Opinion: Thankfully for Donte Stallworth, He Only Killed A Person and Not a Dog
As a practicing lawyer and chief legal correspondent for “The Larely Beagle”, a lot of people have asked me my opinion on Donte Stallworth’s recent legal snafu in which he struck and killed a man with his Bentley while driving drunk. They want to know what my personal view of the case is, and also what I might do if I were hired to be his attorney.
Well, as an attorney, I know one thing: Stallworth should be thanking his lucky stars that he only killed a person and didn’t kill any dogs.
There’s an old PR adage that the two worst things a politician can be caught with are a dead girl or a live boy. As a loose parallel to that statement, in regards to the general public, one of the worst things a person can be labeled is a “dog killer”. And rightfully so, dogs are cute, cuddly bundles of energy that tug on the heart strings of even the most hardened men. People, on the other hand, are overpopulated, lazy, stupid, and frankly, could stand to have their numbers thinned out a little bit. This is the precise reason why lucking out and killing a person will net you 30 days in jail, some house arrest, and some community service, but killing dogs will get you at least a few years in a federal pen.
You see, if Stallworth had been accused of killing dogs, his trail would have contained buzz words like “rape stand”, “forced drowning”, and “mercy kill”. Since he only killed a human being, his legal proceedings only contained benign words like “manslaughter”, “DUI”, and “pedestrian”. Well, let me tell you something: the general public has probably heard that last set of words more often then they’ve heard the words “I love you”, so good luck to any attorney out there who tries to use them to evoke an emotional response from the general public.
So, as an attorney, I advise everyone out there to take a moment and think about which way they should jerk the steering wheel if they were out driving drunk and a dog and a person jumped in front of them at the same time.
