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Teen Who Drove Drunk Gets 30 Days for Fatality

By Bill Brubaker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 30, 2008; B01

A 17-year-old Fairfax County girl who pleaded guilty in a drunken-driving crash that killed a Leesburg woman was sentenced yesterday to 30 days in a juvenile detention center and ordered to do 500 hours of community service.

Loudoun County juvenile court Judge Pamela L. Brooks suspended the most punitive part of the sentence, which called for the teenager to be detained until September 2011, when she turns 21. Brooks also revoked the girl's driver's license and ordered her to get a job to pay $5,000 in funeral expenses to the victim's family.

The teenager was sent to Loudoun's detention center April 21 after she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Brooks did not give her any credit for the 38 days she has served.

Kathleen Becker, 59, died instantly the night of Sept. 20 when her van was hit head-on by the teenager's sport-utility vehicle. Becker was returning home from choir practice at a Catholic church in Sterling.

The teenager had been "binge drinking" before and during a football game at Westfield High School, where she was a senior, authorities said. She had left the game in Chantilly drunk and ended up on Route 15 in Loudoun. She had a blood-alcohol level of 0.17, more than twice the 0.08 legal limit for adults under Virginia law, after the crash.

"My options, quite frankly, are not options I am happy with. . . . Frankly, I don't think 30 days is long enough. I don't think 60 days is long enough," Brooks told the teenager, who was shackled around her ankles and dressed in a green detention-center outfit.

Brooks said a state pre-sentencing report concluded that the girl was "not an appropriate candidate" to be sent to a Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice detention facility.

"You are a convicted felon, so you are a criminal," Brooks told the girl, a first-time offender. "But I would not classify you as a hardened criminal."

The Washington Post generally does not name juveniles charged with crimes unless they are charged as adults.

Becker's daughter, Sharon Macielinski, said her family did not want the girl to be locked up for a long period. The teenager will be on supervised probation until she is 21.

In an interview Wednesday, Macielinski said: "We're not looking out for revenge or payback or anything like that. We're looking at: What is best for rehabilitating this individual so other people don't get hurt?"

Yesterday, Loudoun Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Adriana Eberle urged Brooks to hand down a sentence that would deter other teens from drinking. "This is bigger than what is going on inside this courtroom. . . . She should not get the same punishment as a juvenile who commits a grand larceny," she said.

The victim's husband, Henry Becker, asked Brooks to order the girl to pay half of the funeral expenses, which totaled $10,000, from her earnings.

Sobbing, the teenager apologized to Becker's family. "I can't explain how devastated I have been. . . . I can't forgive myself for taking another human life," she said, reading from a statement.

Outside the courtroom, her attorney, Peter D. Greenspun, called the sentence "fair and responsible and appropriate."

Asked where his client obtained the alcohol, Greenspun said: "It came from different sources. Kids get alcohol. There's nothing unique about that. They get it from adults. They get it by stealing. They get it with fake IDs. They get it by 'shoulder tapping,' where they tap an adult going into a 7-Eleven on the shoulder and ask if they can buy them some alcohol."

On the night of the crash, he said, "there was a lot of energy" at Westfield High because its football team was playing rival Chantilly."

"There was a group of kids there who were partying and drinking before the game," he said. "And apparently there were adults who were tailgating at the school and drinking."

Kathleen Becker was a school crossing guard in the 1970s and 1980s at Sterling Elementary School. In recent years, she did volunteer work but spent most of her time caring for a teenage son who has a genetic disorder.

Prosecutors had wanted to try the teenager as an adult. But they were turned down by a Circuit Court judge who ruled that the girl was emotionally and socially immature, had no previous criminal record and had demonstrated "excellence" in school.

Yesterday, Brooks made a prediction before sending the teenager back to the detention center in Leesburg.

"I think this is something that's going to eat at you for a long time," she said.

It hate Judges that do this!

"My options, quite frankly, are not options I am happy with. . . . Frankly, I don't think 30 days is long enough. I don't think 60 days is long enough," Brooks told the teenager, who was shackled around her ankles and dressed in a green detention-center outfit.

Brooks said a state pre-sentencing report concluded that the girl was "not an appropriate candidate" to be sent to a Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice detention facility.

Tragic Story.

The family did say that they don't want her to be locked up for a long time though.   :-\

I'm guessing none of you have ever had one too many and drove home?


How about let a friend do the same?

I'm guessing none of you have ever had one too many and drove home?


How about let a friend do the same?

I'm guessing none of you have ever had one too many and drove home?


How about let a friend do the same?

HELL NO I DID NOT DRINK AND DRIVE BEFORE I WAS 18!  (Or after for that matter)

Its not that hard to figure out not to do it regardless of what age you are.

Shit, when I was in college, my fraternity (you know, the groups the media labels alcoholics) had sense enough to have a 'Dry Brother' program. A specific few guys assigned each night when any partying was going on and also every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights to be the on-call sober drivers.

Nobody wanted to make it into the headlines as the guys who were idiots and killed a mother on her way home from choir practice.

Why don't we just string her up and kill the pregnant dog! make the beast with two backs ya.  [evil]

An eye for an eye policy only results in a world full of blind people.  8)

Why don't we just string her up and kill the pregnant dog! make the beast with two backs ya.  [evil]

An eye for an eye policy only results in a world full of blind people.  8)

I'm guessing none of you have ever had one too many and drove home?


How about let a friend do the same?

Why don't we just string her up and kill the pregnant dog! make the beast with two backs ya.  [evil]

An eye for an eye policy only results in a world full of blind people.  8)

Patently false.  After a while, the smart people see what's happening and straighten up.  "World full of blind people" my ass.

By that logic, with the death penalty, everyone would be dead.

I think if you are 17 and underage drunk driving, you should get some hard time and maybe even a spoon. How many commericals are on tv about stopping underage drinking? A lot around here. Here is a good time to set up a sweet example to the future underage drinkers of what can happen if you drink under age. 30 days is really not a good example, unless your Morgan Spurlock.

Point is that justice is supposed to be blind.

If you get 10 years for manslaughter resulting from drunk driving, why does it matter how well you did in school?

Does that mean that I can get off with 30 days in jail for killing someone while drunk?  I did really well in school, top 5% of my law school class.

17 is old enough to know drinking and driving can kill, regardless to whether she saw a presentation in high school about a car wreck.  She should have been tried as an adult at the very least. 

She might have been an "excellent" student, but lets see her try to get into a college that's worth a damn with a felony on her record.  She may not be headed to a long jail sentence but it is going to screw up her life  for a few years to come.

I'm guessing none of you have ever had one too many and drove home?


How about let a friend do the same?

This is a tuff call.  The truth is a lot of us have driven in a very intoxicated condition and been lucky enough to make it home safely.  She didn't.  At some point society has to take action and hold the unlucky responsible so the same problem doesn't recurr as frequently.  30 days sufficient?  If she learned her lesson, yes.  If not, no.

This is a tuff call.  The truth is a lot of us have driven in a very intoxicated condition and been lucky enough to make it home safely.  She didn't.  At some point society has to take action and hold the unlucky responsible so the same problem doesn't recurr as frequently.  30 days sufficient?  If she learned her lesson, yes.  If not, no.