The relevant paragraph would be “§ 81 StGB: fahrlässige Tötung unter besonders gefährlichen Umständen”
(Art. 81 of the Austrian Criminal Code: negligent homicide under especially dangerous circumstances). The maximum penalty is three years of prison.
Additionally, if it can be expected, due to the perpetrator’s addiction to a drug (including alcohol), that he will commit further crimes caused by that addiction, the perpetrator is to be remanded to a rehab center (for as long as necessary, but no longer than 2 years).
But that does not mean the maximum penalty is four times three years plus mandatory rehab.
Sentences are always served concurrently, consecutive sentences do not exist. Any mandatory rehab time would also run concurrently.
A teenager’s binge drinking and his lack of judgement in drinking and driving does not usually constitute an addiction, though.
The perpetrator was 16 years of age at the time, so the maximum penalty is halved to 18 months. For a first offence, sentences of less than 2 years are usually suspended in their entirety, with a probationary period of at most three years. If I read that paragraph correctly, it says that for sentences less than 2 years, two thirds of the sentence have to be suspended, which leaves 6 months of prison + 12 months of a suspended prison sentence with a probation period of 3 years would be the absolute theoretical maximum.
In any case, all conditions of probation would be lifted after at most three years. And after five years, the sentence will be struck from all publicly accessible databases, so no worries about future employment, either.
For 4 vehicular homicides? You Europeans must be more civilized than your history of foreign policy would suggest, if you have any people left at that rate…
Of course deciding to flee the country to evade justice was a decision that he made as an adult. It’s difficult to imagine that it doesn’t constitute a crime.
Maybe the insanely long prison sentences Over There don’t have the deterrence effect their proponents claim. I see the European approach as more in line with the reality and way more pragmatic.
The crime we’re talking about is driving a vehicle while drunk and then having something actually go wrong. The question of whether one person dies or four has is quite irrelevant to the guilt of the perpetrator. Just like the question of whether the Iraq invasion caused the deaths of 500,000 innocent civilians or of two million is not really relevant to my opinion about George W. Bush.
The deterrence effect of those penalties is irrelevant anyway, because drunk drivers don’t expect anything bad to happen anyway. They were committing the crime of drinking and driving, they weren’t planning on killing anyone. The penalties for drunk driving without doing any damage are the ones that should probably be increased.
Belligerent foreign policy is now the prerogative of a certain other country ;-).
But let’s take a look back into less civilized times:
The crime of negligent manslaughter, and variants thereof, can of course also be found in older laws. I checked the Austrian Criminal Code of 1852. And the penalty is… 1 year. Speeding while riding or driving (horse-drawn carriages) explicitly falls in this category.
That’s one year of “strict” prison, mind you, so that might have included being actually put in irons, and having no visitation rights.
But there was, even back then, a provision that prohibited solitary confinement exceeding one month. Manning got worse than that before even being sentenced.
From 1938 to 1945, while Austria was part of Nazi Germany. Surely, the Nazis were more strict?
Well… at the time, the German Reichsstrafgesetzbuch from 1871 applied. I couldn’t find any evidence of the Nazis upping the penalties in that one; they just added a few “political” paragraphs. And the German law from 1871 has… drum rolll 3 years.
For this particular crime I can understand not throwing him in prison and melting the key. But mandatory Alcoholics Anonymous, drug tests, and talk therapy for the next few decades sounds reasonable.
Funny you bring up GWB. I think the same program could be applied to him.
Put him and his mom in the same prison cell for the rest of their lives. There is no worse torture imaginable than having to hang out with your mom for the rest of your life.
Nobody has yet mentioned the real crime his family committed: they’ve called further attention to the special treatment they’ve been getting. If you’re rich and get the special rich people’s treatment in court, you are supposed to pretend that the justice system has treated you just like everybody else.
If instead you keep rubbing the country’s nose in how unusually leniently you were treated compared to the common folk, that’s a serious offense. Someone may eventually feel compelled to follow the rules so they can pretend it had been fair all along.
Well, that could be said of any criminal, committing any crime. You surely don’t think you’ll be caught, ever, or you wouldn’t be committing that crime; or at least, not in such a way as to be caught (cf McArthur Wheeler, who robbed two banks in 1995 without wearing a mask, because he had rubbed lemon juice on his face. He honestly believed the lemon juice would obscure his face on the security cameras).
I’m a little shocked to hear someone describe the death of a person from drunk driving as, “the crime of driving a vehicle while drunk and then having something actually go wrong.” That sounds like, “the crime of firing a gun into a crowd of people, and someone got in the way.” You may not have intended to kill anyone with your actions, but I don’t see how anyone can actually be surprised at the outcome.
Maybe death from drunk driving doesn’t happen in Austria often enough for it to be a problem, but it happens with often enough in Oregon, where I live. I will definitely admit to having a chip on my shoulder about it.
Honestly, the first two along with long prison terms sound like equally evidence-free solutions that have had their fair share of special pleading over the years to give them the unjustified status they have now.
My MIL failed a drug test and had to start her own business because of her difficulty with finding work. She wasn’t using drugs, it’s just difficult for some people to pee on command with a potential employer standing outside waiting for you to perform.
Seriously, the #1 most reliable effect of drug testing is incentivizing places to to sell bogus cleanses and synthetic/preserved urine. At a local head shop, they sell a “drug test beating kit” that has a bottle of yellow liquid (claimed to be synthetic urine on the label) and an iron-oxide heat pack. The bottle also has a temperature sensitive dye sticker on it to let you know when the “urine” is “ready” and warm enough for the immediate spot-check when you hand it over to the lab tech or whoever.
I always just refused urinalysis drug tests. Back when I was looking for jobs that did that kind of testing, I was still on ritalin, which has the potential to trip both cocaine and possibly (depending on whether you’ve taken other certain (OTC) drugs) amphetamine. They can take it up with my doctor if they want a urinalysis.
