Repeat DUI's resulting in eventual manslaughter. What to do with someone like this- jail, prison, rehab... lethal injection?

jail combined with rehab and psychological treatment.

sorry about the link, it works fine from my bookmarks and from facebook, don’t know what’s up.

Bad link. EDIT: That’s cool.

But as for the question, extensive rehab, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy – all of which should go hand and hand.

You need to understand why someone would need to drink that much in the first place and treat that – in addition, obviously rehab. Jail afterwords.

Not only are you getting valuable information that immediate imprisonment without psychoanalysis wouldn’t, you are also able to use anything gained for future cases. Maybe the guy had something wrong with him and we can prevent it in the future, who knows? For example, if had continued to throw serial killers in supermaxes without understanding the intricacies and nuances of their mind, how could we have ever hoped to prevent them from arising in the first place?

This is a bit different and probably mis-compared, but still – there is always something to be gained from peering into someones mind, in my opinion.

This man will probably get just a few years of jail time and some rehab. I’m assuming he had to complete some kind of program from his 2001 DUI it obviously didn’t work. What of the families and friends left behind, what kind of rehab and psychological treatment to they get? What kind of state of mind will this man have when he leaves jail knowing he didn’t even bother to check the pulses of the kids he mangled and busied himself instead with trying to flee the scene? What kind of job will hire him with his record, who will want to be friends and confidants of his? What can possibly offer any of us living except a sad lesson on how things can go really really bad?

Well, since you think you have the right to decide if someone is worthless and doesn’t deserve to live, then why don’t you kill him?

@tinyfaery: it wouldn’t bring back my dead relative nor do any good to the rest of the family or friends, it hadn’t even crossed my mind to do what you suggest. Thanks for your input though.

This article might work: http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Teens-killed-in-collision--man-arrested--officials-suspect-crash-was-alcohol-rel

For a first time DUI in New Mexico, the laws are actually very strict. I’m shocked this guy didn’t learn his lesson. It’s much stricter because New Mexico has the highest DUI rate, it seems.
Since this is his second offense, I believe he should get the maximum punishment for 2nd offense DUIs in New Mexico, listed here
And also the punishment for the four counts of vehicular homicide and one count of great bodily injury by vehicle.

@casheroo: There are inquiries going on right now so we’ll see.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com

Repeat DUI’s is a disgrace! Had his license been taken away and he was driving without a license? One thing that really sucks is even if he lost his license he can still be driving without a license.

I have no idea what to do with him. Obviously jail time is in order. If the families want something specific from him, they should have their request considered. If they want to be able to confront him one on one or something that will help them heal…or for him to have to see all of the people connected to the person he murdered just to torture him some more once he has sobered up and realizes the horror he has caused…I have no idea what I would want if it was my family member.

Laws on this suck in general because so many people have a “there but for the grace of God go I” atitude, because most people in America drink I guess.

This is a monumental problem here in Australia as well, perhaps even more than in the USA. Drinking and drunkeness seems to be accepted behavior. You cannot make a drunk stop drinking unless they want to stop for their own reasons and it is a hard hard task. Rehab is a waste of time unless there is a serious commitment to succeed and even then there is no guarantee. So to spend a ton of taxpayer revenue seems non productive. Since a lot of drunk drivers are people who have jobs and lives, I believe punishment such as jail is the only way to go. It still costs the taxpayer but at least they aren’t killing anyone. Impound their cars, they do that if you are caught with too many fish over the limit or for taking alcohol across a state line, why not for drunk driving. You don’t get it back until you pay a huge fine. There will be cries of I need my car to get to work, but I guess they should have thought of that before. It is a tough love sort of situation only with an adult.

Drinking has to be treated with the same disdain as smoking, it kills a lot more innocent people each year. Prohibition does not work, it just has to become “uncool.”
I never thought it could happen to cigarettes but it is, so the same could happen with alcohol. The tobacco lobbies were huge but they couldn’t fight the concerted public attack, the same could be true of booze. Deglamorize it!

I will never support the death penalty no matter the crime.

I’m for using the death penalty for removing people from the streets if they are a danger to the rest of us.

And though I have sympathy for alcoholics, I have ZERO sympathy for drunk drivers, because you make a CHOICE to drive, and you know DAMN WELL that you are essentially doing something that could lead to someone else’s death. To me that’s just as bad as attempted murder…it would be the same if you loaded a gun and started firing into a crowd at random…you might not hit anybody, but you might, sorry, that’s intent to do something that could bring about someone’s death. And in my mind attempted murder isn’t really all that much less of a crime than actual murder anyway, what, just because you’re a lousy shot means it’s a lesser crime? BULLSHIT. Anyone caught driving drunk should be punished SEVERELY. Clearly our society has been more permissive and it wouldn’t be fair now that we’ve put forth an expectation among people that it’s not THAT big of a deal, we need to change that perception…set a date, maybe 5 years in the future and say after this date, you get caught driving drunk once, you spend 2 years wiping he asses of people who’ve been crippled by drunk drivers. You do it again, you die, period. You have NO RIGHT to take the life of a stranger in your hands, and that’s EXACTLY what you’re doing when you CHOOSE to drive when you’re intoxicated, we need ZERO TOLERANCE or this is going to keep happening.

Now I’m no monster here, I understand our society is too permissive and may have led to him thinking it wasn’t really as big a deal as it was. And I also understand that alcoholism is a disease, but I don’t demonize his drinking, I demonize his choice to get behind the wheel of a car after drinking. And YES, I know every single one of us right now if we adopted a ZERO TOLERANCE policy such as what I described would probably know multiple people, people we like and don’t think of as attempted murderers, getting caught up. But I have to believe that if we underwent a massive, nationwide education program, saturated the airwaves with PSAs, spent money on direct mail, put it up on bus stops and billboards, on the radio, printed on our milk cartons, whatever it took, we could spread the message that drunk driving isn’t just something you might have to do every now and then, it’s the same as shooting a loaded gun into a crowd, and if you do it, starting on date x, you will pay for your crime, regardless of whether your choice leads to someone’s death or not.

So for now, given that it’s not as cut and dried as I’d like it to be, and he may not have known the full consequences of his choice this time, I’d give him another choice. Here’s what I’d do in THIS case:

Sober him up.

Bring him out to the middle of a wooded area that was in the direct path of a raging wildfire.

Strip him naked.

Cut down a tree.

Nail his ball sack to the stump.

Give him a rusty butterknife.

Viola, he has a choice, and IF he makes a choice that saves his life, well, he’s gonna think LONG AND HARD before he makes a choice like THAT again.

Seriously, I’m trying to think of ways this man could use his life to be of service to all he has hurt and denied. It’s a waste to spend money to throw him in jail so I’m thinking maybe indentured servitude on a rotating basis between the four (possibly five if the driver doesn’t pull through) families. Hmm.

I think if you kill anyone out of malice, ignorance or stupidity, you should pay with your life.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic Even if someone killed your child?

@Russell_D_SpacePoet – He strikes me as one of those “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” types. Me? I’m nailin’ some ball sacks to tree stumps.

just sayin

DUI killers don’t deserve to live. Blindfold them, make them stand in the middle of the street for a random period of time, then, without warning, crash a car into ‘em at 50 mph.

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. There would be no repeat DUI offenders if when they did it once they are done, no license no more ever. That will make only the very stupid even think of driving with a drink in them. DUI drovers are time bombs waiting to go off. People want to be lax because they figure no lush intends to go through that red light taking out the mini van, but when it happens and someone dies they are just as dead as a plank of wood. People who didn’t plan on killing anyone during a robbery gets the murder beef anyhow, so why let these lushes get a pass just because they didn’t mean it? Yank the damn license and you will see DUI fatalities and such drop through the cellar. And if they get their license yanked and drive anyhow and get caught, automatic $750,000 fine and 25 years in prison no parole or early release.

@Hypocrisy_Central – I agree that licenses should be suspended or pulled, but I don’t think it would make a tremendous difference. Here many of the dui’s pulled over are driving without a license.

@Hypocrisy_Central People can still physically drive without a license…it’s not unheard of.

@rooeytoo, @casheroo Then we are wasting out time booting sex offenders and restrictiing where they live because they have cars and they can go anywhere to vicimize someone. And Cash, I know that. As I said, if they drive anyway they get tossed in jail for 25 years and fined $750,000. So that particular idiot we won’t have to worry about for more than 2 decades.

Most DWI offenders are simply people who make a bad choice and after being arrested they never re-offend. However, chronic or hard core DWI offenders are generally alcoholics and virtually no punishment will stop them from re-offending. As one judge said, “we can’t jail our way out of the problem.” Therefore, DWI courts sentence offenders to long-term treatment followed by probation. The recidivism rate for such offenders is very low, according to research. http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/DrivingIssues/1083352479.html

Let them get rehab on their own time. Just do it like Russia, yank their license for life. Maybe 1st do it like Turkey, the drivers are taken 20 miles out of town and forced to walk back under escort. You will won’t have to worry about them again, if you do, you toss in what they do in Bulgaria; they get shot, that will make sure there is no 3rd offence.

I have an alcoholic cousin that asked the judge to take his license away. He said “if you don’t take it away, I will end up killing someone. I’m an alcoholic.” The judge did just that, so he now rides a bike and takes the bus. I love hearing stuff like that.