This guy Mark Spangler had seven DUI convictions including an accident that caused injuries, and did a stint in jail. Since his release on parole in 2005, his record shows seven parole violations, 4 of them including alcohol and one of THEM including operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
At some point, the State of Wisconsin began procedures to revoke his parole, but they stopped for reasons still undetermined.
Last Sunday he, allegedly, crossed over the centerline and creashed head on into a family of 5 in a minivan. Fortunately all are recovering, though at first the father was not expected to survive.
I don’t know if it would be more satisfying to bash the drunk against a wall, or whoever runs the parole system that allows somebody like this out on the street.
We had a similar situation here in California but it was much worse. A drunk driver hit a minivan killing six people. Three generations of the same family a man and a woman their son and daughter in law and their two grand children. I think it happened a couple of weeks ago.
DUI is a tough situaion. How do you seperate the people who may be slightly over the limit but not drunk from the problem drinkers who are inevitably oing to kill people? I mean it is one thing to go out to dinner and have a few glases of wine that puts you at .08% BAC. Can you really say that one person with .08% is really more dangerous than the person with .07% yet one gets a DUI and the other does not.
Here the courts are punishing people according to BAC. The person with .20% gets a more severe sentence than the person with .08%. The sentences are quite severe. A person with .08% bac convicted for a second DUI gets a mandatory 10 days in jail plus 4 years on probation with 180 days jail suspended. Car is impounded for 30 days. Losses license for two years must attend DUI school for eighteen months, pay a $2500.00 fine and must install an ignition interlock device (driver must blow into device, if alcohol detected car will not start) in vehicle when lisence is reinstated. If anyone is even slightly injured (yes, sore neck counts as an injury)then it is a felony punishible with 2, 3 or 4 years in prison if someone is more than slightly injured there is a 5 year prison enhancement on top of whatever sentence you get for the DUI. If someone dies you can be charged with murder not manslaughter and face life in prson. You really think thats not a severe enough punishment.
We can either outlaw it all together or accept that sometimes shitty things are going to happen.
When a guy’s up to hios third or fourth conviction, isn’t it sort of obvious how you separate them?
An honest mistake you make once and, if you’re not an idiot or a problem drinker, you don’t do it again.
Twice, maybe.
Three times? Off to prison you go for a long, long time. The person cited in the OP had SEVEN, at which point he frankly should have been declared a dangerous offender and imprisoned for life. He’s a menace, and it’s not right to allow such people to threaten others.
The problem here isn’t the severity of the punishment for FIRST TIME offenders, which should not be so severe as to destroy a person’s life. It’s that after four or five convictions it’s quite obvious a person cannot be trusted to be allowed to walk free.
I agree with this entirely. The punishment should go up dramatically at the third offense. It’s not the people tootling home after a Christmas party that are the problem; it’s the people repeatedly driving while they are totally wasted. Those people need to be removed from society until they get a clue.
Go ahead and bash the state, but remember that the state are really the people in a democracy.
If you sincerely want to prevent alcohol related mayhem on the streets, you have no choice but to want prohibition. Over the past 20 years I’ve seen a major war against drinking and driving compared to previously, yet I’ve seen no evidence of positive results. Too many of us want the right to imbibe. Too many of us can’t handle it.
Everytime someone puts forth a proposal for a drinking establishment in a municipality, they have to provide for parking spaces. Think about that.
Those Christmas partiers can kill people just as dead as Al the Alcoholic. Arguably they are taking a bigger risk, because they’re driving during times when more people are on the road. Granted, cases that involve serious injuries will likely be charged with other offenses as well, but the danger to society is the same from a first time offender as it is from a frequent flyer. The enhanced penalties for repeated offenses are mostly for stupidity.
Here, as I’m sure is the case in most states, there is too little prison space and way too many drunk drivers. The prisons are full of serious criminals and the court kicks the drunk drivers after a fine and possibly a license revocation. This doesn’t prevent anyone from driving, of course, and we’ve had our share of unlicensed repeat offenders killing someone. I think the latest one had six convictions, had eluded the cops chasing him, continued at high speed anyway, ran the light and killed a father of two. If there is no place to put the convicted 3-time DUI who has yet to kill someone, what is the solution? Prisons cost money and they fill up quickly.
If I had to make the call, I’d let loose the drug dealers with no violence in their history. And probably some hookers, and others if I can think of them guily of non-violent consensual crimes.
Not at all. Repeating the same offense deserves enhanced punishment. I was just nitpicking Frank’s point about Christmas party drunks versus repeat offenders.
Well the way I have seen some jurisdictions handle it (effectively I may add) is to revoke liquor licenses if anyone leaves your bar and drives drunk (this is amazingly effective, I have seen bouncers giving drunks sobriety tests and forcing patrons to take cabs or call car driving services), they also confiscate cars for driving drunk and they subsidize driving services (these guys show up at the bar on a portable scooter and they drive your car home for you then leave on the scooter (if you live far away, they have a friend follow them and drive them back to the city), it costs about twice what a cab ride would cost (even with the subsidy) but it takes care of one of the primary reason people drive drunk.
The best proposal I’ve heard yet is an encoded photo ID card that gets swiped at a bar or liquor store. On the bar code is something that tells the cashier “yep” or “nope”. No card, no service. Went nowhere, of course, as the populace would rather just tut-tut and shake their heads at the injustice than allow the dam’ gubmint to interfere in their lives.
The difference between the “one time special late night party” drunk driver and the habitual offender isn’t what happens when they hit another driver. In both instances, they can pretty well kill an innocent just as dead.
The difference is that the habitual offender, by definition, habitually offends. There’s a much greater liklihood that he’ll hit or kill someone because he’s always out driving drunk. The times the police catch him are but a mere fraction of the times he’s actually done it.
Well, it certainly is true that prisons cost money and fill up quickly, but I’ve not heard anyone (anyone that I can take seriously) suggest *not * imprisoning additional violent offenders for this reason. What usually happens is the state finds room for these prisoners (or it doesn’t, but stuffs them into every nook and cranny possible), or new prisons are built.
And, like Boyo Jim, if it’s room you need, I’d release the non-violent drug dealers and those, like sex workers, who’ve committed consensual so-called crimes. Actually, if I had my way, non-violent drug dealers* and sex workers* wouldn’t be in prison to begin with.
*The only thing about non-violent drug dealers and some sex workers that worries me is that their respective lines of business can indeed become violent (and many times does, but not because of the nature of the business itself)–oh, when will common sense deliver us unto legalization?–but still, releasing them might be worth it in order to make sure we have room for prisoners who do have a proven history of violence. And yeah, while “x” number of DUI offenders don’t have proven histories of violence, either, it is more likely, in my neighborhood, anyway, that I’d be run over and possibly killed by a DUI offender than it is that I would be the victim of drug- or sex worker-related violence (either as a by-stander or as a buyer/seller).
I would think, however, that a habitual drinker would be a little more skilled at driving while drunk while the Christmas boozer is a novice. On the other hand, the Christmas boozer is likely to be just a little tipsy where the habitual drinker is likely to be pretty drunk.
Back when I was a drunk, we used that as our justification. It wasn’t necessarily true, though.
A 22 year old guy just killed my cousin’s girlfriend in San Diego, CA. He had 4 previous DUIs, may have never possessed a valid driver’s license, and was an illegal alien who had been deported, but came back over the border and killed Amy. The first two DUIs got him 12 days, probation and fines, the third got him a year in jail, not sure about the fourth.
This incident could get him 50 years- murder, felony hit and run, felony drunk driving…
Here’s a link to one of the stories about Amy and her killer. And another. There is some devastating video as well.
What do I think? Lock him up for good- he’s proven himself unwilling or unable to abide by reasonable rules.
Well, I guess for a third time offender, the state could put them in jail and auction their car, take away their driver’s license permanently, make them wear a cuff when they get out and attend Alcohol Recovery classes and fine the shit out of them.
But when they kill someone illegally driving someone else’s car while drunk, well what can the state really do about that? It’s like telling a pyromaniac they are not allowed to play with matches anymore and then letting them go. Ultimately, there’s no way to prevent them from repeating the behavior.
Maybe it is best to make drunk driving a sort of “murder 4” offense - knowingly and recklessly committing an act that could lead to the deaths of others.