.
Until are laws are so stiff and so harsh that drunk drivers are put away for life, they are going to continue to murder, maim and permanently disfigure innocent people, destroy families and careers but their careless, pathetic irresponsible actions. "Oh, I just had two. Or I just had three." Oh, oops. Didn't see that tree coming. Oh, oops. Forgot to buckle my infant baby into his car seat and oh, oops, the cops had to dig my child out of the windshield."
There is no law tough enough to stop drunk drivers. Life in prison with no chance of parole is the only answer. Or the death penalty.
Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
You drink, you drive, you kill, then you should die, too. Why should drunk drivers get to live when they take other lives?
Maybe my view is harsh and unsympathetic but 32 years ago, a young man's life, a smile that I never forgot was snuffed out forever because of a drunk driver. I never got to see Greg's smile again, I never got to hear his voice again.
Drunk drivers should be snuffed out exactly the same way.
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