Jailing drunk drivers
EVIDENCE OF the state's failure to keep impaired and dangerous drivers off the roads in Massachusetts can be found in hospital rooms across the state. One of the latest examples is that of a 24-year-old woman and her infant daughter, injured in a Quincy crash Sunday when their car was struck, police say, by a repeat drunk driver, Lawrence J. Robertson of Braintree.
Authorities say Robertson was behind the wheel despite having been stripped of his license. Cases involving repeat offenders are frighteningly familiar. On Wednesday, Robert Parsons of Kingston, whose license had been revoked for numerous traffic violations, allegedly rammed into a bicyclist in Duxbury. License revocations and suspensions are but small bumps in the road for too many scofflaws. It seems there is always a friend or loved one ready to surrender the car keys to an unlicensed driver, no matter the driving history.
Robertson has been convicted of drunken or drugged driving at least four times. And he is hardly an anomaly. In 2004, the police arrested 2,008 repeat drunken drivers, according to Robert Creedon, spokesman for the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
There is no way to know whether mandatory jail time would change the driving habits of the state's road menaces. But it is well past the time to find out. Legislation filed in May by Governor Romney would mandate a year in prison for anyone convicted of drunken driving on a suspended license, provided the suspension was related to operating under the influence. This should be a first step. Ideally, the sentence would provide an opportunity for alcohol or drug treatment. Regardless, the offender would be off the road.
Romney's bill is named for Melanie Powell, a 13-year-old Marshfield girl who was run down and killed by a repeat drunk driver while she and her friends walked from the beach on a sunny afternoon in July 2003. An especially powerful provision of the bill would increase the period of license suspension for failure to take a breathalyzer from 180 days to one year, upping the ante for drunken driving. An especially practical provision would allow prosecutors to use certified records of prior convictions as evidence. Currently, prosecutors must scurry to find and present law enforcement officials from long-ago cases, a ridiculous barrier that protects repeat offenders.
Massachusetts lawmakers -- among them a healthy contingent of defense attorneys -- have been overly tolerant of those who operate vehicles under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The Bay State was last in the nation to adopt the so-called per se law that establishes a 0.08 blood-alcohol level as legal proof of impairment. Melanie's bill is a clear-headed response to a deadly problem.
