A Cautionary Tale: The DWI Trial of Stephen Mole

Steve Mole was pronounced guilty of killing one person and seriously injuring two others while drunk driving. He was a fiftyish computer programmer with sole custody of two teenage children-by all accounts a loving father. He was an avid churchgoer, conscientious worker; an everyday non-remarkable resident of Texas. Despite having no prior convictions, the jury gave him a total of 30 years on the three separate charges which the judge ruled be served consecutively. There would be no parole possibility until the 15 year halfway point. For a harrowing week, Steve heard his character vilified by a parade of victims, witnesses and attorneys. Certainly the suffering he had caused was profound. Beyond question, he had put himself in the defendant chair-he did not, nor could not, shift the blame elsewhere. But was the sentence just? Perhaps an even bigger question; does one's life henceforth deserve to be defined by the one incident, terrible as it was? We may all want to ponder this considering society's ever-increasing hunger for "throwing away the key". As laws get stricter and more numerous, more everyday people not only get criminalized, but serve sentences representing huge percentages of their lives. The book is entitled is "A Cautionary Tale": The DWI Trial of Stephen Mole. Steve himself contributes rich, moving, thought-provoking reminiscences. Others from his trial and life also supply interviews. Much of the text is derived from court transcripts including first person accounts from the victims. There are several ironies. Steve had observed 10 years of complete abstinence in support of his alcoholic wife. Of the five people in the struck car, two were police officers. The woman who died had cheated death five years earlier. She was a flight attendant who, by chance, missed the 9-11 flight that crashed into the WTC's north tower. Steve's own family trauma included a father dying of Parkinson's disease and a sister who testified for him a mere two days after her husband had died. Concurrently, Steve had cases pending in bankruptcy court and family court over a rancorous divorce. Because of his financial situation, he had to settle for a court-appointed lawyer who failed to impress upon his client the wide range of potential outcomes. Steve could have accepted a state's offer that could have meant parole in a mere two and a half years. Steve's chronicle is part drama, part "there-but-for-the-grace-of-God" cautionary tale, part societal critique, but mainly a story of redemption. Despite a setting not applicable to most of us, there is a relatable and inspirational universality to Steve Mole's saga.