Member-only story
Why Are So Many People Filled With Hate These Days?
And how social media is making it worse.
A young woman who went through grade school with my 23-year-old daughter was sentenced to one year of community service and a few thousand dollars of restitution yesterday after pleading guilty to hitting a bicyclist and fleeing the scene of the accident. The bicyclist survived but suffered serious injuries.
According to the plea deal, my daughter’s classmate could have faced up to six years in prison, but the judge didn’t find the circumstances supported such a sentence. I don’t really know the girl or her family, but I watched the hearing live on Facebook and breathed a giant sigh of relief as I listened to the judge support his decision. He told the victim, who was seated in the courtroom, that he was sorry for her suffering. He seemed sympathetic to what she’d been through and understood how her life had been changed forever due to someone’s carelessness.
At the same time, he considered the defendant — a young college student who clearly panicked after her car collided with what she initially claimed to be a trash can. He conceded that the defendant had exercised poor judgment by fleeing the scene and lying to cover it up afterward, but she didn’t strike him as “evil” or “callous.” The stress of the situation was most likely too much…
