These two have prior convictions for juvenial offences and have just been told that punishment for their current offenses is less important than football. Their future, at best, may consist of a couple of years at a Division II college, leaving without a degree, and most likely hard time in a penitentary for some future crime committed as some future date.
There's no point in ruining their futures.
And what kind of future did they leave the injured passenger as a result of their stunt. You can blame the driver and call him reckless but the long and short of it is had they not pulled their stunt the passenger would not have been injured and had his future destroyed. You have no sympathy for him but plenty for the jerks who did it to him. Putting an obstruction in the road just to see what happens in criminal, not irresponsible. At the very least these two should never be near the high school football team for their prior offenses alone, not to mention their current criminal acts.
The kids need to take responsibility for what they did, but they don't deserve to have the responsibility for mistakes of the driver layered on top of them that were not reasonably foreseeable.
Maybe they can sue the driver for what happened to them? </sarcasm>
Actually I believe only the younger of the two has had prior juvenile offenses.
...and have just been told that punishment for their current offenses is less important than football.
No, they've been told that they are going to have to pay for their actions. He's under house arrest until the football season ends. He then gets to spend 60 days locked up. After that he has to perform 1500 hours of community service and is on probation.
What they did was really stupid. They put the decoy on the road and then drove up and down the road watching other drivers react by slowing down and going around it.
It was stupid, but mostly harmless though there was a significant risk or property damage, from someone not being able to completely stop in time, they couldn't have expected someone was going to go off the road at a high rate of speed, roll their care, and crash into a fence.
Roby wasn't the first driver to encounter the car.
The news stories about the incident are very vague, and don't tell why Roby wasn't able to slow and avoid the decoy like the others were.
However, Campbell who was 15 years old at the time, couldn't have been able to predict that there was a serious chance of someone recking their car in this way.
The pranksters definitely have a good deal of responsibility in this incident, but under Ohio law you are required to drive at a speed in which you can stop in the assured clear distance. I posted the actually code in another post.
The driver was not in control of his car and was driving too fast, and shares some of the responsibility as well.
What they did wasn't assault, but emotions ran high due to the severity of the accident, though the severity of the accident was in a large part due to the driver not driving safely.
You can blame the driver and call him reckless but the long and short of it is had they not pulled their stunt the passenger would not have been injured and had his future destroyed.
Bull! I'm not displacing blame, you are.
I'm holding each responsible for their own actions. I'm not holding the pranksters blameless, but I'm not trying to shift the blame for the actions of others on to them either.
If they didn't place the decoy on the road, the accident wouldn't have happened. However, if Roby was driving his car within the bounds of how he was legally required to drive, the accident also would not have happened.
Roby wasn't the first driver to come across the decoy the pranksters put in the road. He was the first to have any kind of accident due to the decoy being on the road.
Roby didn't just have trouble stopping in time (being able to stop in time is what is explicitly required in the Ohio code). He didn't just hit the decoy at a low rate of speed and have damage done to his car. He didn't slide off the road a little because he wasn't quite able to slow down enough to avoid the decoy.
He swerved around the deer, went off the road at a high rate of speed, and rolled the car avoiding a stationary object that was there before he approached.
You have no sympathy for him but plenty for the jerks who did it to him.
I have an incredible amount of sympathy for him. I have even more sympathy for the passenger. I don't see any reason to punish Roby any more for his part in the accident, but that doesn't mean that the pranksters should be punished for his role in the accident.
Putting an obstruction in the road just to see what happens in criminal, not irresponsible.
Yes it is. I didn't say it wasn't. They should be held responsible for that criminal act and the consequences resulting from that act. However, how much of the accident itself was the result of their unlawful actions and how much of it was the result of the driver's unlawful actions?
Both were in violation of the law.
Each deserves to be held accountable for their own actions.
At the very least these two should never be near the high school football team for their prior offenses alone, not to mention their current criminal acts.
I have no idea what Campbell's prior juvenile offenses were, and I suspect that you don't either.
Are you suggesting that those offenses interfered with him contributing to the football team? Have there been problems with his actions as part of the team? When this incident happened he was 15 and had already let the football team to two back to back state championships as quarterback.
Is taking away the one thing he's good at going to make him less likely to do things that are criminally stupid?
It's not uncommon for work releases to be permitted so that people can maintain their job while serving their sentence. They are allowed to leave jail, go to work for the day, and return to jail after work.
When these people have finished serving their sentences, they need to be able to have hope of being a contributing part of society.
How is this teenager going to football practice and playing football that different? Football is what he is good at, and he is very good at it. Football practice and games are vocational training for him.
He's going to have to learn about a lot more than just football to be able to be a contributing member of society in the future. He's going to have to learn responsibility, maturity, and some common sense.
He deserves to be punished. He needs to do his time in detention and his 1500 hours of community service. However, taking away his chance to make something of himself by doing what he is really good at doing is just foolish and vindictive.
Keep him under house arrest through the end of the season. Keep him on probation until he's 18. Make it very clear that his actions are being watched carefully and that his suspended sentence can easily be reinstated.
Maybe they can sue the driver for what happened to them?
To sue beyond the extent of the driver's insurance policy, I believe you have to practically prove that the driver intended to do the harm. I suspect that the driver's insurance policy is already going to be paying the passenger's medical expenses up to the maximum covered by the policy.