Justice for All?

A few months ago, an 18-year-old pregnant woman and her boyfriend went to the movies; afterward, the woman started across the street to wait for the bus to take her home. She never made it because a driver hit her and kept going. Both the woman and her nearly full-term baby died within an hour of the accident. Investigators had good leads that took them to a home in Palm Springs; however, no one answered the door. The next morning, the investigators returned to the home and documented the extensive damage to the vehicle parked in the closed garage. The female driver was taken to the police station, allowed to post a $25,000 bond, and returned home.

She has not been seen nor heard from until today.

To say that the family and friends of the victims of the hit and run were stunned would be putting it mildly. To say that citizens were astounded that the driver, whose husband works for the district attorney's office, was given preferential treatment would be understating the reaction. Two people killed as a result of a hit and run by a woman with a previous DUI should have resulted in a bail of $200,000 and a trial. Although the public has been assured repeatedly that the investigation is on-going, to date no specific charges have been filed against the driver.

None of that happened -- and none of that is going to happen.

After endless delays and no comment responses to questions at the DA's office, the woman driver was scheduled to appear in court this morning to hear the charges against her. However, once again she called the shots, pleaded guilty to DUI vehicular manslaughter for the death of the pregnant woman, not her unborn baby, and will probably serve (a maximum of) 15 years (10 years for the manslaughter; 5 years for leaving the scene) according to the terms of a plea bargain wrangled out of the public eye. Believe it or not, she was also given until August 14 to surrender because she may need surgery in the next couple of weeks -- and walked out the front door of the court house.

UPDATE: the judge had no prior knowledge of the case, including the fact that the woman was pregnant with a baby due 2 weeks after its death. He said the case was dumped on his desk this morning and hurried through the system. Boy, are there a lot of angry people in the Valley this fine day.

Adding insult to injury, allegedly the driver and her husband, who is an investigator for the DA's office, got into a fight at their PS home following the hit and run. Allegedly, the woman took a handful of pills and had to be taken to the hospital to have her stomach pumped, thus obscuring evidence of being under the influence at the time of the hit and run. Allegedly, the DA's office has not been involved in either the investigation or the legal machinations that led to today's stunning court appearance. Allegedly, the DA's office has done everything in its power to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest and/or favoritism.

This whole situation reeks. There is a dead woman, a dead baby, and damage so extensive to the vehicle driven by the admitted driver that it looked as if she had run into a wall. There is no way that she did not know she had hit something, and there is no way her husband did not know it when she arrived home. She may have taken pills to either kill herself or obscure evidence, but her husband could have called the cops to the hospital to arrest his wife, cuff her to the hospital bed, and take her to jail when she woke up.

He may not have been driving the vehicle, but he's driving the cover-up.

The victims' family is in shock at today's court appearance. They wanted to confront their daughter's killer and at least get an explanation for why she didn't stop and, perhaps, an apology for not just killing their child, but their grandchild. Instead, they are victimized again by the court system that promises "justice for all," unless, of course, you work for the system and know how to make the system work for you.