Victimless Crime Files: Stoned Driver Kills Woman in Highway Collision

Timothy Wood got high and started driving down a lonely Alaskan highway. But that’s O.K. right? It’s not like drinking and driving:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A driver who was under the influence of marijuana was sentenced to three years in prison for criminally negligent homicide in the death of a 53-year-old woman killed on the Seward Highway.

Timothy Wood, 33, was behind the wheel when his Chevy Blazer crossed the center line and slammed into a car driven by Diane Bahnson of Girdwood in 2005.

Wood’s blood tested positive for marijuana.

Troopers said Wood was driving erratically before the accident.

Wood was originally charged with second-degree murder, but technical problems with the blood test evidence made it hard to take the case to trial, according to prosecutors. In a plea agreement, the charge was reduced to criminally-negligent homicide.

Bahnson’s parents and husband came to Wood’s sentencing hearing. They urged Superior Court Judge Philip Volland to give the stiffest sentence possible under the agreement.

“I believe Mr. Wood has gotten away with murder,” Bahnson’s husband, Reid, told the judge. “He destroyed not only one life, but many.”

Wood apologized to the family. He said not a day goes by that he does not think about what he has done.

I bet. Any pot heads want to claim this had nothing to do with marijuana?

9 thoughts on “Victimless Crime Files: Stoned Driver Kills Woman in Highway Collision

  1. My brother in-law is right. Tim Wood did get away with murder. I don’t blame the judge though. He had to handle this case the way he did due to your Alaska laws. There were other factors that played into the blood work not being allowed & those people know who they are & should be ashamed of themselves for playing “GOD” & allowing Tim Wood to get away with taking Diane’s life. Keep in mind that his license has been revoked for 5 years but he can petition to get it back in just 2 years. Think about that while driving any road in the Anchorage & out lying areas. I believe he’ll be a repeat offender, I just hope he doesn’t take another life or maim someone else in the process. In reality, he only spent from Oct. 2005 – Nov. 2007 in jail. That’s hardly 3 years but your laws seem the think this is justified for taking another life. I can’t understand this. Unless you’re in any of Diane’s family shoes, you’ll never comprehend the devastation Mr. Wood has caused our families & Diane’s friends. Don’t let another Tim Wood get away with anything remotely similar to my sisters case. Get your laws stiffened so that the Tim Woods’ of Alaska don’t get a slap on the wrist for murder.

  2. While I’ll be the first to say that I think adults smoking marijuana in the privacy of their own homes is truly a “victimless crime”, I will also state unequivocally that driving a vehicle while impaired with marijuana, or any other mind altering substance including alcohol, should be (and already is) illegal in these United States.

    What a terribly sad and tragic story. I think he should have faced a much stiffer punishment for such a careless and destructive act.

    How sad.

    Did this story have “[something] to do with marijuana”? Of course it did. It had to do with someone partaking and then making the selfish and horrible decision to put other people’s lives at risk by getting behind the wheel.

  3. I would agree with you Del except that drug use, marijuana or alcohol or anything else, is rarely partook by adults with no other responsibilities. That’s what this category is about, that regardless of the legality or illegality of a substance getting high is something best left behind in an adult’s life.

    When you have to drive somewhere, when you have kids or other responsibilities out should be able to live your life without getting high.

    But perhaps more importantly the adults getting high in these stories do so because there other problems they had that their drug use was a symptom of. I’ve blogged about adults using pot to get children stoned so they could have sex with them, adults giving infants pot and deriving some sort of sick enjoyment of it (you and I can agree that’s sadism at best) and even cults recruiting through drugs.

    That’s the truth about drug use. The idea of a victimless crime is theoretical because often there are victims, whether it be crash victims, neglected children, teens doped and raped etc. Libertarianism in regards to drug use fails to recognize that there are indeed consequences to drug use that effect the rest of us.

    I wouldn’t have voted to make pot illegal if there was a vote, but the idea that legalizing pot will make pot smokers safer to be around, make them less criminal, is a pipe dream.

  4. I wouldn’t have voted to make pot illegal if there was a vote, but the idea that legalizing pot will make pot smokers safer to be around, make them less criminal, is a pipe dream.

    Sorry, Rob, but I don’t remember ever saying such a thing.

  5. The idea of a victimless crime is theoretical because often there are victims, whether it be crash victims, neglected children, teens doped and raped etc.

    And all of those things are already illegal, whether the adult use of marijuana is legal or not.

  6. Not you Del, but many legalizations advocates do claim we’d reduce crime rates if we legalized which is only true if you care about lowering possession and dealing raps. I wasn’t implying this was an argument against something you said, just explaining the general reason I push so hard on these stories.

    And marijuana’s legalization doesn’t change user’s behavior anymore than alcohol’s legality makes drunks less likely to get in trouble. People that get drunk get in fights, crash cars and generally hurt the people around them. So it is with people who get high, except maybe they drop their children, deal drugs with their children or, as in the a recent case in England stomp a person to death to get money for weed.

    I grew up in a neighborhood where people got high all the time, not just in their basements but right on the street. I know that many pot heads ARE violent, they do horrible things they wouldn’t have done unless they were high and adult pot smokers are a big reason that area remains bad today.

    I don’t like the romanticizing of adults getting high; I’m not interested in whether or not people do it. Unless they are directly interacting with me.

  7. Not you Del, but many legalization advocates do claim we’d reduce crime rates if we legalized which is only true if you care about lowering possession and dealing raps.

    I disagree with you here, and it relates closely to the conversation we were enjoying on the other thread about the Mexican cartels.

    When alcohol was illegal, it is a fact that gangland violence related to alcohol sales skyrocketed, I think that forcing a thriving marketplace into the hands of law breakers and gangs by making the sale of certain products illegal does have a tendency to increase violence associated with that marketplace.

    Does the possible future legal status of drugs result in more net bad behavior than the increase I describe above does? I’m not sure.. It might end up being an overall negative impact on our society to legalize drugs in the long run because of the damage done by people who then feel more free to get high and somehow hurt someone through their own carelessness. But I’m not convinced that amount of damage increases simply because drugs are legal. People will be careless whether the pot or alcohol they consume is illegal or not.

    they do horrible things they wouldn’t have done unless they were high

    While I understand your experiences and intention in making such a statement, I don’t believe you have any evidence to support this position. I believe that people who are violent by nature, who don’t have empathy for other human beings, are acting the way they act for more reasons than simply because they are high on marijuana. There are just too many non-violent marijuana smokers in the world for me to believe that marijuana MAKES you violent,. That just hasn’t been my experience.

    And marijuana’s legalization doesn’t change user’s behavior anymore than alcohol’s legality makes drunks less likely to get in trouble.

    Maybe that is true for a simple user of marijuana and maybe it is not. I won’t pretend to know since we have never lived in a society where marijuana use is legal. All I know are illegal marijuana users. And the VAST majority of them are otherwise law abiding citizens. I know your experience has been different, but I think that has more to do with the socio-economics of the area in which you lived than anything related specifically to the use of marijuana.

    I’ve smoked enough marijuana in my younger days to know that it never made me feel violent towards others and it never removed my sense of empathy towards other people.

    I disagree with your above statement completely, however, when discussing the violent behavior of those who supply this illegal product to the marketplace of marijuana buyers. I believe that an illegal pot dealer on the corner has a much higher likelihood to use violence against someone trying to move into their “territory” than a legal supplier of this substance would. If you look at the hash bars in Amsterdam, you can see what I mean..

    When competitive pressure crops up on the streets of Amsterdam’s hash bar districts, the reaction by the suppliers in this semi-legal marijuana market is to try to market their products better, not to shoot down their competitor in the streets, which is what happens here where prohibition pushes the market into a black market setting. What does the illegal drug pusher have to loose by killing his competitor? Nothing! He’s already breaking the law. The position of the hash bar owner in Amsterdam is very different, however. He has everything to loose by becoming violent. That was my only point. He also has more of an incentive to keep people from over-indulging. Just like a responsible bar owner will cut off a patron who is clearly inebriated. The illegal alcohol seller in the 20s had no such incentive.

    and adult pot smokers are a big reason that area remains bad today.

    I would ask that you consider the fact that it could be true that the insane profit margins and violent nature of illegal marketplace has a lot more to do with why those areas are the way they are. If your typical young man couldn’t get filthy rich from entering the black market for illegal drugs, I don’t think the gang activities in these areas would be so profitable and prevalent. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. The only thing I do know is that pushing a thriving market into the underworld will result in lawlessness, extreme profits and an overall less controlled approach to commerce.

  8. I would ask you to consider that the simple fact is people who get high do horrible things unrelated to the substances legal status.

    If you get high, try this: Think of the worst thing you’ve done recently and then tell me you did it sober. Most people cannot?

    My Victimless Crime Files category documents those crimes that would have happened regardless of pot’s legality.

    My home town of East Orange isn’t bad just because of dealers, who by and large were always happy to leave me alone and go about their business, but the people who were high. I’ve been shot at once and had guns pulled on me three times. I’ve been jumped a couple of times too. In almost all those cases the people either smelled like pot or I saw them getting high just prior.

    Also, the rivers and swamps are full of club and bar owners. The idea that drug gangs will straighten up after legalization is disproved by the power the mafia still wields over the night club industry.

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