Drunk Driving

By Rod Dreher • June 11, 2012, 5:53 AM

Seven members of a local family, dead because of a drunk driver:

Before being booked in the fatal wreck, Gerald was arrested at least three times for drunken driving in Assumption, East Feliciana and Livingston parishes.

Lynn McCain, of St. Gabriel, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that she and her husband were driving in front of the Gaines’ vehicle.

McCain, 56, said she and her husband were driving home after visiting with her ill mother-in-law in Clinton.

Gerald was driving in the wrong lane and almost crashed head-on into McCain’s SUV, she said.

McCain said she swerved to the right to avoid being hit by Gerald then Gerald smashed into the Gaines family’s car.

McCain, who said she and her husband heard what sounded like an explosion just after the miss, said the Gaines family had no time to avoid the crash.

McCain said her first instinct was to get out of her car and run over to the Gaines car to help. She ran over, but it was too late.

“The car was crushed and mangled,” McCain said. “I saw children inside. There were no cries, no moans and no one asking for help. There was nothing. No sound, just dead silence.”

Three times this SOB was arrested for drunk driving! Three times. Yet he was still on the road. And now an entire family is dead, except for the father, who wasn’t in the car, and now has to figure out how to get on with his life.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Louisiana. Tagged drunk, drunk driving, DUI, DWI.

27 Responses to Drunk Driving

Public Defender says:

June 11, 2012 at 7:09 am

“Arrested” three times? Not “convicted” three times? There’s a story there. Maybe he wasn’t really drunk. Or, more likely, maybe the local police or prosecutors were just sloppy.

Too many cops treat drunk driving tests cavalierly. They don’t administer them in a way that’s scientifically valid. They use machines that weren’t scientifically calibrated. And the makers of those machines often treat critical data about reliability as “trade secrets.” Often, judges let them get away with that, but when they are properly challenged, these sloppy cops look like bumbling fools in court.

One step towards making sure guilty drunk drivers get properly punished is to start taking the testing process seriously. Part of that is for police departments to accept the reality of recent US Supreme Court Confrontation Clause decisions that make it much harder for prosecutors to rely on out-of-court statements, like affidavits describing calibration and equipment testing. The Right to Confrontation also makes it harder for Prosecutor to treat the machines as unquestionable black boxes. That means the manufacturers’ claims of “trade secrets” can hamper prosecutions. But instead of dealing with reality, both prosectuors and law enforcement have been hoping that the 5-4 decisions will flip. (Justice Scalia has been the intellectual force supporting the enforcement of the Confrontation Clause.)

Law enforcement’s lack of professionalism in drunk driving cases ensnares innocent people and helps the guilty avoid punishment. The difference between a drunk driving conviction and acquittal is often getting a lawyer who knows which mistakes cops routinely make.
Art Deco says:

June 11, 2012 at 7:12 am

Three times this SOB was arrested for drunk driving! Three times. Yet he was still on the road.

It is worse. He had three priors and he was just 30 years old. The people who complain about ‘mass incarceration’ do not realize just who is still out there walking the streets.

And now an entire family is dead, except for the father, who wasn’t in the car, and now has to figure out how to get on with his life.

In the interests of precision: there are multiple fathers bereaved. The man’s mother-in-law, his wife, another adult woman, his stepson, his two children, and another child who might be a daughter or a stepdaughter were in the car.

You had seven people piled into a common-and-garden four-door sedan hit head on by a pickup truck. Just a perfect storm.
Rod Dreher says:

June 11, 2012 at 8:10 am

“Arrested” three times? Not “convicted” three times? There’s a story there. Maybe he wasn’t really drunk. Or, more likely, maybe the local police or prosecutors were just sloppy.

A good and important point. I know of a guy who had four DWIs, and is still on the streets. That is not supposed to happen. It happened. I don’t know him well enough to ask how that happened, and don’t really want to know.
Connie says:

June 11, 2012 at 9:25 am

This is such a problem in Wisconsin, where the culture says that it’s ok to drive while intoxicated. Weekly, there are articles about a driver receiving his (it’s usually a man) 6th, 7th, or 12th DUI stop.

We need to treat the first one more seriously than a traffic ticket. But because of the bar and restaurant lobby, the legislature has been reluctant to change the categorization of DUI. And family members need to step up, get involved, and say, “You are NOT driving.”
Floridan says:

June 11, 2012 at 9:39 am

Drunk driving is a tough problem to solve.

Some would say that the penalties should be more draconian, but that often leads to a willingness for prosecutors and judges to allow those arrested for DUI to plead down to a charge such as reckless driving. Why? Because many feel the penalties are too harsh and have such extra-legal consequences (loss of job, for instance) that some other penalty may more justly fit the crime. Thisis almost aways the case when the driver is young, barely over the legal limit and has not caused a traffic accident. It also helps if the parents show up in court and the accused is represented by counsel.

Generally, DUI recidivism is treated more harshly, but too often taking away a person’s drivers license has minimal effect — someone who drinks and drives after a DUI conviction is not going to let a suspended license stop him or her. Putting them in jail will work while they are locked up, but unless we hand out life sentences for DUIs, that person will have to be let loose at some point.

I’m afraid that if we really want to reduce the incidents of drunk driving, the answer will come not from the legal system, but from some sort of social intervention.
nathan says:

June 11, 2012 at 9:57 am

“Conservatives” and people in general make a huge deal about the “illegal” drugs that we are at war against (a war we are losing at the cost of our civil liberties and untold numbers of dead in places like Mexico) and yet we are all too casual about the legal drug, alcohol which according to a recent story is routinely responsible for nearly 40 percent of highway deaths on major holidays. What for example is going to happen to the football player who was three times over the legal limit doing 30 miles an hour over the limit? Probably very little.

What should happen to him AT A MINIMUM since this is his second offense is lose his license for at least a year, better yet two and if he gets caught driving without it? Mandatory jail. And with no apologies those who drink, drive, cross the center line and someone gets sent to the hospital (or worse) because of them? They should NEVER get out of jail.

And can we collectively quit being hypocrits here? Legalize all drugs and punish the misuse of them, not the use. It is nonsense to advertise a drug on TV that is responsible for highway deaths around 8-10,000 a year and then conduct this horrible, impossible to win war against other drugs which are argubly no worse.
BradleyP says:

June 11, 2012 at 10:14 am

I would be in favor of addressing one’s first DWI with a class A misdemeanor and lots of community service while wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with a scarlet D. A second offense equals loss of license for years, if not indefinitely, and jail time. We hear these stories far too often.
Art Deco says:

June 11, 2012 at 10:43 am

I’m afraid that if we really want to reduce the incidents of drunk driving, the answer will come not from the legal system, but from some sort of social intervention.

And how long have you been employed as a social worker?
Matt says:

June 11, 2012 at 10:53 am

Generally, DUI recidivism is treated more harshly, but too often taking away a person’s drivers license has minimal effect — someone who drinks and drives after a DUI conviction is not going to let a suspended license stop him or her.

So take away their car too.
Floridan says:

June 11, 2012 at 11:14 am

Art Deco: “And how long have you been employed as a social worker?”

I’m not, but I applaud your thoughtfull analysis of the issue.

Matt: “So take away their car too.”

I believe that in some Scandanavian countries a person who is convicted of DUI has his drivers licesne and auto tag confiscated. Of course the problem comes when the subject is not driving his own vehicle.
Public Defendet says:

June 11, 2012 at 12:19 pm

Recidivism isn’t a problem here. He apparently has zero convictions. Only arrests. I speculated as to why in an earlier comment. But we do need to consider the possibility that the reason he has no convictions is that he was not guilty.
Franklin Evans says:

June 11, 2012 at 12:28 pm

With due respect to prior usages above (not aiming personal barbs here)…

There’s nothing draconian about the notion that a drunk driver who injures or kills others should be tried for a felony. There’s nothing draconian about contradicting the “give him another chance, he has a job!” nonsense when the driver makes a choice to drive knowing full well it’s illegal. And while I try very hard to give our judicial professionals the benefit of the doubt, those who infuse personal judgments like “that’s too harsh” need to be taken to the scene of such crashes and, if necessary, have their faces rubbed in the blood and gore.

A DUI stop where no crash has happened must have enforcement and punishment limits. I don’t like saying that, but the principles of our criminal justice system demand it, and we must take the good with the bad. However, a driver with prior citations that were not contested, and especially a driver with prior convictions should go right to felony charges. That many chances were too many when it’s someone’s life on the line.

Hurt or kill someone, pay the price. You can cry me a river and it will never be enough.
Matt says:

June 11, 2012 at 12:41 pm

There are two situations, one where a drunk driver is driving a borrowed car for their first offense, and another where the drunk driver borrows another person’s car because theirs was seized. The first situation I’m not sure you can do anything about, but the second could be handled by taking away the lender’s license and car in such an event.

Another good reform would be to treat drunken driving that ends in an accident as a premeditated offense. If you kill someone while drunk, you’re now up for first degree murder. Even if it is pleaded down to second it would be quite a deterrent.
Peterk says:

June 11, 2012 at 1:37 pm

and the sad part is the MADD stopped focusing their efforts on these type of drivers and instead starting targeting the occasional drinker, putting in place a campaign of prohibition
Geoff Guth says:

June 11, 2012 at 3:48 pm

I guess I kind of have to echo the sentiments of Floridan here. What should we do about DUI? Incarceration won’t work unless you lock them up for life (which increasingly, we’re not prepared to pay for); the root cause of the problem, alcoholism, isn’t addressed by prison, not without extensive and expensive intervention.

Take away the keys and you’re left with, in many if not most cases, someone who’s incapable of earning a living and carrying out basic day-to-day tasks. That’s especially true in suburban and rural areas.

So what do you do?
No Name (for this post) says:

June 11, 2012 at 5:09 pm

My ex-husband drank and drove regularly. Since I never knew where he was going, and that because he was always gone before I returned home from work (that, or at home and passed out), I couldn’t call the cops on him. I was terrified that he’d hurt or kill someone. (It got to the point where I didn’t care if he hurt or killed himself, awful as that sounds.)

Eventually he did get into an accident, involving only himself, thankfully. He totaled the car, banged up himself badly enough to be hospitalized, and got a DUI, .18 blood alcohol content, over twice the legal limit here.

He walked, thanks to a loophole. The BAC report was signed by someone with a title other than the title that would make the signature legal. And, he continued to drink and drive. Three failed marriages, failed relationships with his kids (alcohol played a part in all), a bad accident, and the SOB still drank and drove, last I knew.

I have no pity for folks like him. None. They’re a danger to society that best be kept locked up for life. Not a perfect solution in terms of overcrowding and such, but short of the death penalty (which I no longer support, but that’s another story), there really is no way to keep these people off the streets permanently.
Monterey says:

June 11, 2012 at 5:39 pm

This kind of story is *so* angrifying.
JonF says:

June 11, 2012 at 6:34 pm

Countries with draconian DUI laws have something that enables those laws to work: good (or at least viable) public transportation. If you stop someone from driving they have to have an alternate means of getting around– and outside a few major cities the US does not have that. So courts are forced by simple common sense* to allow limited driving rights for the DUI-convicted.
Also, being able to get home by metro or express bus allows people who go out and party to get home safely without getting behind the wheel of a car.

Also, “locking people up for life” sounds good, but it’s hugely expensive– which punishes the taxpayers who are guiltless. Resources as always are scarce and we need to practice sensible triage in all matters of public spending.
Finally (and people will not like to hear this) at the end of the day life is dangerous, and we will never make it perfectly safe. Any time you get behind the wheel of a car, on the seat of a motorcycle or bicycle, or even just cross a street on footy, you are risking your life. Look ahead to see what’s coming down the pike.

* It’s asinine in the first order to sentence a person with fines, DUI classes etc,. but leave them no means of getting to work, to the DUI classes etc. It would be the equivalent of the catch-22 of debtor’s prison and the law ought not be such an ass, even in a good cause.
alcogito says:

June 11, 2012 at 7:35 pm

Sometimes it works. When he was young and foolish my son would drink too much with friends and drive. He nearly killed himself in a one-car accident and lost his license. He walked, rode a bike or hitched for a long time, went to AA and never drank again. It’s been at least 20 years.
Public Defender says:

June 11, 2012 at 7:37 pm

No Name,
That “loophole” was probably one of the many checks th system uses to make sure that cops did what they were supposed to.. When the government uses science to take away someone’s liberty, it’s not too much to ask that they get the scince right. The cops don’t have to be PhD caliber scientists. They just have to be honest and competent lab techs. Unfortunately, not all of them are.

Other rules serve as shields against dishonest or mistaken cops. As I remember it, the New Orleans police department has a justifiably bad reputation for corruption. I don’t know about the Baton Rouge cops, but all police departments (like any large organization) have some bad eggs. Making sure that cops attest to only what they have seen and heard is one way we try to minimize the damage of bad (or simply mistaken) cops.

And yes, that means that sometimes guilty people go free. The solution is not to take shortcuts to avoid “loopholes.” The solution is for cops and prosecutors to do their jobs honestly and competently.

On the other side, when an honest and competent cop nails my client, there’s not much I can do. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Andrea says:

June 11, 2012 at 9:23 pm

My paternal grandmother was hit by a drunk driver two months before I was born and was in the hospital for a year afterwards, relearning how to walk. She was crippled for the remainder of her life. The drunk driver had multiple priors and walked away from the accident without a scratch. I don’t have much sympathy for drunks who get behind the wheel. One of many reasons I don’t drink. They ought to put devices on these guys’ cars that prevent the car from starting if there’s any alcohol on their breath.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

June 11, 2012 at 10:26 pm

This is one reason we need a convenient, comfortable, accessible, public transit system, everywhere. Right now, our lives and communities are constructed in a way that it is almost impossible to get around without a car. But a good 25% of the people behind the wheel have no business driving. Technically it is a “privilege,” but in practice it is a necessity, and culturally it is considered a “right.” If we expect people who shouldn’t be driving to actually stop, we must have some reasonable way for them to get around.

THEN, those who insist on driving drunk should be interned in very specific institutions, where they have a reasonably clean if spartan apartment, access to a van to take them to work, and can pay rent to defray the cost of keeping them there. Those who break this rather modest security can be put in medium security prisons instead.

What’s it worth to save a few lives?
nathan says:

June 12, 2012 at 8:24 am

What percentage of our prison population is composed of drug USERS? 25 or more? Legalize drugs especially marijuana, get a lot of these people out of jail, take a different approach to other crimes so that we do more community service and less jail perhaps for non violent offenses, and then we would have the resources to lock up alcohol abusers longer. Because the simple fact is we do need to get alcohol and other drug “abusers” off out of circulation as opposed to mere “users”.
Franklin Evans says:

June 12, 2012 at 9:11 am

Many of you are doing something which I am sure is unintended: justifying serious injury and death because society/government/courts don’t provide “reasonable alternatives” when a person is tried and convicted of DUI.

JonF writes: It’s asinine in the first order to sentence a person with fines, DUI classes etc,. but leave them no means of getting to work…

That’s the example the sticks out on my reading. I do have rational sympathy for the POV, I really do. But in the end, the damage caused by drunk drivers far outweighs the current punishments for a DUI conviction, and citing the self-damage the drunk has done because he can’t get to work (or the AA meeting) — and with due respect — sounds like simple, lazy thinking. Why are you so worried about the perpetrator and not about his next potential victims? Why isn’t one conviction enough to get him off the road? That, my friends, is the part of the POV I don’t get.
Bill Logan says:

June 12, 2012 at 2:19 pm

When someone is convicted of DUI, the civil penalties seem to be focused on depriving them of their car. But since many people really do need their cars, that seems to be a bit harsh. Why not deprive a person convicted of DUI of the alcohol instead? We could have measures such as:

1) Convicted DUI driver prohibited from purchasing alcoholic beverages (would require some sort of “DUI” indicator on state ID and also mandatory carding of everyone purchasing alcohol)

2) Seller of alcoholic beverages prohibited from selling to someone convicted of DUI (same requirements as above)

3) Convicted DUI driver prohibited from possessing, using, or being under the influence of alcohol at any time (i.e. not just when they’re driving)

Make the terms of these penalties longer with each conviction. For the first conviction, you could have a 3 year term. For the second conviction, you could have a 7 year term. For the third conviction, you could have a 15 year term.
JonF says:

June 12, 2012 at 6:34 pm

Franklin,
Cases where a drunk driver causes serious injury or death are usually punished severely. In those instances (barring unusual circumstances) where this is not the case, then, yes, that’s a miscarriage of justice.

But are you talking about cases of DUI where there’s no injury or death, or even an accident? “No harm no foul”? Well no. But we don’t punish people who flout gun safety laws as severely as if they were already first degree murderers, do we? We don’t punish sexual harassers as if they were rapists. Is there any crime for which such a principle (“Punish them as if they had done the worst thing possible”) would hold true? I don’t think so.

Moreover the majority of serious DUI accidents are due to a small coterie of hard core drunks, not the person who occasionally has one too many at a wedding, baby shower or Friday night on the town. Those are the people the law needs to focus on. Public resources are, as always, finite and need to be used wisely. The MADD approach of defining DUI down and casting the widest possible net is not an effective way to address the problem– just as banning all guns is a poor response to our murder rate.

And maybe half of all fatal accidents involve alcohol (and there’s some weaseling in that stat, but never mind for now). What about the other half? As someone else said there’s a lot of people driving who shouldn’t be.

As long as we are dependent on cars with (in most places) no viable alternative this will be a problem.
Franklin Evans says:

June 12, 2012 at 9:30 pm

JonF: A fair reply, well taken.

As with many laws, especially criminal statutes, there are shadings and degrees. My point was not well made concerning that aspect, and you may be very sure that I do not advocate anticipatory or “preventative” measures under the law. We have a local controversy about that right now, on the section of US 1 in Philadelphia called the Roosevelt Blvd. It is annually rated as one of the most dangerous roads in the nation, especially to pedestrians. They installed red-light cameras on a time-limited budget, and it’s up for renewal. There are legal arguments from many angles obfuscating the entire thing. The thing that seems to get overlooked is that injuries and fatalities did decline over the last two years along that road.

We do live in a dangerous world. We (used to) live in a open and free society, where crime was something investigated and prosecuted only in hindsight. That is changing, and I for one consider any such change for the worse. In the meantime, we have criminal statutes on the books right now that at least my implication are not being enforced via the legal loophole of pleading to a lesser offense.

I am rarely an absolutist. When it comes to criminal negligence that leads to injury and death, I offer not one bit of sympathy to the perpetrators. I’d actually rather see them go bankrupt than get away with ruining the lives of others, and if their ruination causes at least one potential perpetrator to change his behavior in the future, I consider it a worthy investment. People when sober are not ignorant of DUI laws. That their judgment becomes impaired after drinking, and that they make decisions while impaired that lead to crimes, should not be in the slightest a mitigating factor should they be credibly accused of criminal DUI. If anything, they should be on the road to a homicide conviction (suitably adjusted for degree depending on other circumstances).

There is an analogy I wish to propose. If a person brandishes a gun at you, in a manner that suggests to any reasonable person that the gun is about to be fired at you, that is a threat of death. That the safety is on, that the gun is not loaded, these and other details are irrelevant in the moment. All you know is that you could die in the next few seconds.

If the driver of a vehicle weaves in and out of traffic, follows close to the vehicles in his way at highway speeds, and you see that driver in your rear-view mirror after witnessing his driving behavior, and knowing how slim your chances are of surviving your car being hit or going out of control at that speed, I submit that any reasonable person will view that as a threat of death. That current road conditions are good, that the road around that next curve is clear and not a line of stopped vehicles, these and other details are irrelevant in the moment. All you know is that you could die in the next few seconds.

For me, a vehicle is a loaded gun, and if it’s brandished as if about to be fired, then I see no reason to stay calm and give the driver a second chance because he needs his car to get to work.

Like I said, I’m rarely an absolutist. I think that’s because I more than use up my quota on driving behaviors. My weekly commute is nearly 300 miles. Shrug.