So I have a coworker that got a DWI quite a few years back. She and her husband went to a friend's house with the intention of spending the night there and drinking a bottle of Wellers (her biggest sin, IMO). They were up late drinking and eventually all went to bed. Later that night she was awakened by a cop from a near comatose state in her car in a ditch off the side of the road. She had absolutely no recollection of anything beyond deciding it was time to go to bed. Her best guess was that maybe she decided to go for a pack of smokes or something, but had no understanding of how she got to where she was. This was total blackout territory. I can't help but to think that the punitive aspect of DWI enforcement is meaningless in a situation such as this. She made no conscious decision to drive drunk. Her mistake, aside from the quality of hooch, was in getting so drunk in the first place, but that's no crime and she had every intention of doing so responsibly.
Now, I'm not putting this out there to defend her actions. She's the first to accept responsibility for what went down, even if was beyond her control. Yet I just read a scathing editorial about the Patriot's signing of Michael Floyd, and I can't help but think that the newly released details of his arrest are being used make the thing more egregious than I think it was. From my standpoint some dumb frat-boy driving with a .10 has far more culpability than somebody who's fucked up to the point of losing any semblance of functionality, mental or physical. If he'd just been your run of the mill variety DUI, rather than some "super extreme" thing, people would be rightly calling for him to receive the standard NFL sanction. I believe that's a 1 game suspension and 2 game checks. I might actually call that a little too lenient. But between his remarkably high BAC and the video of him passed out he's suddenly history's greatest monster. The fact that it was the Patriots that signed him certainly doesn't lessen people's indignation.
People here already know my opinion that DWI enforcement is remarkably full of shit, but this case isn't applicable. I want people punished for driving while impaired. Yet I'd like for the punishment to be tied to reason rather than emotion, and I don't think that's the case here. Whether that applies to the State of Arizona is probably better discussed in a forum we can no longer use, but as it applies to the NFL is a different matter. Here's an instance where Goodell might well be inclined to use the standard penalty yet has no choice to but to ring him up indefinitely because of the perceived severity of the offense. This is why rules matter.
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