By guest-writer
This week, a Florida police officer pleaded not guilty to charges of vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter after being convicted in the wake of an accident that killed a young mother.
According to the Miami Herald, 24-year-old Peter Munoz did not appear in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court for his arraignment. Rather, his DUI attorney entered a plea of not guilty for him, which is allowed under Florida law.
Sources indicate that Munoz, who had been a police officer in Coral Springs for five months before the accident, was speeding through an intersection late one night this July when he struck the car of Jennifer Gutierrez, a paralegal who was traveling home from her boyfriend’s house.
The Miami Herald reports that Munoz’s Volkswagen struck the driver’s side of Gutierrez’s BMW with such force that the victim was impaled into the driver’s side door. When paramedics arrived on the scene, they had to cut the car into several pieces in order to remove Gutierrez.
Toxicology reports taken after the accident showed that Gutierrez had not been drinking, but Munoz did not perform as well on his blood alcohol test.
A police affidavit taken shortly after the accident shows that Munoz had a blood alcohol content of .229 one hour after the crash, which is almost three times more than the legal limit of .008.
Police reports from that night also indicate that Munoz did not attempt to take any evasive action to miss the BMW; instead, he simply plowed right through it.
After the accident, Munoz was taken to a local hospital, and later released home before being arrested a few weeks later on charges of DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide.
Understandably, the family of the victim was upset that Munoz was not immediately taken into custody, and has alleged that Munoz received special treatment from his colleagues in the Coral Springs police force.
The Coral Springs police department, however, promptly fired Munoz when he was arrested in late September. The official termination notice, though, does not explicitly mention the car crash.
Munoz likely faces a lengthy court battle, particularly in light of his not guilty plea. Sources indicate that the arrestee’s attorney believe that the victim may have been on her cell phone at the time of the accident, which may have caused her to drive recklessly.
In her defense, Gutierrez’s family claims these allegations are untrue, and that Munoz is solely responsible for the accident.
In the meantime, the family of Jennifer Gutierrez will mourn the loss of a promising young woman, who was apparently studying for her final exams at a local college on the night of the accident.
Gutierrez is survived by her 4-year-old daughter, who was not in her car at the time of the accident.
By guest-writer
Because of the blinding influence of alcohol, drunk drivers attempting to elude the police often think they’re police-evading tactics are more clever than they actually are.
Common tactics include driving too slow or too fast, masking swerving by simply swerving really slow, or blaming red eyes and slow reflexes on a lack of sleep, or prescription pills.
The most infamous DUI offenders, though, are the people who cause car accidents, and then flee the scene out of fear of being caught driving under the influence of alcohol.
A man in Louisville recently learned just how difficult escaping the scene of a DUI accident can be.
According to WDRB News, which is based in Louisville, Kentucky, 37-year-old Jesse Gaines was arrested last week after police tracked his car by following the path of leaky fluids from Gaines’ wounded vehicle.
Before his arrest, Gaines had allegedly been involved in a three-car accident in downtown Louisville. The police report from the accident indicates that Gaines swerved into oncoming traffic and struck two cars before speeding back into the road and then striking a pole.
After the accident, Gaines fled the scene, which led to phone calls to Louisville about a drunk driver on the loose.
Officers did not have a hard time locating Gaines, as they simply followed the path of a leaking fluid that had started dripping from Gaines’ car at the scene of the accident.
When Gaines was finally arrested by the police, he admitted that he had just left a strip club where he had consumed two “large liquor drinks.”
The police report also claims that Gaines smelled of alcohol, had red eyes, and was unable to stand without falling down. When the police administered a breathalyzer test, Gaines blew a remarkable .26, which is far above the legal limit of .08.
After his less-than-sterling performance on the blood alcohol test, Gaines was promptly arrested and charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol.
To add insult to injury, Gaines was also charged with a failure to maintain insurance. This, of course, will be disappointing news to the other drivers whose cars were struck by Gaines during his ill-fated drive.
While Gaines faces a world of legal trouble, it’s worth noting that DUI arrests can be serious crimes even in the absence of an actual accident.
A DUI arrest often leads to jail time, a suspended license, and hefty fines. Because of the potentially severe impact of DUI charges, many people who are arrested seek legal information from a local DUI lawyer.
Courts take DUI arrests very seriously, but with the proper legal information, people who are arrested are able to deal with the charges with minimal damages to their finances and their reputation.
By guest-writer
When drinking and driving converge, the results can be disastrous. And, while they are difficult to predict, drunk driving accidents often seem to claim the lives of tragically young victims.
This harsh reality happened once again after a recent fatal car accident in Northfield, Vermont, that was allegedly caused by drunk driving.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, 18-year-old Renee Robbins died after a car containing eight Norwich University students crashed in a single car accident.
The car was being driven by 22-year-old Derek Saber, who was arrested by local police under suspicion of a DUI shortly after the accident.
In addition to Robbins’ death, three other people in the car suffered “critical” injuries during the accident. Four other students required hospitalization after the crash.
Before the accident, the eight occupants of the car had been at an off-campus party early Sunday morning. The passengers were all freshmen students at Norwich, and they lived in the same dormitory on campus.
The incident had a severe impact on the campus’s collective psyche, and many members of the campus community are grappling for answers.
According to Norwich President Richard Schneider, the incident was “an unfathomable tragedy,” and “the entire Norwich family is grieving over this.”
While the families of the accident victims face their own pains, the driver of the car and the leader of the party the students left before the accident are facing legal troubles of their own.
The driver, Derek Saber, allegedly had a blood alcohol level of .16, which doubled the legal limit of .08. He was arrested and held on $100,000 bail in a county jail in Vermont.
In addition to Saber’s legal troubles, 20-year-old Logan O’Neill, who hosted the party, was charged with various counts including possession of alcohol, enabling consumption of alcohol with a minor, and violating the terms of his release, stemming from a prior DUI charge of his own.
At the time of the party, O’Neill was under strict orders to avoid consuming alcohol due to the conditions established by a court after his second drunk driving arrest earlier this year.
Drunk driving accidents are one of the most common causes of teenage deaths in the United States. This statistic is particularly troubling in light of the fact that drunk driving accidents are completely preventable.
By Topher
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this one says it all. Two on-duty Miami police officers mug and smile for the camera while surrounded by five young women celebrating a bachelorette party July 2 at the Clevelander hotel.
Later the same night, one of the officers, Derick Kuilan, took the bachelorette for a joyride on a department-owned ATV, crashing into and seriously injuring two innocent beachgoers.
The picture was released Tuesday by Miami-Dade prosecutors as they charged Kuilan with two felony counts of reckless driving with serious bodily injury and two counts of DUI with serious bodily injury. The second officer, Rolando Gutierrez, does not face criminal charges.
“It is mind-boggling that they felt comfortable enough to do something like that,” Miami Beach Police Chief Carlos Noriega told the Miami Herald.
Both officers have been fired from the department since the time of the incident.
Details of what allegedly happened are outlined in a warrant prepared by prosecutor David I. Gilbert and Miami Beach detective Robert Silvagni:
Derick Kuilan was assigned to ATV patrol, midnight shift, on July 3 and Officer Rolando Gutierrez was assigned to patrol mid-Beach.
That night, the pair of officers walked into the Clevelander hotel bar, a known attraction for tourists, around 5 a.m.
A group of young women from Pennsylvania were celebrating a bachelorette party when the officers arrived. After posing for a picture with the group, Kuilan and Gutierrez began dancing and drinking.
Kuilan then invited the bachelorette, Adalee Martin, to take a ride with him on the ATV he had parked nearby, to which Martin agreed.
The two drove south along the beach at alternating speeds, turning the headlights on and off as they neared approaching pedestrians. When they arrived at the end of the beach and turned around, they drove back north with the vehicle’s lights turned off.
On the drive back, the ATV crashed into Kitzie Nicanor and Luis Almonte, who were on the beach dipping their feet in the water. Bystanders claimed that the ATV whizzed by and that “they could barely see it, because it had no lights on and it was traveling fast,” according to the warrant.
Almonte suffered a broken femur, requiring surgery, while Nicanor had to have her spleen removed and remains hospitalized in serious condition.
Kuilan surrendered to the Miami-Dade County Jail after being charged Tuesday and has already posted $30,000 bail. His arraignment is scheduled for Aug. 25.
By Topher
Perhaps the most important rule for people fighting DUI accusations is to be sober when making court appearances. A former sheriff’s deputy in Orange County, California, failed to heed this rule, and will face the consequences.
Allan James Waters, 38, had been facing a likely sentence of 16 months in prison for his conviction on several counts, including a felony DUI and charges that he had illegally tried to obtain prescription medicines.
Waters, however, appeared at his first sentencing hearing with slurred speech and an inability to keep his balance. Waters was then placed in police custody for several weeks after the judge said he was in no condition to be sentenced.
Several weeks later, the judge finally doubled his sentence to 32 months due to Waters’ previous behavior in the courtroom.
A term of Waters’ initial $100,000 bail was that he had to remain sober. After Waters appeared drunk at his initial hearing, the judge ordered him back into police custody and raised his bail to $250,000.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Waters had been involved in a messy accident and had a history of other felony violations.
In April, Waters pled guilty to felony driving under the influence causing bodily injury after an accident involving a serious injury to a 78 year-old woman.
Waters’ legal problems, though, extended beyond the DUI charge. He was also charged with two felony counts of selling a substance in lieu of cocaine and nine felony counts of fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance.
The DUI accident occurred in March 2010 when Waters crashed into the back of a car at a red light. Sources indicate that Waters spoke with other deputies for about 30 minutes after the accident and then promptly left the scene.
The officers’ decision to let Waters leave the scene of the first accident proved to be a mistake.
Later that same day, Waters was still driving under the influence when he swerved into oncoming traffic and struck a vehicle driven by an elderly woman. The impact was so severe that the woman needed back surgery after the accident.
Toxicology reports later revealed that Waters had been under the influence of the prescription drugs zolpidem and hydrocodone.
After the initial traffic collision, Waters’ behavior did not improve. He was cited for trading fake cocaine for prescription drugs and trying to illegally obtain drugs from doctors.
To no one’s surprise, Waters has been relieved of his duties as a sheriff’s deputy.
By guest-writer
An Illinois man, Cecil Conner, was found guilty of the drunk driving death of his girlfriend’s 5-year-old son.
The conviction came after Conner’s defense team attempted to shift some of the blame for the child’s death to a police officer. The jury decided, after hours of deliberation in the Will County courtroom, that Conner alone was responsible for the tragic outcome of the May 10 DUI crash.
Conner crashed into a tree, drove through a fence, and hit another tree in the accident that killed young Michael Langford, Jr., before being charged with drunk driving, according to an article in the Herald-News.
Part of Conner’s unsuccessful DUI defense was the claim that police had some part to play in his drunk driving and subsequent accident. He argued that police arrested his girlfriend, his designated driver, on a suspended license during a previous traffic stop, then ordered him to drive home. Conner claimed that they threatened to arrest him if he didn’t drive away.
Conner was drunk, and family members have criticized law enforcement for, according to their story, ignoring the fact that he was an impaired driver when they ordered him to drive home.
The prosecution in the case successfully argued that Conner alone was responsible for the decision to drive drunk and endanger the child.
Per Illinois DUI law, Conner could face up to 14 years behind bars. He’ll be sentenced in May.
Conner admitted to being drunk following a house party. His girlfriend, Kathie LaFond, was driving, but was arrested on the way home. Conner took the wheel, and police said that neither Conner nor LaFond informed the police that he had been drinking that night. Prosecution were also skeptical that police ordered Conner to drive home.
Conner, however, continued to drive drunk, even after he called a friend for help. The friend told him to stop the car, but Conner drove on, reaching 66 miles per hour at points, before he drove over several lawns, through trees, catapulting his car to the point that it uprooted a tree.
Young Langford did not survive the poor decision.
The jury deliberated for nine hours before reaching its guilty verdict on two aggravated drunk driving charges.
By guest-writer
Mitchell Green, of Kern County, California, near Bakersfield, served in the army for six years in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and he was a firefighter on the local force. He didn’t have a criminal record to speak of, and his friends called him a model citizen.
Before the night of February 2, 2010 , that is. On that night, Green drove drunk, and he got into a car accident. He collided with a vehicle carrying Michelle Maxwell and her teenage daughter. Michelle Maxwell died, and Mitchell Green now faces nine years in prison for charges related to California DUI, according to the Bakersfield Californian.
Her husband, Jerry Maxwell, acknowledged that, no matter what the sentence was, their lives were forever changed by Green’s decision. Judge Charles H. Brehmer noted during the sentencing that Green didn’t mean to hurt anyone, much less cause their death.
Maxwell’s mother, Marceline Seberger, spoke in court about the loss that she had suffered, emphasizing that there was no way that Green could know the way that they felt. She did believe that Green was remorseful, however, following the trial, saying that she could see the emotion in Green’s eyes. The last thing she said to Green was, “May you make peace with God before you see him face to face.”
Maxwell’s daughters told the Californian that they forgave Green for his actions the night his DUI caused their mother’s death. But they acknowledged the continued pain they would face. “She will never be able to spoil my children or even meet them,” said Michaela Maxwell, who was in the car the night of the crash.
Jerry Maxwell felt less kindness in the hours following the crash. Green was in a hospital bed near his family, according to the Californian, and he acknowledged a desire to hurt Green after learning that his wife had died. But his wife’s memory stayed his hand. “I heard my wife’s voice saying, ‘It’s not worth it,’” he told the paper.
Green had plead no contest to the felony gross vehicular manslaughter charge in December. His pickup truck collided with the Hyundai Sonata occupied by the Maxwells. Green had run a red light, and he didn’t brake even as he hit the smaller car.
His blood alcohol content registered at .13, over the .08 legal limit across the country.
By guest-writer
Anthony Guarino, 57, of San Diego, California, will stand trial on felony charges of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, DUI and other charges, following a deadly crash that killed an area father.
According to an article from 10 News, Marc William Durham was killed in the crash of August 20, 2010. He was a father of five who was driving his family to the movies when they were rear-ended by Guarino’s BMW as they pulled up to a red light. Afterward, Guarino was charged with drunk driving in California.
Durham, a former security chief for General Dynamics, had retired just one week before he was killed in the accident. Other members of his family were in the car at the time of the DUI crash, though they escaped with injuries, saying that their father got the worst of it.
Guarino was allegedly drunk at the wheel of his BMW, and he will stand trial on the felony DUI charges after admitting to police that he had been drinking whiskey at a bar before he took to the roads that night.
The accident happened at about 9 p.m. The accident investigator in the case told the court that Guarino was traveling between 50 and 60 miles per hour in the BMW when it hit the Toyota Corolla owned by Durham.
When Guarino rear-ended the car, it started a chain reaction of collisions, and ultimately four other vehicles were involved, with additional injuries to passengers in those vehicles, including an 8-year-old boy.
Guarino told police that he had consumed around five Jack Daniels before he headed home from the bar. He admitted to police also that his driving was affected by how much alcohol he drank, but, according to the article, “he didn’t know how.”
Officers at the scene determined based on their judgment and observation that Guarino was intoxicated. When his blood alcohol content was measured several hours later, he registered a BAC of .15 percent, which is well over the .08 legal limit for driving while intoxicated. And it is likely, according to the claim of Deputy District Attorney Chandelle Konstanzer in court, that it was much higher at the time of the accident.
The defense for Guarino made the argument that his client was not guilty of gross negligence, and that a sleep apnea condition may have contributed to Guarino passing out while at the wheel.
The trial is set for early December, and Guarino is free on $100,000 bail, but he is not allowed to drink alcohol or drive.
By Topher
Michael Penachio was driving his Mercedes Benz over 100 miles per hour down the highway when he crashed into and killed a single mother and journalist, Danielle Baker in 2007.
Penachio was drunk driving down the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago, Illinois when the avoidable tragedy struck, according to the Chicago Tribune article.
Now Penachio will do his time: 5 years in prison. The DUI sentence comes after several years of plea negotiations that frustrated Baker’s family. Ultimately, however, Penachio pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in exchange for the five-year prison sentence. He could have been sentenced to up to 14 years in prison.
Penachio spoke to the court and to Baker’s family. “Mr. and Mrs. Baker, I’m so sorry for all the pain and sorrow I have brought to your lives. I’m sorry that it has taken this long for you to hear me say it.”
The agreement took so long because a new judge was selected in the case, and then the case was subject to numerous delays.
Penachio sought to get a sentence that didn’t include jail time, so that he could keep his job as a financial broker and maintain the health insurance that helped fund care for his son, who has cerebral palsy.
The father of the victim, Derrick Baker, said that he was glad that this chapter of the ordeal was over, and he accepted Penachio’s apology.
“It meant a lot to me, it really did,” he said. “As I said before, it would be a worse feeling to know that someone had no remorse for their actions, and it did do me a lot of good to hear it. I believe he was sincere. I wish him no harm, and I hope that he is able to move on with his life as well.”
Penachio set aside $54,000 as a part of settled civil suit, as part of a college fund for Danielle Baker’s daughter. She is four years old.
“This will never be over for my daughter,” Baker said. “She will never be back with me, but this part of it is over. I’m glad it’s over. I feel for his family as well, and I hope everybody is just able to heal from this and everyone just gets a chance to move on.”
By Topher
A San Ramon, California, man is suspected of drunk driving and hit-and-run after police arrested him in the wake of what CBS 5 is calling a “drunken driving rampage.” The man, Cainan Schierholtz, is the brother of a pro baseball player for the San Francisco Giants, Nate Schierholtz.
Cainan Schierholtz was arrested on a recent Sunday morning, after, according to police, he hit a bicyclist, a pedestrian, a light pole and two cars.
The call came it at about 10 in the morning, with reports that a car was driving recklessly on Danville Boulevard, in Danville, California.
Then came the report that the driver allegedly hit a cyclist riding in a bike lane on the same road. Schierholtz allegedly did not stop, though, continuing down the road. Soon after that he allegedly hit a pedestrian who was standing in the bike lane.
Again, he didn’t stop to offer assistance or acknowledge either of the accidents. Instead, he allegedly continued driving, then swerved into traffic and hit a pickup truck. Not done yet, police said that he kept on driving still, until he veered up onto the sidewalk and rammed into a light pole, which fell to the ground.
Even after all of that, Schierholtz still kept driving, according to police. He rear-ended a sport utility vehicle, and then drove down a dead-end street.
The driver of the pick-up truck who had been previously hit followed Schierholtz, and then used his truck to pin him into the dead-end street so that he couldn’t get away.
According to a witness, the suspect’s airbags had deployed, so that he was awkwardly pinned in the car. And yet, despite even that, he was still driving.
Eventually Schierholtz realized he couldn’t get past the makeshift blockade, and he stopped in front of the pickup truck. The truck’s driver and several other bystanders pulled the suspect out of his car and restrained him until the police got there.
Schierholtz was booked on suspicion of four counts of DUI causing bodily harm, three counts of hit-and-run causing injury, two counts of hit-and-run causing property damage, and driving without a license, according to CBS. He was held on $350,000 bail.
By Topher
When there is a chance to affirm justice, and to see that a criminal gets their due, it is often the victim of a crime who raises the loudest voice and brings safety and security concerns into the public sphere.
That is the case in Tennessee, as a woman who had to struggle to survive after being hit by a drunk driver is raising the alarm and attempting to keep the perpetrator of that DUI behind bars.
Eveylen Turner, of Clarksville, Tennessee, was in a coma for three weeks after Joseph Chimahosky crashed into her. Chimahosky was drunk when he hit Turner. He was found guilty of the crime, and he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.
He has so far served five months of that sentence as part of his DUI penalties, but is now facing a parole board that will determine if he stays inside the joint or heads back out into the world.
With the parole hearing offering a place for Turner to state her views and potentially impact his stay in prison, Turner vowed to Channel 4 News in Nashville that she would do whatever it would take to keep Chimahosky behind bars.
“I don’t think he has served his time,” said the victim of the man’s drunk driving crash. “I think that he will get out and do the same again. The next person might not be as lucky as me.”
This was not Chimahosky’s first conviction for drunk driving, either. He had two previous convictions for DUI before his third, in the crash that almost killed an innocent person.
Turner made sure to be at Chimajosky’s parole hearing recently, bringing along pictures, X-rays and her medical bills, which totaled more than $1 million, as she built her case against him.
According to Channel 4 News, her and her family pleaded with the hearings officer to keep Chimahosky in jail.
Assistant District Attorney Chris Dotson held a similar position. “I have no faith in him getting out of here,” he said, “and endangering everybody in the roadway in this county.”
Chimahosky has been in trouble even while in jail. There are reports of an incident on four occasions. He told the parole officers that “not a day goes by I don’t think about my actions. As much as I want to, I can’t change what happened that night or what bad decisions I made that night, but I can change the decisions I make in the future.”
The parole board’s decision should take 3 to 4 weeks.
By Topher
After an eight-day trial, an Illinois jury has convicted Sandra Vasquez of aggravated drunken driving and reckless homicide in the deaths of five teens.
On February 11, 2007, about 30 teens were found partying in a Suburban Chicago home. A parent broke up the party and sent the teens home. Vasquez’s younger sister was at the party, and when Vasquez arrived to pick her up, seven other teens asked Vasquez to drive them home. Vasquez agreed, and the teens literally piled into her small sedan.
According to the Chicago Tribune, two teenagers were sharing the front passenger seat, four other teens were jammed into the back seat, and two other teenagers were on top of those teenagers’ laps.
A few minutes later, as the car was driving 70 mph down the highway, Vasquez swerved and then veered into a light pole. The two teens in the front of the car, and the two laying on the laps of the teens in back died instantly. One of the other teens died eight days later from his injuries. Vasquez and the other three teens, including her sister, also suffered injuries.
Vasquez admitted that she may have had as many as four drinks, but said she was not drunk. Chicago Breaking News reports that expert testimony showed that her blood alcohol level could have been as high as 0.124, putting her well over the legal limit. However, her blood alcohol level could have been as low as 0.04, the defense argued, because her liver was damaged in the accident, making testing difficult.
Vasquez was arrested and charged with 10 counts of aggravated drunken driving leading to death, six counts of aggravated drunken driving causing serious bodily harm, and five counts of reckless homicide. She spent the three years between the accident and trial out on bail by posting her parents’ home as collateral. She has lived “like a saint” since the accident, according to the Beacon News, spending her time taking care of her children, four and eight years old, and adhering to the rules of her probation.
The jury finally delivered its verdict on the crash on Wednesday, June 30: Guilty on 21 counts. Some members of the jury were visibly crying, clearly upset by what they considered their civic duty, reported the Naperville Sun. Most of the families of the victims consider the guilty verdict to be justice, but feel sympathy for Vasquez.
Vasquez’s attorney points out, however, that a woman trying to do the right thing by clearly intoxicated teenagers is also a victim of this terrible situation, and plans to ask for probation based on extreme circumstances. The District Attorney has already said that he will not cooperate with this request.
Ms. Vasquez’s bail has already been revoked, though she was given the chance to call her two children before being sent to jail. She will be sentenced in August and could face a maximum sentence of up to twenty-eight years behind bars.
By Topher
A recent DUI case in San Diego was declared a mistrial after a single juror held off from deciding whether the defendant was behind the wheel when a car struck another vehicle and killed four people, according to 10 News.
Deanna Fridley was on trial in the case in which the four were killed in Pala Casino, California. Fridley claimed that she was not the driver of the car that got into the deadly December 14, 2007, accident, and one of the jurors in the case would not conclude that it was her, leading to the mistrial.
The jurors in the case informed the judge that they had reached an 11-1 deadlock. They had been apart for a holiday break, and on their return they announced that they could not come to a unanimous agreement on the charges.
Fridley was also accused of DUI causing injury and misdemeanor driving on a suspended license.
Judge Runston Maino, serving in the case, declined to enact a motion by the prosecution to replace the juror with an alternate juror. “You haven’t failed as jurors; you haven’t failed as individuals,” he told the jurors in light of their lack of unanimity.
Fridley, 26, faced four 15-years-to-life sentences if she had been convicted in the case. Her defense attorney, James Boyd, addressed the media after the mistrial was declared, saying that he was “really happy” with the result. “My question,” he said, “is how is it that 11 of them actually thought she was driving? It’s a real who-done-it. Was she driving or not?”
A retrial of the case could come in six to eight months, and there will be a status update in July.
According to prosecutors, Fridley was driving over 85 miles per hour and swerved over the lane divider before crashing into and killing Luis De Santiago, his wife Lina, and Luis Baez and his wife Rubi. They also claimed that Fridely had spent the day smoking meth and drinking with a friend. Fridley was allegedly driving a GMC Yukon, while the victims were in a Toyota Camry.
Fridley testified that she had switched seats with her friend before the crash. The friend, Anthony Boles, denies this claim.
Fridley will remain in custody, and her bail is set at $1 million.
By Topher
Nichole Santos celebrated her 21st birthday just six months ago. Taking her new drinking privilege to new extremes, between then and now, she has been arrested for DUI four times.
That’s a rate of one DUI per month since February.
The most recent DUI ended with a dramatic accident. The car that Santos was driving left the road and came to rest 285 feet later. On the way there, it knocked down three light poles.
Santos was driving home from the bar at the time of the accident, and she was driving drunk.
This marked her fourth DUI in as many months, according to Clarksville police. Her first DUI arrest was on February 2, her second was on April 10 and the third was on May 21. The latest arrest came on June 27.
This was not Santos’ first trouble with DUI. In 2007, when Santos was just 18, she was convicted of her first DUI.
Citizens in Clarksville are concerned about how Santos’ has been able to repeatedly offend. “It really shows we need to tighten our laws,” said Mothers Against Drunk Driving Tennessee executive director Laura Dial. “A system that allows that to happen is flawed.”
Dial continued by saying that the Santos case highlights the need for a mandatory interlock law in Tennessee. Such laws would force repeat offenders to have ignition locking devices on their cars that test a driver’s blood-alcohol content before turning the car on.
Tennessee recently passed a version of an ignition interlock law that made them optional.
Another DUI law lets judges in DUI cases label repeat DUI offenders as “dangerous.” In these cases, the judge can set no bond, or set the bond as extraordinarily high, to keep those repeat offenders behind bars. This is not a mandatory law and is applied at the judges’ discretion.
Speaking about the current legal situation, Dial said “You get arrested for a DUI, you do a little time in jail, you get told not to drive. That doesn’t work with a DUI offender.”
In Santos’ case, she was able to make her $5,000 bond hours after she was arrested, and was back home by the next Monday.
Santos hasn’t been convicted in any of her DUI arrests, as she awaits hearings in each one.
By Topher
In Missouri, a man who has repeatedly been charged with DUI received a 28-year prison sentence after he killed three people in a drunk driving accident.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that Newton Keene had avoided severe repercussions for DUI convictions in the past. Keene, however, was convicted and sentenced for three counts of aggravated drunken driving resulting in death and one count of drunken driving causing bodily harm. The sentence included a plea bargain negotiated by Keene which resulted in the dropping of lesser charges.
The 28-year sentence represents the maximum penalty for the crimes in question. Keene has to serve at least 85 percent of the term, which comes to about 24 years, before he can be eligible for parole.
Keene was driving the wrong way on the Interstate at 2 a.m. in the morning when he struck and killed Tawanda Jackson, her friend Jon Moss and her son Arnold. Her daughter, Takia, who was eleven-years-old at the time, survived the crash. They were returning home from the funeral of Jackson’s grandmother.
Keene registered a blood-alcohol content of .24 percent, which is three times the legal limit. Takia was very emotional as she listened to the charges announced at the sentencing. Keene declined to make a statement.
When the accident occurred, Keene had already been convicted and jailed for his fifth DUI. He was arrested twice after that, though police did not seek felony charges in those cases. He went to prison in 2000, on a five-year felony DUI sentence, but was released after just 120 days.
Speaking of the maximum penalty in the case, Madison County State’s Attorney William Mudge said, “This is the only way to keep the public safe from Mr. Keene.”
A relative of the victims, Thomas Marble, had consented to the plea deal. The family did also, however, express their discontent that the maximum penalty was not higher for such an offense.
The Post-Dispatch has featured a series of investigations last year highlighting the problem of repeat offenders slipping through the cracks. According to the article, these investigations led to improved legislation to close that gap.