Good morning
- The so-called "Bicycle Groper" has pleaded guilty to four counts of misdemeanor sexual abuse. He faces up to 180 days in jail on each count and probably deportation.
- The little piece of the Metropolitan Branch Trail that was recently built next to Union Station has been "opened" with paint and everything. BeyondDC calls it part of the 1st Street cycletrack, but technically that's wrong - and somewhere I have the Columbus Circle streetscape redesign drawing to prove it - but since the 1st Street Cycletrack is basically the Metropolitan Branch Trail is really just a semantics thing and now I regret bringing it up.
Interesting that the 'groper' faces up to 180 days in jail for each of 4 counts (possibly 2 years?), but the woman who negligently killed Diane Whitman is fined just 400 dollars. Personally, I would rather my wife was groped by some idiot on a bike trail that killed by an negligent driver. Women can recover from a groping; death is usually permanent...
Posted by: PghSteve | November 12, 2012 at 07:02 PM
PghSteve, it does seem out of balance, but I'll note that intent matters in the law. So the real question is: is intentional (and serial) groping worse than negligent homicide? I'm not going to weight in on that, but I just wanted to point out the real issue.
Posted by: washcycle | November 12, 2012 at 07:54 PM