In its Aug. 11 editorial, the Aurora Sentinel editorial board opines that incarceration is not an appropriate sentence for a chronic drunken driver, because sending drunken drivers to jail does little or nothing to prevent them from continuing to drink and drive.
Respectfully, this position defies common sense and the community’s sense of justice and public safety.
The Sentinel’s piece was generated in response to the predictable and appropriate community disbelief over the sentencing of Doyle Carmack, a five-time convicted drunken driver who drove Aurora’s streets with a blood-alcohol level in excess of 0.230. He previously had served a three-year prison sentence for felony DUI out of Missouri, and in the Aurora case he received zero days of incarceration of any type.
At least five times prior to his felonious conduct here, Carmack received sentences requiring various forms of rehabilitation, therapy, and punishment for his chronic drunken driving. He had numerous “second chances.”
Colorado law mandates that a person convicted of a misdemeanor of driving drunk with a BAC in excess of 0.200 as a first offense — Carmack’s BAC was 0.235 — must be sentenced to jail. Our law also requires that people convicted of a second or third DUI in their lifetime — Carmack had five priors —must be sentenced to jail.
However, when our state legislature finally joined 45 other states in passing a felony DUI law in 2015, it failed to include one minute of mandatory incarceration, leaving open the possibility that the drunken drivers with the worst records could serve no time at all. That result makes little sense to Aurorans and it creates an injustice for those sent to jail for statutorily “lesser” acts of drunken driving.
My office — and the probation department — sought to keep Carmack off Aurora’s streets where he couldn’t hurt or kill anyone by recommending a four-year community corrections sentence, the first six months to a year of which would have been in a locked facility. As with prison, Carmack would not have had access to a car. He would not have access to alcohol. Unlike prison, he would have been able to keep his job. He would have been required to participate in rehabilitation and therapy.
Community corrections is the door-step to prison, ensuring that any violation during his four-year sentence would have resulted in his incarceration in the Department of Corrections.
Perhaps four years of denied liberties would have done what almost 30 years of lesser penalties and attempts at rehabilitation failed to do. If not, then lengthy incarceration would be the only remaining answer.
Our community has seen the deadly results of chronic drunken driving before.
In 2009, Sandra Jacobson of Centennial was driving drunk at 10 a.m. on Pena Boulevard and killed two librarians in town for a convention.
She had previously been pulled over and arrested by Colorado State Patrol troopers, Arapahoe County Sheriff’s deputies and Douglas County Sheriff’s deputies, among others. In at least one of those cases, her blood-alcohol level was at least 0.224.
Her license was taken away, she was given 15 days in jail and she was ordered to undergo therapy.
Yet, when Jacobson slammed into the cab taking the two librarians to the airport, her blood-alcohol content was more than three times the legal limit.
The judge at her sentencing called her BAC “extremely, incredibly, grotesquely high.”
The Sentinel’s position that incarceration is not the answer for a repeat drunken driver ignores the obvious reality that someone who is incarcerated in a locked facility cannot endanger our community by continuing to drive.
Doyle Carmack did not kill anyone that night, because a citizen noticed his erratic driving and called authorities. That, and pure luck.
Aurorans deserve to be protected from chronic drunken drivers by more than that.
Our felony DUI law should be amended to be consistent with our lesser DUI charges and include the promise of incarceration for our worst repeat offenders.
George H. Brauchler is District Attorney for the 18th Judicial District in Arapahoe County and is running unopposed for re-election this fall.