娄秋琴律师就英菲尼迪车肇事案和高晓松酒驾案接受中央电视台采访

Question 1 In the two cases involving drunk driving, chen was charged with jeopardizing public security by dangerous methods while Gao was charged for drunk driving. What's the difference between the two crimes?

 Although the two crimes are both classified as crimes against public security in Criminal Code, they do have lots of differences. The former is a kind of concrete dangerous crimes, in practice it usually casuses severe consequences. As in the chenjia case, it led to two deaths and one seriously injured. If the accusation is proved, the maximum punishment can be death penalty, and the best result is still three years  imprisonment.

Hower, the crime of drunk driving is just an abstract dangerous crime, which generally causes no casualties or huge losses. A person who are found guilty of drunk driving only can be sentenced to criminal detention, whose longest detain deadline is six months, just as Mr Gao got in his case.

Question 2 How do you evaluate the new law that lists drunk driving as a crime? What penalties do you think can effectively stem drunk driving?

After drunk driving is defined as a cime by the Eighth Amendment, Public Traffic Administration records obvious decline both in numbers of taffic accidents and deaths in such accidents. This means the new law is really effective. To strengthen this steming effect, strict enforcement is as important as rigour legislation . Certainly, when deciding the sentences, we should also consider the circumstances to see whether the offender deserves a lesser or mitigated punishment. That is exactly the spirit of law.