Nice try, Mr. Defense Attorney.</p><p> The pitch last week in a Johnson County court was for judicial leniency in regard to a young woman&rsquo;s addiction. Cut the $100,000 bond in half, went the lawyer&rsquo;s plea. Let her drug treatment continue. </p><p>Then the 19-year-old can face involuntary manslaughter charges for driving into an elderly woman as she tended to her gardening, throwing the poor woman&rsquo;s body across the yard.</p><p> Normally my penchant to preach the good work of drug courts, dealing with people&rsquo;s addiction as the root cause of crime, would kick in here. But the judge is right.</p><p> He refused to reduce the bond, essentially ensuring the young woman will stay in jail. The out-of-state treatment she&rsquo;s midway through is over, for now.</p><p> She began the treatment two months after the death of 70-year-old Sandra Carocari, who went outside to putter in her Overland Park yard that July morning. </p><p> Jill Conaghan was allegedly found by police with alcohol (remember, she&rsquo;s a minor) three times in the weeks after Carocari&rsquo;s death. In one case, Conaghan was in the company of a convicted marijuana dealer. </p><p> One can hear the wise defense attorney advising the parents to usher their daughter into an out-of-state treatment facility. Perhaps it was a strategy to keep her out of jail longer?</p><p> But nothing is easy about this case. Which matters more: How long it takes to seek help or that they do?</p><p> Complicating judgment is the lag time between the incident and Conaghan&rsquo;s arrest only last week, after toxicology reports returned.</p><p> She initially fled the scene, likely horrified and apparently still under the influence. She later turned herself in to police, with her parents, no doubt heartsick, at her side.</p><p> Could it be that she was so distraught after the death that it fueled, rather than stopped, her addictions? A person would desire escape. And if drugs and alcohol had long been her mode of coping, it is counterintuitive to believe she would immediately change course.</p><p>Details are still sketchy. Not revealed yet is what kind of drugs she was on that day and their potency. Was she hazy on pot? Or was she high on the OxyContin or heroin that police are increasingly seeing among Johnson County&rsquo;s teens and young adults?</p><p> I can&rsquo;t feign a lack of bias. I envision my mother in the descriptions of Carocari: married 50 years to the same man, mother of three who enjoyed tending her roses, always friendly to neighbors.</p><p> Still, 19 is far too young to have your life&rsquo;s path determined &mdash; by drugs, alcohol or prison. I do wish her sobriety, but all in good time.