Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin goes easy on yet another drunk driver/killer

Readers, LVS can barely keep up (scroll down, see previous posts) w/ the back-up of back-ordered DUI homicide cases that snoozy and boozy DA Jim Martin is cleaning out from the bottom of his desk (because it's an election year) while everyone is on vacation and won't notice, Martin hopes.

This "latest" DUI from 2010 involves a death, and serious injury, and is again skillfully spun and downplayed online by DA Jim Martin Morning Call "newspaper" "reporter" and adorable lapdog Kevin Amerman.

Have a read ...

Emmaus man gets jail for fatal DUI crash

Here are The Inconvenient Facts in a nutshell ...

* By law, Pennsylvania judges like Robert L. Steinberg must sentence drunk drivers who kill people to a state mandatory minimum prison sentence of 3 years in a Pennsylvania State Penitentiary for the charge of Vehicular Homicide While DUI.

* The homicidal drunk driver in this case, Joseph M. Hammer, was sentenced to serve around 18+ months in Lehigh County Jail.

Why?

* Because "no nonsense" (?) DA Jim Martin generously (hiccup) plea-bargained away the major charge of Vehicular Homicide While DUI ... and most of the other charges.

Why?

* Because, as The Morning Call helpfully (and skillfully) tells us, the wishes of the victim's family were that they did not want to see their son's killer go to jail.

* This is curiously inconsistent w/ my family's experience. And our wishes. We wanted an appropriately stiff state prison sentence for our daughter Sheena's DUI killer, Robert LaBarre. One that was commensurate with the crime Robert LaBarre committed against Sheena Villa. But DA Jim Martin told me that he did not represent Sheena's family, he represented Lehigh County, and that our wishes were not a factor in the criminal charges he chose to file, and to not file.

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