Contempt of Court
By Jeffrey Page
Not since the last time a defendant in a rape case said the woman’s sexy outfit meant she was “asking for it” have we encountered a more grotesque defense and sentencing than that of an ex-cop charged with drunken driving and killing a woman with his SUV.
A judge in Brooklyn ruled last week that because the woman, leaving a wedding reception in Mill Basin 13 months ago also was drunk, she contributed to her being struck by Andrew Kelly, the drunk off-duty NYPD officer. Kelly refused to take a breath test until seven hours after the incident and only then under orders. And just months later, as part of a deal, he pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and driving while intoxicated, and admitted that he had been drunk at the time he plowed into Vionique Valnord-Kassime. He also resigned from the police department.
Ms. Valnord-Kassime is dead and state Supreme Court Justice Allan Marrus sent Kelly to jail for 90 days and put him on probation for five years. You read that right.
The judge, prosecutor and the attorney representing Andrew Kelly seemed able to find a way to pin the rap of Ms. Valnord-Kassime’s death on Ms. Valnord-Kassime herself.
The assistant district attorney said, “She had been at a wedding. She had been drinking.”
Kelly’s lawyer said, “It appears that she was drunk and she wandered into traffic.”
Acknowledging that his sentence might strike some people as on the lenient side, the learned Judge Marrus was quoted by The New York Times noting that “the alcohol consumption of the victim [and] the fact that she walked out onto a rainy street to hail a cab against the advice of friends” could have been contributory factors to her being hit.
What Marrus did was to find Ms. Valnord-Kassime guilty of a crime that does not exist – WWI, or walking while intoxicated.
Translation: It was all her fault.
Anybody want to tell me about justice?
Only Sanford Rubenstein, the lawyer representing Ms. Valnord-Kassime’s family, observed that she was the sole victim in this case, no matter that she herself had had too much to drink.
Ninety days? Ninety days for driving drunk and killing someone is more like an annoying inconvenience than a serious penalty, and the question must be asked. What would the sentence have been had Andrew Kelly not been a cop at the time of Ms. Valnord-Kassime’s death? If Andrew Kelly were just another working stiff trying to make it in this economy, would he have been sent away for three months?
We’re supposed to respect the law and the people who enforce it and those who run our courts. And we are supposed to understand the random danger of drunken driving. But Marrus’s sentencing of the disgraced Andrew Kelly was an absurdity that flies in the face of common sense and sends a terrible message that maybe killing someone while you’re blind drunk isn’t such a terrible thing after all.
At the time of the sentencing, Ms. Valnord-Kassime’s father, the Rev. Varius Valnord, the pastor of the Haitian Church of God in Brooklyn, came face to face with Andrew Kelly in the courthouse. Kelly apologized. The Rev. Valnord accepted. But 90 days?
Clearly, Rev. Valnord is a forgiving man of God though he intends to bring a wrongful death action against Kelly and the city. Forgiveness is a wonderful – and personal – step. But one thing must be understood. The case against Andrew Kelly was not brought in the name of the Valnord and Kassime families. It was brought in the name of all 14 million people of the state of New York. We all need protection from drunken drivers.
The rest of us must demand representation in cases such as this since the next time someone is run down by a drunken driver – cop or civilian – the victim could be your kid, your sweetheart, your friend.
Because one thing about drunken drivers. They’re not very discriminating; they’ll kill anybody in their path.
Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.
Tags: Jeffrey Page
