Muskogee, OK- An Oklahoma judge has given a teenager who caused a fatal traffic accident after drinking a chance to redeem himself by attending church instead of going to jail.
In the early morning hours of Dec. 3rd, 2011, Tyler Alred, who was sixteen at the time crashed his pickup into a tree. His passenger and friend John Luke Dum, also sixteen, was killed.
As police questioned Alred about the accident, the teen admitted that he had been drinking prior to the accident. Two tests showed that his blood-alcohol level was 0.06 and 0.07, just below the 0.08 threshold of being legally drunk. Because he was under age, he was considered drunk under the law and was charged with DUI-related manslaughter, the Tulsa World News reported.
In August of this year, Alred pled guilty to the manslaughter charge, but instead of sentencing him to jail he was given 10 years of probation during which he must take drug and alcohol tests for a year, participate in victim impact panels, graduate from high school, graduate from welding school, and attend church every Sunday for the duration of his probation, according to The Huffington Post.
For some this poses a legal dilemma because of the separation of church and state. The judge in Allred’s case has included church in other sentences.
“My client goes to church every Sunday,” his defense attorney Dan Baker said in court, “This isn’t going to be a problem for him.”
Drunk drivers, because of their lowered inhibitions, often implicate themselves when they are stopped by police. This gives the prosecution evidence to use against you increasing the possibility of getting convicted for DUI. If you are unable to avoid conviction, a DUI attorney will be instrumental in negotiating for a lessened sentence.
