Message
To All Americans: I Am Not Responsible For You
by
Nathan Poole, Columnist
August 1, 2002
Picture
this:
You are at home asleep when the sound of the telephone ringing suddenly wakes you from your comfortable slumber. It's the state police. Your buddy has been arrested for drunken driving after an all-night drinking session at a strip-club, and the police would like you to get out of bed and pick your buddy up. After initially getting angry that your buddy did not ask you to go to the strip club with him, you reluctantly decide to go give your friend a lift. What the hell, you think to yourself, he'd probably do the same for me.
When you arrive at the police station, you are mildly surprised to see that not only are the police giving your friend his keys back, but they are also giving the two of you directions to get back to his SUV. You assure the police that you plan on getting your drunken friend to a nice and comfortable couch tonight, and then you'll pick his car up in the morning. Once in the car, however, Mr. Good Times decides that you are taking him to pick up his car right freaking now. After trying to calm your friend down to no avail, you become increasingly frustrated at his level of belligerence. Finally, you give up. Fine, here are your damned keys, drive home, get arrested for all I care.
Your friend takes the keys, gets into the vehicle, turns on the ignition, and proceeds to drive away, eventually colliding his SUV head-on into another vehicle, killing himself and the driver of the other vehicle, a 22-year-old Navy enlisted man on the way to his mother's birthday party. You wake the next morning to find that you are charged with both deaths. If you are ultimately convicted, you could end up serving 15 years in prison.
Sounds a little far-fetched to you? Well, Kenneth Powell, a 40-year-old laborer, has found himself in just that predicament. There are many ways to look at this, I guess. You could make the argument that Powell was responsible for his buddy's behavior because Powell knew that his buddy was far too impaired to operate a motor vehicle safely. "Kenneth Powell made a series of conscious decisions to set that whole thing in motion, even though he knew better," prosecutor Michael Ostrowski told jurors July 17. "Nobody is here saying he intended anyone to get hurt. But he intended to set that reckless conduct in motion, knowing there was a real risk." In other words, he knew better, so it is his fault.
On the other hand, you could argue that the state police were responsible for letting the drunken man out of jail in the first place. And to what extremes must a person go to stop another individual from doing something illegal or hazardous? "You could be setting yourself up for battery or a disorderly conduct charge if you get into a fight and a neighbor or someone else calls to report it," says Frank K. Russo, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor. Gary Trichter, a lawyer who heads the Houston-based National College of DUI Defense Inc., took it one step further. "The state, by prosecuting this guy, is saying this guy should have fought him, used physical force to stop him," Trichter said.
Allow me to go even further. Regardless of what the state police did or did not do, Kenneth Powell was under absolutely no obligation to do anything. His buddy got drunk and decided to get behind the wheel of a vehicle, thus breaking the law. Powell was not and never should have been made to be responsible for the safety of his buddy or anybody his buddy may have hurt or killed in the process of breaking the law. Powell's friend killed a person, and that is a tragedy, but the person to blame for that tragedy is dead. We should not look for someone else to blame.
I am not responsible for what you do. If you smoke, you may get cancer. At the very least, your clothes, your car, and your pets will smell like a cheap Vegas casino. If you eat out at fast food restaurants often, then you might die of coronary disease. At the very least, you will get fat and your clothes will fit poorly. This is not my problem, nor is it the problem of the tobacco companies or the fast food industry. Maybe I could sue my wife for constantly serving me fatty foods and forcing me to watch large quantities of bad television.
America, quit being children. Realize that you do know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, and what is good for you and what is not, and take just a little responsibility for your own actions. Unless your name is Gabriela and you are a two-and-a-half year-old little girl, then I am not responsible for you. Grow up. ***
© 2002 Nathan Poole
A native of San Antonio, Texas and a veteran of the United States Air Force, Nathan Poole is employed by the United States Postal Service. He lives in Irwindale, California with his wife and family.
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