chriskal wrote:
happyscientist wrote:
That is just horrible. I used to live in Lawrence, and I thought that part of the state had more common sense. Based on the link, it sounds like it shouldn't have simply been assault, but attempted homicide.
Turns out it was a Johnson County, KS case, which, is a suburban county south of Kansas City. It appears that he was charged w/ Aggravated Battery, intentional bodily harm. Under KS law there are a number of versions of agg batt. and the jury would also have been instructed on the lesser included charge of Agg Batt/ reckless and simple battery.
I didn't sit in on this trial so I have no idea what evidence was presented to the jury. For whatever reason they didn't find it satisfactory. If I had to guess, I would imagine the prosecution failed to prove the necessary intent.
jOCO can be a scary place to ride. It's chock full of soccer moms in mini-vans and people in big SUVs. However, it is also generally a bad place to be charged with a serious crime as the usual jury demographic is not very defendant friendly.
I live in Lenexa, and ride almost everyday right where this happened. This is a two way issue in my opinion. JOCO can be very dangerous as you have tons of distracted moms on cells phones and entitled people who are too lazy to drive defensively. On the flip side you have a lot of entitled cyclists who have an eff all motorists mentality and it only encourages these types of incidents. I know right where this happened, ride there every single day, there is no bike lane, i am sure the cyclist just blew past the cars on the side, probably ran the stop sign as well, and the driver was fed up. I have seen this so many times at this exact spot, it does not excuse the driver but cyclists are asking for this. The road racing community in KC is very good and is extremely proactive on obeying all road laws, but outside the racing community i have seen some of the most egregious cycling behavior out of any city i have lived in, 100% unacceptable. The police need to hammer cyclists for non compliance with traffic rules and then equally enforce the 3 foot law and put in more bike lanes.