Originally Posted by
FBinNY
You're right that (as far as the article says) that the driver didn't PROVE he was out of town, but under US and state law that's not his burden, but the State's to disprove. I trust that the police did investigate his alibi, though I'm not privy to the details.
IMO, that leaves one (or both) of the roommates as the likely drivers, but again, that isn't enough and would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Here in the USA we don't operate criminal law by process of elimination, and nobody must prove his innocence. Rather the state has the burden of proof. We also don't prosecute inanimate objects under criminal law because they lack the mens rea, and are incapable of confronting their accusers, and mounting a defense.
I agree that our system isn't perfect, and allows some fairly obvious guilty "if not him, then who" people to dodge the law, but I wouldn't have it any other way. In fact if we look at the number of convicts later PROVEN not guilty (not technicality cases) we might draw the conclusion that it's already too easy to convict, and protections should be increased, not lessened.
In reality I think the police are out of the picture and the victim will have to resort to a civil case to recover medical payments... and will likely have to hire a detective to get to the bottom of the real story. (receipts, cell phone records, local video cameras, etc)
I was just putting out some "Solomon justice" to counter the seemingly poor excuses put up by the likely offender. It just seems down right silly that the car was found, at home, with evidence, and supposedly no one drove it... case closed.
I also have to wonder how far the police might have gone had the victim been found dead.