Posted on 11/25/2012 10:36:04 PM PST by Slings and Arrows
Comal County, Tex. (CBS HOUSTON) – A Guadalupe County man arrested for his eighth DWI has been sentenced to life in prison after being pulled over last February with a Blood Alcohol level equivalent to consuming 23.5 beers.
In late February, authorities say Cornelio Garcia-Mata was driving nearly six times the legal alcohol limit, when he was pulled over around 6 p.m. off Interstate 35 in New Braunfels, WOAI-TV reports. Garcia-Mata got his first DWI in 1990. While on probation, he picked up his second. Since he’s a habitual offender he faced 25 years to life in prison for his latest offense.
“Subsequent blood tests shows that his blood alcohol was .446,” Comal County Chief Felony Prosecutor, Sammy McCrary told the court, according to WOAI. “It was a good verdict for the community. That’s somebody we won’t have to worry about killing somebody.”
In a video posted on YouTube from Feb. 26, 2012, an officer’s dashboard camera shows Garcia-Mata swerving in his truck before being pulled over on suspicion of intoxication. “How much alcohol have you been drinking today?” asks the officer. “I’m not drinking,” Garcia-Mata replied in slurred speech.
Prosecutors said his blood-alcohol level was five times the legal limit.
He has been held since then at the Comal County Jail without bond after a hold was placed on his release by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was indicted in May, arraigned in June, and went to trial on Tuesday last week in front of a Comal County jury. They later returned a guilty verdict and a finding that Garcia-Mata’s vehicle was a deadly weapon because of his previous felony DWI convictions.
What would normally be a third degree felony with a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison, became a 1st degree felony with a possible sentence of 25 years to life, KGNB Radio reported. After deliberating for only 20 minutes, the jury returned with the maximum penalty: life in prison.
In 2008, Garcia-Mata served less than two years of a six-year sentence, McCrary told WOAI. Garcia-Mata had seven prior DWI convictions out of Guadalupe County, which included felony charges. Garcia-Mata now awaits transfer into the state prison system.
Garcia-Mata will be eligible for parole in 30 years – when he is 75 years old.
I am not in any way a prohibitionist and I agree with you to some extent in that legal limits are now set too low, that a person barely over the limit who did not cause personal or property damages or didn’t even commit a moving violation in some cases and has no priors, faces punishment, both legal and monetary that are draconian. And I also agree with you that there are many drivers on the road who are not under the influence of alcohol or drugs but are dangerously distracted are potentially just as dangerous as a drunk driver; people who drive while texting, reading and sending emails or surfing the net on their smart phones for example. I actually observed a woman tailgating me on I-95 in rush hour traffic between Baltimore and Washington who was, and I’m not making this up, flossing her teeth, using her rearview mirror like a bathroom mirror and evidently steering with her knees! I’ve also seen guys with newspapers spread out over their steering wheel and once saw a guy passing me on the Capitol Beltway who was eating what appeared to be ramen noodles from a bowl and using chop sticks. As the comedian Ron White says “You can’t fix stupid”.
But I will say that while distracted driving is dangerous and should be punished when proven; the distracted driver is only dangerous while they are distracted. In other words, a driver texting (or flossing or eating ramen noodles) while driving is a danger (and very stupid BTW) while they are distracted or texting but one can reasonable assume they are not similarly impaired once they stop texting. A drunk or drugged driver however is dangerous from the minute they put the key in the ignition and the car starts moving until the time they stop moving, and one can only hope that their car does not come to a stop by hitting another vehicle or a pedestrian or a building.
This guy blew a BAC the equivalent of having 23 beers. This was not someone who was coming home from a cocktail hour with business associates after having a single glass of beer or wine or a martini and got pulled over for a broken tail light. And we are not talking about his 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th, DWI arrest but his 8th. The article doesn’t say so, but I can’t imagine that after 7 DWI’s and prior felony convictions, the guy was driving with a valid driver’s license (I think it’s also safe to assume he probably didn’t have insurance either), so suspending or taking away his license isn’t the answer. He got his 2nd DWI while still on probation for his first, so the threat of further jail time (he served a little less than two years in jail of a six year sentence for a DWI conviction in 2008) and further fines and more felony convictions evidently wasn’t much of a deterrent either. And goodness knows what other crimes he may have committed and been convicted of unrelated to drunk driving (again it’s an assumption on my part but probably not an unreasonable one given that someone with 7 prior DWI convictions is not likely a model citizen).
I honestly don’t know what should be done in a case like this other than what was done. Just because he didn’t cause a death or destruction of property previously doesn’t mean he didn’t commit a crime each and every time he got behind the wheel drunk – he is a repeat offender and I’m am all for stiff sentences for repeat offenders. It’s only a miracle that he didn’t injure or kill someone yet. But according to you, I guess that on his 8th DWI conviction, since no one was hurt and no property was damage, he should have been given yet another slap on the wrist, yet another fine, a little more jail time of which he would only serve a fraction of, sent to alcohol rehab yet again, another suspension of his license, ordered by a judge to never drive again or own a car, all in hopes that his 8th DWI will be his last. But if and when the guy has his 9th and odds are he will, and ends up killing someone or a whole family, the fact that he never killed anyone in his 8 previous DWI convictions will be cold comfort to the families of the dead or gravely injured.
Any driver that causes damage to others’ property or persons should be prosecuted equally. Drinkers or teatotallers, I don’t rightly care. I am more concerned with ACTUAL safety and accountability.
Just the other week near where I live, a 77 year old man coming out of a bank drive through, for reasons not yet determined, sped over a parking barrier, through a fence, across a gravel embankment and crashed into a daycare center and into and through the room where 12 children had just finished having lunch and were floor mats were soon to be laid out for naptime. The driver and three children were injured, fortunately none of them seriously. But if I understand you correctly, the 77 year old man, who was not drunk, had no prior criminal record nor any prior driving violations, not even as much as a ticket, should be thrown in jail and we should toss away the key but the guy with 8 previous DWI convictions including several felony convictions should have nothing happen to him just because he hasn’t yet injured anyone? That the habitual drunk driver is not a safety concern? Is that right?
But there is the point: HE DIDN'T KILL ANYONE. Murderers and rapists are back out on the street in less than a dime and the town drunk goes to jail for life! And from the look of this thread, most FReepers here agree with it. I don't know which of those things is the greater travesty.
exactly right.
MORE than that - It is not that he didn't cause damage. It is that there is no malice. No intent. That's the thing.
I like shooting my mouth off!!! I didn’t advocate lawlessness I did advocate using common sense which some here lack! By the way I do not support the War on drugs either it is a loosing proposition!
Eight DUI’s ya know.
Eight 10 twenty whats the difference sounds like he has a subsistence problem! Needs hospital care rather than life in the big house!!!
You seem to have the loser part down pretty pat. It is a loser position to only support the laws one likes and just ignore the ones you don't like. Now that is a losers position. You're an libertarian anarchist, not a conservative.
I didn’t indicate I didn’t like it, I merely found humor in it’s babylonian confusion :-)
No insult intended, been there on a quick reply myself...
There was no confusion in my reply.....the man is an alcoholic (frequently called allies by those who have been around them).....the rest is self evident
“Eight 10 twenty whats the difference sounds like he has a subsistence problem! “
Perhaps you should put the booze down and seek counseling yourself if you can’t tell the difference between subsistence and substance.
If he didn’t drive he could go for counseling or whatever. He’s shown a complete disregard for the law and for other peoples lives. He needs to go away before he kills someone.
“You can think that all day long, but the fact of the matter is that if it were true, then our “legal” BAC would not have been reduced to .08 and MADD wouldn’t be pushing for still lower limits. Data shows that the true improvement in safety (lower number of accidents/deaths) was from .16 to .12, and there was statistically no improvement from .12 to .08.”
Actually, I don’t have any problems with your numbers...you are correct. All one has to do is read articles where drunks cause accidents, they are almost always over 0.12...often much higher - whereas most tickets (without accidents) is lower than that.
My point is that drunk driving would not be the way it’s perceived without the 7-time DUI’ers finally starting to take out lives. If those people were somehow off the road, the public would be saying, in essence: “What’s the big deal” as there would be few accidents...and thus they would not be supporting these arbitrarily low limits.
As to being a way for government to make money - sure, of course. But there still has to be some public acceptance of it. For example, you could fine ever driver $1,000 for driving between 1 and 5 MPH over the speed limit. You could do it with cameras and make a HUGE windfall (i.e., you’d get 95% of the cars on the road, at any given time or place). But the public would SCREAM, as they don’t see the danger from these “habitual” speeders as something that warrants such huge fines.
...so you need to have a way to hook-in the public - and these particular people (7-timers) are PERFECT for the purpose of getting the public to scream “DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING!!!!” ...and so they do.
Wow. It is nice to not feel like a freak ;)
The guy should be arrested and fined for disturbing the peace if he is in town. But not charged with a felony.
If you went to work intoxicated all the time, but always did your job correctly,then no one would know any differently. So there would be no victim. Now I realize that is unlikely, in your profession, so your judgement to do so would carry a lot of responsibility.
Don’t mis-interpret me, if someone IS victimized,or harmed as a result of reckless behavior, whether that behavior involves drinking or not, then the person responsible should be held so.
People who go to sleep driving kill other people just as dead as drinking. Several years ago, here in Texas, near me,an oilfield truck driver went to sleep returning home from a fracturing job.He ran over a van and killed 5 people.He was ticketed and paid a fine. Somehow, that didn’t seem like enough punishment to me.But, at what point does an accident become a crime?
An old Alaskan trapper once said “The reason you folks down south have so many problems is that too many of you live too close together, and the friction is causing you many problems”
Robbing people is victimizing them. So there was damage done when the bank was robbed.
Attempted murder involves actually TRYING to kill someone.
Actual intent is involved.
Those people rightfully need to be punished.
In your example, the drunk driver DID harm someone. Severe punishment was justified.
As a side note, however,if the police were involved in a high speed chase over a misdemeanor infraction, and that chase ended in harm to an innocent person, they should be in prison right along with the drunk driver.Their actions were just as irresponible.Not knowing the particulars in the case it would be hard to say. If the drunk was already driving at a high rate of speed and endangering lives, chasing him may have been justified. Otherwise following him at a distance and capturing him when he stopped would have been the appropriate thing to do.
I don’t think losing one’s job over a dwi conviction is anywhere near fair, unless that person’s job is driving.Taking someone’s means of making a living in this society is almost guaranteeing his entire family will suffer, (if he has one),and one or more people will wind up on govt. assistance over it. Often what seems to be a fair punishment has more consequences than desired. In this case, I’d think his employer is meting out punishment, and that isn’t right.
There often are not easy solutions to society’s justice problems. The real question is “how much is enough” Isuppose.....
You’ve summarized the Alynski message pretty well. If a people valued liberty, it would not be a success. Sadly, Americans no longer value liberty, so it is rather easy to execute this strategy. Heck, it is even prevelent on supposedely liberty loving discussion forums like FR. All you need to to is pick one of a few subjects, and folks scream for security over liberty.
The only Libertarian Streak I have is less government and the Drug Issue.. The drug laws don’t work.. Either change the laws so they work and we can win or legalize drugs and tax them!!! We have been battling this problem for almost 80 years and we are not winning and I don’t believe we can win this problem so legalize and tax the drugs which I believe will stop allot of our other problems Like the Gang drug problem... I am not a Anarchist I believe in laws that are needed however you can’t make a law for morality!! I believe in closing the borders legal immigration, strong military, smaller government, smaller taxes!These is conservative Ideas.. You guys sound like liberals that should be over on Huffington Post or Move on org!!! name calling won’t win an Idea for you!
Drinking is a disease. When you drink you don’t think properly, you do stupid things.. It is a crutch to get through life. Some people are using this for the demons in their lives. I haven’t had a drink in 20 years.. Some people speed when they drive so when somebody gets 8 speeding ticket he should get life in prison????
Drunk driving is a crime. Drunk drivers kill thousands of people.
He won’t stop driving willingly so throw his butt in jail.
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