Steve,

A couple of legal points–

1) “attempted vehicular manslaughter” is actually a contradiction. The law can’t recognize that. To make a baseball analogy, it’s like saying there was an accidental intentional walk. The law considers attempted manslaughter to suffer from the same kind of flaws as that would.

2) I actually think it should be classified as murder. It is intentional killing. One intentional drinks. One intentionally walks to one’s car (or staggers, legally the exact method of getting to one’s car doesn’t matter). One intentionally puts the keys into the ignition. One intentionally drives the car.

That’s enough to constitute intent. A fatal accident is a natural and probable consequence of such an intent.

That makes it murder.

Unfortunately, by defining DWI deaths as manslaughter, legislatures disagree with me. And, they are the ones with the constitutional power to make that call, not me.

Nothing yet on the college’s site – it’s actually my alma mater. Tragic to lose a fellow grad…

That must have been a helluva commute, though. Trenton’s 2 hours outside of the city, and then he goes home to MA on the weekends on top of that. Lotta driving, yeesh.