Overheated driver doesn't deserve the cooler

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Give me a Big Gulp. Or supersize me. Well, I do declare, ladies, better watch where you throw an ice-filled cup from now on.

In my best Southern belle accent, I ask you, whoever thought that showering a hot body hopping all over the highway, using a chilly drink to cool that body down on a sizzling summer day, would land a Sistagirl in the steamy slammer for two long years?

Jessica Hall, a 25-year-old mother of three from Jacksonville, N.C., finds herself facing a sticky situation tomorrow when a Stafford County, Va., judge formally sentences her for "maliciously throwing a McDonald's cup of ice into a car that cut her off on the highway."

And the aggressive D.C. driver at whom Hall aimed the cup? No repercussions.

We've all driven in Hall's hot tire tracks a time or two, and I bet the vision of throwing more than regretful gestures has crossed our minds. Hey, I can think of a long list of folks I'd like to lob a McMissile at, including the gridlocked legislators in the Virginia General Assembly who can't seem to get a transportation bill out of the regular session for yet another year.

After all, traffic congestion played a part in the McMissile case.

Initially groggy, I mistook the McMissile case as part of the WTOP radio morning commuter report or a candidate for Monday's "Knuckleheads in the News." But I was awake enough to ask aloud, who is the real knucklehead in this case: the defendant or the jury? Those icy McMissiles can pack more punch than a mint julep. Hall was wrong, but to what criminal standard should she be held? I'd submit a misdemeanor rather than a felony, since no one was seriously injured.

"We didn't think it would go this far. Two years! What did I do?" Hall said in an interview in the Other Paper.

Justice cannot be served by having the mother of three children sit in a prison cell for two years after suffering a fit of temporary insanity on the highway. Her absence at their vulnerable ages of 4, 6 and 8 could create even bigger consequences for society.

Clearly, as Hall stated from the Rappahannock Regional Jail, "I must have been wrong ... but seriously, God, lesson learned."