Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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It would take someone more basic than I am to rail against the 30-day jail sentence Aaron Pierce received in Montgomery County Circuit Court on Monday.

He got it for running over and killing fellow Virginia Tech student Brian Joseph McCloskey in November 2005.

Maybe I need to develop some outrage that, on the same day in the same court where Pierce received 30 days and other penalties, a young man who spray-painted graffiti on Christiansburg High School received, in effect, two months in jail, plus a fine and community service time.

Maybe I should go bonkers because, on Friday in Franklin County, a Rocky Mount teenager essentially received a one-year jail sentence for killing his best friend in drunk-driving vehicle crash.

But I can't do it.

Going crazy over the differences in crimes and punishments is too black and white for me.

Pure chance

Maybe it's because I know that, 40 years ago, I could have been Aaron Pierce or Brian McCloskey -- a college boy, a partygoer, just like them.

A guy who could have drunk alcohol one night and fallen into catastrophe and death.

I never vandalized a school or killed a friend while driving drunk.

I do feel frustration over the inconsistent punishments the courts often mete out.

But it's too easy to limit the discussion to that.

The problem I have with Pierce is that he let nearly five weeks pass from the night McCloskey was run over to the day he admitted to Blacksburg police that he'd had it "in the back of his mind that he may have hit him," according to a search warrant.

Pierce revealed this one day after police seized the 2006 Ford Excursion he drove the night McCloskey was killed.

I understand that Pierce could have been filled with paralyzing fear.

Unseen consequence

Brian McCloskey did nothing to deserve his death. He was kid who drank at a party.

He was walking in a grassy area near a bicycle trail.

Presumably he stumbled or passed out.

Then Pierce came along, driving an off-road shortcut in an SUV he borrowed from his roommate as he ferried people to and from parties. He, too, had been drinking.

On the trip that killed McCloskey, he thought he might have run over a large rock.

Reports of McCloskey's blunt-force trauma, and investigators' uncertainty over the cause of death, made Pierce think that perhaps he had struck not a rock, but a person.

Brian McCloskey was a freshman, age 18, a life-of-the-party type without a trace of meanness, according to his family and friends.

Police found him battered and bloodied. He lingered for about six days before he died.

For weeks, his loved ones struggled to manage their emotions. They wondered whether he'd been run down or beaten to death.

To me, Pierce's second-most egregious crime, after running over McCloskey, was withholding what he suspected while others suffered.

Like McCloskey, Pierce, now 21, had a clean past and a solid reputation, his lawyer told the court.

With three years of good behavior, he can expunge the involuntary manslaughter charge against him.

His victim can't expunge anything.

McCloskey's family generously agreed to a deal in which Pierce will serve 30 days in jail, perform 300 hours of community service, attend a substance abuse program and lose his driver's license for a year.

Pierce also paid $12,800 in restitution to the McCloskey family for Brian's funeral and tombstone in Maryland.

The family wants him to do his community service in a hospital.

I have another idea: Have him speak at schools to kids of all ages.

Require him to talk about the consequences of alcohol misuse and the responsibility to promptly report relevant information to police.

Ensure that he emphasizes our obligation to minimize others' suffering whenever possible.

That might keep another kid from one day causing the anguish McCloskey's family has been through and will go through.

It might help Aaron Pierce more than any other punishment.

And I think Brian would want that.