If SQ 805 wins at the ballot and become law all DUI charges remain misdemeanors, the first time a drunk is arrested, and the tenth time the drunk is arrested. Judges will not be able to take in to account that the criminal simply refuses to get help or change. An excellent example of that was in the news last week.
Meet Max Leroy Townsend. Max drove his pickup truck into a crowd of cross country runners and murdered a few of them before driving away. He was caught later on that day and is sitting in jail in Cleveland county on 1.2 million dollar bond and has qualified for a public defender.
This wasn't Max's first brush with the law. You can check out part of his record at this link.
Max was convicted of drugs with intent to distribute in 1991 and spent five years in prison.
In March of 1997 Max was caught with weed, DUI driving, and paraphernalia. He pleads out and gets some of the charges dropped and pays some fines.
In August of 2002 Max was convicted of two counts of felony child abuse, received a suspended sentence, and promptly had that suspended sentence revoked and spent some time in stat prison. He pled guilty on another felony child abuse charge in November of that same year.
In May of 2003 Max gets arrested for DUI, his second and subsequent according to the charges. The case gets dismissed, once again Max has a good lawyer on his side. Max is also charged with leaving the scene of an accident. He pleads out on the charge, which is why the earlier DUI charge was dropped. He spends a few years in prison.
In May of 2005 Max was arrested and charge with felony drug possession and concealing stolen property. He pleads out in 2006 and the record shows that he was paying some payments on the fines and fees.
In July of 2011 Max is arrested on public intoxication. Max pleads guilty and pays a few hundred in fines.
In November of 2013 we see another DUI felony charges, keeping in mind that about this time is when the law changed and DUIs from municipal arrests started showing up on OSCN.net.
By this time we have seen Max rack up 31 years of prison sentences but of course he spends little of that time in actual prison. Had he done so perhaps he would have learned to be responsible instead of drinking and driving.
Max has a drug and booze problem yet he is turned out on the streets again and again until he murdered and horribly injured a bunch of students. Because soft on crime agendas decided that criminal's rights are more important than the victim's rights.
Go ahead and vote for SQ 805 if you care nothing for public safety. Let's let Max run wild. We are already there I think.
