In January, Colorado lawmakers will consider a new DUI bill (HB 1036) making repeat DUI offenses a felony. Currently, Colorado is one of just five states plus the District of Columbia without a felony DUI law. DUIs in the state are treated similarly in the eyes of the court whether it is a first or tenth offense.
Extreme DUI Case Raises Questions
Recent news about Denny Lovern, who racked up 16 DUI convictions in 30 years, has raised concerns that the state legislature hasn’t done enough to address serial drunk driving. If passed, the new law would create minimum jail sentences for drunk drivers with three or more offenses in the last five years.
Similar Colorado bills have failed in the past. Some debate whether a felony DUI bill would really make a difference in preventing impaired driving. They claim that some individuals will drive drunk no matter how severe the proposed punishment. And they point to figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) showing that while alcohol-involved highway deaths increased in 2012 (the latest year for which state-level data is available), DUI deaths decreased in four of the jurisdictions without felony DUI laws, including Colorado.
Prevention, Punishment, and Public Safety
But supporters of the bill counter that a felony DUI law is about more than just dissuading potential drunk drivers or even punishing offenders—it is about public safety. Some believe putting hardcore drunk drivers behind bars is the only way to take people like Lovern off the road to keep them from injuring or killing others. Without the option of a felony DUI, the prosecutor in Lovern’s case is using charges like attempted first-degree assault and attempted manslaughter to try to obtain a jail sentence.
Why hasn’t a felony DUI law been passed in Colorado? Many believe it has to do with the high cost of incarceration, as well as a preference for treatment. However, treatment and punishment are not exclusive to one another and a felony DUI bill may give prosecutors and judges more choices for handling repeat offenders.
Do you think felony DUI laws and mandatory incarceration help reduce intoxicated driving, or do states need to focus on other options to deal with extreme repeat offenders?
I Think 3 DUI’s in 5 years is ample ammunition to make it a felony. I started a Colorado DUI Information site when I got my DUI just so I would be reminded of what I did on a day to day basis. So hopefully, I wouldn’t make the same drinking and driving mistake again
htttp://www.Dui-Colorado-Dwi.com
Come by and check it out
Making DUI a felony for multiple offenders could help deter these people from drinking and driving again – and putting others in jeopardy because of their actions.
I am from California, and have been in trouble for DUI’s, as well. Punishment only makes the matter worse, and does not address the issue of why a person is “drinking” so much in the first place.
I was an athletic, kind, college-bound teenager who stayed away from drugs because I KNEW that these were “bad” for me and for my future. Beer was socially acceptable in my community, Silicon Valley in the 80’s. But I was bred from a long line of “responsible” alcoholics and did not understand that I was becoming addicted with each naive gulp taken from that red plastic cup as I dreamed of my future from the balcony of a Stanford University frat party.
I would surmise that most multiple-DUI offenders are like me, not happy about what alcohol has done to their lives, the pain it has caused others, and would do anything to go back to their teenage years and make an informed choice to not drink. At age 40-something, the shame I continue to carry over drinking and driving, drunken behavior in general, is exacerbated by all the negative social stigma of being labeled as such a “dangerous, felonious creep who obviously does not care for themselves or for society at large.” (paraphrased) I am not a criminal who needs to learn their lesson. I DID NOT KNOW HOW to change my life, to unbreak the cycle I found myself stuck in, and the fear of opening my emotionally brittle self up to others who wanted to villain-ize my behavior and punish me kept me in alcoholism longer, on the your highways longer, than I should have been. How can a person who probably already despises what they have become find the necessary desire and encouragement to change from being told that they are indeed “unloved, unacceptable and not worthy of being a part of the society they most probably would do anything to feel anything other than rejection from?” When you take away a person’s freedom, label them a felon, you take away a HUGE part of what they need to successfully become the person you want them to be in the first place. In California, most will lose their homes, their jobs, their checking accounts, the ability to pay off creditors and thus their credit standing, and many lose their families and eventually their self respect. When you have a reduced the person to the point where even they, too, finally believe that “they deserve” to be treated this way, then the battle for change is lost. But yet they are released back to your streets…
How difficult do we want their road back into society to be? Because we can take it all away, over and over again, punish and shame, remove whatever is left from them. But this NEVER addresses “the issue.” You see, addiction is not hurt by this. In fact, this is fertile breeding ground for addiction. You are punishing the person and protecting, nurturing, and strength-training the monster you are trying to slay.
Please, let us learn to care for one another and find solutions that are for the common good. I love that little girl playing with her ball near the road, too. But what if she was an alcoholic?
One DUI – $10,000 fine and 30 days in jail.
Two DUI’s – $25,000 fine and 6 months in jail.
Three DUI’s – $50,000 fine and 2 years in PRISON.
Four DUI’s – Life in prison.
No sympathy for people who make excuses for driving drunk. Fine, I get it, you have a problem and so you drink. I have a friend with a problem: Her 18 year old beautiful daughter is dead because a drunk driver plowed into her. And the drunk had 2 DUI’s in our state and 5 others in another state. Had our state found the other 5 he might have been in jail instead of killing a couple kids.
No not from CO but my opinion is, in general we have gotten too soft on this crime so come up with a way to deal with it. Bottom line keep everyone else safe! My state makes it a felony on #4.
Today is the 3 yr. anniversary of my daughter being killed by a repeat offender who’s license was revoked. Yes, he drove again because the threat of a Felony wasn’t there and he didn’t care. He is in prison and he admitted that prison was the only thing that would have stopped him.
Linds, with all due respect, you talk about how hard the road is for a person with addiction and that a Felony DUI Bill will make it harder for them… Really?
Do you have any idea how hard it is to live each day without my daughter or my son without his sister, my mom without her granddaughter or my granddaughter who will not grow up knowing her aunt? (Of course you don’t)… Do you know how hard and long my journey has been just to be able to start trying to live again? Of course you don’t… We have life sentences… You have choices so don’t even try to make excuses… You can have your addiction if you so choose but that doesn’t mean you have the right to drive drunk and put everyone else in danger of your dumb ass. Stay home and be drunk… Unbelievable…
Not everyone who gets a DUI has a drinking problem. It can be as simple as having a couple of drinks after work and going home. Are you drunk? Most likely not. Yes the ‘law’ says you don’t drink and drive. How many everyday people could have received a DUI?? And yet all I see is condemnation for someone who gets unlucky enough to get stopped by law enforcement. And from what I am seeing, law enforcement is using excuses to stop people to see if they can get someone arrested. My son and a friend were out late one evening in Golden and a highway patrol pulled him over with the excuse that his tail light was out. My son doesn’t drink so this officers fishing didn’t get him anything. And my son’s tail light was not out! This type of “fishing” is the states way to increase revenues. Yes repeat offenders should have higher penalties. BUT what about the first time offender that is barely over the limit? And was stopped by an officer fishing for an arrest because it was late at night, on the pretense of not coming to a complete stop. In court that wasn’t even brought up of course. I strongly believe there needs to be some logical sanity when it comes to this issue of DUI/DWAI rather than the moral majority making their sentiments pushed down everyone else rights. I sympathize with people that have lost loved ones to a drunk driver. I could’t cope that that senseless loss either. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that a first time offender should be put in jail with felony record when no one else was involved. Could it have been? Yes. But it didn’t and each case should be reviewed for the severity of what happened.
So, in your wild youth (when alcohol and driving was not looked at the same way as now) you got 3 DUI’s in GA. Now 30 years go by and you are stopped for a broken tail light in CO after a couple of beers on the way home from work (no weaving, speeding, etc…). Do you really think that 50+ year old should be charged with a Felony and do hard time for this? In CO, punishment looks at all DUI’s in your entire life no matter where you got them. Seriously, the general population has no idea the DUI laws have become so serious. Up until 2005 you could drive with a beer in your hand in CO. Here we live in a culture where craft beer breweries and restaurants are everywhere. The legal system is flooded with DUI cases right now because the legal definitions basically make it illegal to have any alcohol in you bloodstream and drive. Do you know you can get a DUI in CO working on the broken motor of your car that has the wheels off it and having a beer (this is no joke). That is how crazy the laws in CO have become. If your going to have alcohol in the society (especially as celebrated as it is here in CO) there is always going to be the risk of it’s misuse. It is the inherent risk of the culture. If the general population was WELL informed of just how bad DUI laws were and the laws were made more realistic then the culture can rationally adapt. But right now, a lot of people are being blindsided by harsh unforeseen punishment for what they see is normal behavior.