Justice or Injustice?

CNN covers a case about a lady who was ran over by a man and his 15-year-old daughter who he was trying to teach how to drive.

Richard Miller was giving his 15-year-old daughter, who wasn't old
enough to have a learner's permit, a weekend lesson in an empty parking lot last
April when she sped across a street, jumped a curb and landed on a lawn where
Sarah McGinley was playing with her 1-year-old daughter.
McGinley, 18, tossed
the infant to safety moments before she was struck and killed in front of her
fiance's home.

...Prosecutors said Miller's daughter hit the gas pedal instead of the
brake. Miller said he tried unsuccessfully to push the brake pedal with his
hands as the car surged toward McGinley.
Miller, 47, pleaded guilty last
month to involuntary manslaughter. He could have gotten a year in prison.
His daughter pleaded guilty in juvenile court in June to causing the
accident and was sentenced to 200 hours of community service.
Miller
apologized Monday to about a dozen members of the victim's family in
court.
"Every hour I mourn for your daughter," he said. "I am terribly sorry
for the tragic loss of Sarah. Please know that you are in my prayers
constantly."
The judge also ordered Miller to pay $7,500 to cover funeral
costs, and he must pay an amount to be determined for the mother's tombstone. A
civil case also is pending.
In keeping Miller out of prison, Judge Benjamin
Lerner cited his "exemplary life," his lack of a criminal record and his guilty
plea.

"She was a wonderful young woman," said her mother, Betty McGinley, who
thought the sentence should have been harsher.
She said the baby, Victoria,
still asks for her mother.
"Do you know what it's like to hear a 22-month-old
baby tell her baby doll that her mother left?" McGinley said.

I think it would have been an injustice to punish Mr. Miller and his daughter more so than that. What happened was awful, tragic, and very unfair but he wasn't out and out negligent. He didn't want anyone killed. He has to live with this for the rest of his life. Sometimes justice is used as a tool of vengeance, sometimes it is not. In this case I believed that society is served better with keeping this man out of prison.