Guilty As Charged

On the surface it sounds plausible, but delve below the facade and it more or less falls apart. Simply put, one wants to believe others when they declare their innocence of intent to do harm to others. We instinctively would like to believe them, preferring that to thinking ill of others. But the evidence before the court is such that it seems indisputable that Sommit Luangpakham failed miserably in his obligations to others in society when he was operating a motor vehicle.

He was impaired. His judgement at that point was not in question, if he fell asleep at the wheel. It was his earlier judgement, in attending an all-night party with friends, who imbibed, though he claims he did not, despite the arresting officers testifying to their indelible impression gained through years of experience that he had indeed taken alcohol some hours earlier. Either the alcohol impaired his responses or the fact that he had fallen asleep at the wheel caused him to crash into five cyclists, one after the other.

In either event, whichever happens to be the catalyzing factor in his having driven into a bicycle lane on a clear, sunny, beautiful morning in July where he drove directly into five cyclists, injuring them horribly, he seems clearly to have been guilty as he was charged. He claims he was unaware he had hit someone; his impression once the impact awoke him from his momentary lapse into sleep was that he had hit a post. It would have been beyond his imagination to believe he had struck anyone, he claimed.

Despite which, he had struck something. Wouldn't most responsible people have stopped their vehicle, gotten out of it to survey the scene? To determine precisely what it was they had struck? He claims that had he known he'd hit a human being he would have stopped immediately to offer assistance. Clearly, he was anxious to depart the scene and had no interest in determining exactly what had occurred, if he wasn't aware of what had happened at the moment of impact. The impact itself was not singular; he hit five people sequentially.

And while his lawyer claims that given the circumstances that his client describes and his relative innocence in the matter, other than as an instrument of an unfortunate accident, and that the sad and sorry event, witnessed by many people who were alert and were capable of giving their impressions of the occurrence as it happened, it represented a simple and inadvertent misfortune; his client to be found guilty of nothing more than a momentary lapse resulting in an accident.

The "I didn't know what happened. I must have fallen asleep" admission of Mr. Luangpakham might be appealing under other circumstances, but it is not to be taken seriously once the other details have been filled in.