Harsher sentencing may not prevent car killings

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The senseless deaths of five young Twin Cities women in June ignited justified anger toward those who kill and maim with vehicles — along with complaints that not enough is being done to prevent these tragedies.

But increasing penalties across the board for criminal vehicular homicide (CVH) — the crime with which 27-year-old Derrick Thompson is charged in the June tragedy — may not be the solution.

Jon Cummings, founder of Minnesotans for Safe Driving, is no stranger to the devastation reckless and impaired drivers can inflict. In 1994, his 23-year-old son was killed by a drunken driver. Cummings has since delivered thousands of talks on impaired driving.

"I've been doing this a long time, and I've been to every prison in the state multiple times," he said. "I've met many people that have done this, and most of them are pretty dang good people that made a stupid decision."

While some who have killed with vehicles are repeat offenders — like Thompson, who was convicted of a similar hit-and-run crime in 2020 when he injured a California woman so badly she became comatose — most aren't. Between 2012 and 2021, nearly 60% of CVH defendants in Minnesota had little to no criminal history, said Nathaniel Reitz, director of the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission, which defines standards for criminal penalties.

Penalties for CVH have already increased several times over the years, leading to harsher presumptive sentences. Back in 1980, the commission ranked CVH at severity level five, with a recommended stayed sentence for defendants with little criminal history. Today it is ranked at level eight, and even offenders with no criminal history face a presumptive sentence of four years in prison.

But despite those recommendations, many still don't see prison time. Reitz said 44% of all defendants sentenced for CVH between 2012 and 2021 received "mitigated dispositional departures," through which a judge, based on the facts of a specific case, decides a stayed sentence is more appropriate than prison time. Among defendants with little to no criminal history, 58% serve no prison time.

Reitz said such a high rate of departures could be a signal from the criminal justice system that prison isn't always the appropriate approach, not that CVH is ranked too leniently in the sentencing guidelines.

"If anything, the signal is the other way," he said.

Further, there is little evidence that harsher penalties deter crime.

"Is the metric longer sentences? Is that the right solution to everything? That I just don't agree with," said Robert Speeter, a defense attorney who has delivered talks with Cummings.

Defendants also have varying levels of culpability. While some may be found grossly negligent or negligent, not all are. Despite this, the Legislature decided in 1994 to rank all CVH offenses — grossly negligent or not — equally severely.

Cummings told the Star Tribune in June he did not advocate for harsher sentencing broadly because of how different each CVH case can be. While some defendants may have extensive criminal backgrounds and demonstrate a flagrant disregard for human life, most cases aren't so black-and-white.

"There's other people that are at a wedding and they have one too many, or they're good people that screwed up and they know it and take responsibility for it," Cummings said. "It's kind of senseless to lock them up forever, right?"

While harsher sentencing could certainly cause defendants like Thompson to sweat, it could also disproportionately punish those who fall in the gray area, whom judges are already granting stayed sentences in high numbers.

I'm inclined to believe we are wasting our energy taking a uniform punitive approach. It's clear what we are currently doing isn't enough, but it's doubly clear that there's no quick fix. There are countless factors that may lead someone to drive impaired or recklessly, and no one policy is equipped to deal with all of them.

However, by addressing these factors individually — alcohol, for example — we may be able to develop a mesh of preventative policies. One such policy could be a tightening of laws related to ignition interlock devices (IIDs), small devices connected to a vehicle's engine that prevent it from starting if the driver blows above a certain alcohol concentration.

In a 2021 report, Mothers Against Drunk Driving assigned every state a grade based on their IID legislation. Minnesota ranked in the bottom quartile. In Minnesota, you must have at least two driving-related alcohol offenses on your record before you're required to enroll in an IID program. Many states require it after just one.

Requiring this after a driver's first DWI offense could undoubtedly cut down on alcohol-related driving offenses — especially considering only a fraction of drunken drivers are actually caught. While there were an estimated 127 million episodes of drunken driving in the U.S. in 2020, only about 1 million such arrests are made each year nationwide.

The development of good, preventative policies will take time, and a legislative shift away from carceral punishment would likely draw ire. But redirecting our energy toward prevention — rather than retribution after a tragedy has already occurred — could ensure fewer families go through the heart-rending loss of a loved one.

Noor Adwan is a May journalism graduate from the University of Minnesota and Star Tribune Opinion summer intern.