Driver's Third DWI Kills Two, Injures Three

[Bluebear]

What are we going to have to do, require breath-o-lyzers on EVERY car in order to make them run? What a shame...


Barton


A mother and daughter were killed after a drunken driver slammed into their car around 2 a.m. Saturday in Lewisville. The victim's husband and two other children were transported to area hospitals.

According to Lewisville police, John Barton, 29, switched lanes at a high rate of speed and hit 30-year-old Kandice Hull's car. Hull and her daughter Autumn, 13, were killed after Barton rear-ended their Nissan Sentra, flinging it 600 feet down Interstate 35E near Highway 121.

Hull's husband Tony and their two other children were transported to area hospitals. Tony Hull is in serious condition. Authorities have not released the children's condition.

This is third time Barton has been arrested for drunken driving. The original charges for intoxication manslaughter and intoxication assault have been upgraded to murder because of his record. He is currently booked at the Denton County Jail.

Barton and a passenger in his vehicle were not injured.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

http://cbs11tv.com/local/third.dwi.kills.2.1611082.html

[Archae]

1. He's being charged with murder. Good.

I saw this same approach to reat drunken drivers on "60 Minutes" a few mopnths ago.

Repeat drunk driver drives drunk again and kills, he gets charged with murder. Because it *IS* murder.

[peacebird]

3. repeat drunk drivers who cause accidents when innocent people are killed is murder

At some point you have to take responsibility for your own actions, and since he has already been in accidents caused by his drinking, and this accident killed a young mother and one of her children, and hospitalized her husband and other children - this man should see jail time.

Sad all around.

[WVRICK13]

30. Jail Time?

He should never see the outside again.

[Obamanaut]

32. Should not limit to 'repeat drunk drivers.' People who drink and drive

do not accidentally consume adult beverages (or any mind altering substance) and then get behind the wheel. It is a conscious decision to do so.

[Winterblues]

50. It is also an impaired decision

I can understand a person getting a DWI one time..After that though, IMO there is no excuse and serious time should be given..The first one should be considered as very serious as well and the person should have a device ionstalled in their car to check their breath before starting the engine and then every ten minutes after or the car shuts down.

[Obamanaut]

53. It was not an impaired decision, or an accident, to consume

whatever substance that eventually led to getting behind the wheel in an impaired condition.

If someone snuffs out a life or harms another person, and that someone is driving while impaired - that person should be punished to the full extent of the law.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. It is a tragedy that this man had THREE chances to kill someone..and finally succeeded!!!!

Why was this man still allowed behind the wheel?? Why was his car not impounded and he be given a jail sentence after the FIRST DWI?
At least two and perhaps ;more, lives could have been saved. Children would have their mother. The man would have his wife...that is if HE survives. There are no excuses for this.

[dmallind]

4. Why?

Maybe just maybe because having a beer or two should not mean the end of being able to participate in modern society? When DWI actually means INTOXICATED or includes actually doing any harm then you might have a point. Until then it's just second guessing probability and neoprohibitionism.

[era veteran]

8. There is no reason to defend drinking and driving period.

It is not probable but certain that in EVERY state you are drunk at .10! No drinking and driving, it is barbaric to inflict a drunk driver on society.

[jmowreader]

20. Now it's 0.08 percent

Unless you have a CDL, and then it's 0.04.

[era veteran]

27. Of course I got mixed up

I teach an alcohol class to servers to avoid 3rd party liability lawsuits, I know better. Thanks for the correction.// Under 21 in KY it is .02.

[blueamy66]

33. See, this is my problem with those that "teach" drinking classes

1/2 of them don't have a clue of which they speak

[LanternWaste]

43. Self delete

self delete

[era veteran]

44. Sober 20 years, 5 months, 4 days & about 17 hours

Before that I had plenty of experience with alcohol.

[blueamy66]

45. and?

My 35 year old brother drank himself to death. His 15 year old daughter was the one to find him in his bed.

My father was diagnosed with cancer, yet drank 2 bottles of wine a day until he lost his mind and died.

I, myself, drink on occasion. I have a degree in Criminal Justice and interned with juvies in drug aversion programs.

Still doesn't mean I'm an expert, ya know?

[era veteran]

51. What do you recommend?

The class I teach is just facts. To help servers of alcohol avoid being sued in the case of a third party liability lawsuit. The law of the land prosecutes sellers of alcohol who may have contributed to some kind of accident. I personally have qualms about the state prosecuting sellers under these nuisance or dram shop laws. The buyer makes the decision but that is how it's done. Not an expert, but trained in the subject and tempered by life experience.

[dmallind]

35. There's plenty of reasons to defend the one strike = lifetime disposal idiocy

Remember what I disagreed with is NOT the punishment for actually doing harm while DUI but the idea that one DUI conviction should mean either lifetime driving bans or major prison terms.

The paranoia on thi issue is amazing. Think of what we are suggesting draconian prison terms for: Doing something that in some very low percentage of cases (even using MADD's own propaganda a drunk driver could drive so every bot for thousands of years before killing someone, 70% of the time the driver himself) might possibly hurt someone.

Can you think of another case where we criminalize tiny risks beyond minor citations?

Perhaps the issue here is the strange perception that this is not a tiny risk. Let's take that on first.

Let's start with the MADD propaganda that 41% of traffic fatalities are alcohol related (which in itself gets translated into small mninds by lousy reporting and incessant emotional handwringing to equal "drunk driving").

This comes from a "HBD" box for "had been drinking or taking drugs" being checked on the FARS - Fatal Accident Reporting System. here are some facts about this system:

Only half of the HBD checked drivers are ever tested for alcohol.
About half of those who ARE tested and recorded as HBD are over the legal limit. Many of the rest have trace readings that could be either outright errors or a squirt of cold medicine a few hours earlier.
It includes drivers who have been taking drugs - either legal or not, OTC or not.
It includes pedestrians
It is often checked routinely at certain hours of the night without any testing.

So we're already down to about 1/4 of the claimed ratio just based on the check box and how often it is is abused.


Now let's think of another issue. Even in MADDWorld 59% of fatal accidents involve no alcohol whatsoever. What causes those? Well let's see. Poor weather conditions. Badly maintained cars. Sudden appearances of deer, fallen rocks, etc. Just poor driving ability. What stops any of those things from applying to alcohol related (aka drunk driving) fatalities? Nothing at all obviously

No correction is made for any fatality where alcohol is present but where the accident could have been caused by other factors

And of course let's imagine that we have a truly drunk driver for once. Absolutely blotto. Certainly should not be on the road. He slowly weaves his car to a stop light at half the speed limit and finally owlishly perceives it is red, so stops. He is then rearended by a semi driver on his thirteenth hour without sleep and crushed like an egg. Bingo - another drunk driving death!

Fault is assumed to be with impaired driver even if in any other case the investigation would place fault with others

But do truly drunk drivers cause fatalities? Of course they do. But do they slaughter innocent people every time as emotional appeals would suggest? Not at all. In 70% of the cases where fatalities are caused by drivbers actually tested to be drunk, the driver themself is the only victim.

So in summary, only about 1/4 of claimed "drunk drivers" were ever demonstrated to actually BE so, they may or may not have been at fault. Alcohol may or may not have had any causal relationshiop even if they were, and 70% of the time they only kill themselves.

Now again using MADD's own numbers there are BILLIONS of "drunk driving" trips every year, and yet we get to a few hundred innocent people killed by truly drunk drivers yearly. Even if we assume the drunk driver was always at fault - pretend it's impossible that anybody can crash into a drnk or that a drunk's brakes can fail or that that a sudden obstacle can cause a drunk to serve out of control as it would any driver - the risk is minimal. Way way way lower than the risk of anything else that would cause such harsh penalties as many suggest. Essentially making a driver at a 0.08 level (which I have publicly demonstrated a 280lb person can achieve on ONE beer if stopped within a few minutes - and where do DUI patrols hang out usuually except just outside bars?) a lifetime pariah who must never be allowed to drive and will only be able to get the kind of job open to felons with extended prison terms is hardly an appropriate response to this risk. W

hy not instead criminalize the harmful action itself, and increase the penalties for the exacerbating factor of being drunk? So if you commit vehicular manslaughter and get say 5 years, if you were drunk you'd get 10. If you drive dangerously instead of getting 3pts and a $500 fine if you do it drunk you get 6pts and $1000 fine. Furthermore we could use a BAC that is truly drunk - 0.2 say, and make that a significant but still traffic offense if no other crime is present. Where else do we criminalize probability with no harm? Why should this be an exception when any sober (pun intended) analysis shows the risk is truly minimal? The only arguments against this POV are emotional. Laws should not be based on emotions.

[Elmo39]

39. Makes sense

I see no one responded to your fact filled, intelligent post...wonder why?
I guess since you didn't advocate death, dismemberment, sterilization, or some other "fitting" punishment" for a drunk driver your post is ignored.

I actually agree with you.

[blueamy66]

46. Very good post.

alot of good info...

[NeedleCast]

52. Excellent Post

[Bluebear]

9. This arraignment photo doesn't look like he had 'a beer or two'

[Robeson]

11. DU is an amazing place.

[Bluebear]

36. .

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bluebear]

16. 'Maybe just maybe because having a beer or two'

Just when you think you have read it all.

[LeftyMom]

17. Seriously. Some people are fucking amazing, aren't they?

I don't care how trashed people get- more power to them as long as they arrange to get home safely while they're still coherent. Take a cab, take the bus if they won't throw you off, get somebody to come get you, walk if it's not too far. Hell, I don't care if you get pulled home in a Radio Flyer wagon. Just don't create a danger to yourself and others by getting behind the wheel when you've had a few. Ever.

[MajorChode]

18. You're kidding, right?

[myrna minx]

38. delete - not worth it. n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

41. I read it..and immediately put the poster on ignore.

I guess I have become totally intolerant of stupidity in my old age.

[texastoast]

5. The laws are outdated, I'm thinking

Texas gave people a lot of chances to get their act together before FINALLY sending repeat offenders to the farm. I had a friend whose husband had SIX DWIs before being sent off. Tolerance made sense when we had just 9 million people or so here. Now we have krillions, and I'd say half of them not from here. The idea of "wide open spaces" is becoming yet another Texas myth. On a day not too long along that guy could have driven home and not met another car at 2:00 a.m. and been most likely to kill only himself. What a horrible shame for this family. God, I'm old when I say it's best to be home before midnight because of all the loonie drunks and the cops out to find them are on the road here in Texas.

It is obvious that Mothers Against Drunk Driving's efforts tick off the alcoholic beverage industry or we would be farther along the path to updating our laws. That's my take on why we aren't progressed.

[rocktivity]

19. Hooray, he's hit the trifecta

:eyes:
rocktivity

[ProgressiveProfessor]

22. He had a lot more than 3. Estimates vary but for everytime one is caught, they were DUI many more

[marmar]

6. Pathetic loser.

nt

[brewens]

7. DWI also means driving while idiot. It doesn't say what his blood

alcohol level was. Looking at his pic I'd be willing to bet it was pretty high. Still, alcohol doesn't force someone to drive like a maniac. Most people are even more careful when they've had a few because they don't want any trouble.
I'd like to know what this guys driving record was like aside from the two previous DUI's. It's always seemed to me that it should be way easier to lose driving privileges and permanently in some cases. Prohibit someone from owning or buying a car if they don't have a license and insurance. Have large fines for anyone allowing an unlicensed driver to operate their vehicle. Driver licenses should not be valid if they are not insured.
We should start people out as kids learning to drive with the knowledge that if you screw up too bad you're done driving.

[fishbulb703]

49. +1

Idiotic driving is a much more dangerous problem than drunk driving, although the two often mix.

[LuckyLib]

10. Our metro paper has been doing a huge series on this. Restrict their licenses?

They drive anyway. Revoke them? They drive. Impound cars? They get one from a sympathetic friend or relative. Anyone arrested for 3, 4, 5, 9 DWIs has driven hundreds of times without getting caught. Eventually, they will kill someone. But courts are notoriously lenient about drunk driving. Local woman returning from a graduation party for her daughter, bombed. Loses control of the car, drives up on a curb, kills a guy standing there talking to someone. She gets a year in the workhouse. We seem to have sympathy for folks because they didn't intend to hurt anyone. Bull. Throw the book at them.

:mad:

[Berry Cool]

24. We have sympathy for folks because our society still relates more to the plight of the drunk driver

and we put ourselves in his place more easily than we put ourselves in the place of his victims.

We look at the guy who drove drunk and killed someone and say "There but for the grace of God go I." We think of all the times many of us climbed behind the wheel after having one or two or maybe sometimes more and somehow managed to get away safe and uncaught--thus, we feel way too sorry for he who got caught.

We should be feeling sorry for the one who did nothing but be unlucky enough to be in his path when he lost control. But it's harder to put ourselves in that person's place. We don't want to think about that happening to us. So all too often our society sympathizes more with the driver than with his victims.

We need to start regarding drunk drivers not as hapless victims of circumstance who were "unlucky enough to get caught" but as people who made a deliberate, conscientious decision to get behind the wheel of a vehicle and drive it despite being incapacitated. We need to think of them as we would of a person who had a few beers and then started waving a gun around and pointing it at people. Only then will we lose our current unhealthy level of sympathy for them, and correctly ascribe to drunk drivers the level of responsibility and guilt they deserve.

Oh, and it also might help to make our whole society less dependent on the personal operation of a motor vehicle in order to get places. In societies in which people are less dependent on personal vehicles, drunk people, or people whose driving has been restricted because they have driven drunk, feel they have many more options than to drive themselves everywhere. In societies in which people are less dependent on personal vehicles, the removal of driving privileges is not tantamount to destroying a person's job and social life, and is thus an easier punishment for society to stomach doling out to the drunk driver as a fair response to his wrongdoing.

As things are, many of us are reluctant to revoke driving privileges to anyone, so highly do we regard them as essential to basic life. And we become angry at the very idea of anyone telling us that for some reason or other, we can't or shouldn't drive. We need to become a society that truly regards driving as a privilege reserved to the mature, sober and responsible, not an inheritance we all come into automatically at age sixteen and that is revoked only after we have proven time and time and time and time and TIME again that we are untrustworthy behind the wheel.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. A guy here killed a 12 year old boy last week; he was high on PCP and driving on a suspended license

http://www.kctv5.com/news/22993952/detail.html

[salguine]

13. Just euthanize his worthless ass. He's breathing air that decent people could use.

[Bluebear]

14. Too easy, salguine.

I don't believe in the death penalty, for one thing it's the easy way out. He can fester in a cell for 4 decades thinking about this.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

21. I have no problem with that.

[Jkid]

23. Why do people still drive drunk knwoing the consequences of their actions?

He could have called a friend, got a taxi... But he still drove drunk.

[blueamy66]

47. Because alcoholism is a disease.

Why do schizophrenics not take their drugs?

[proteus_lives]

25. He belongs in prison for the rest of his life.

[JoeyT]

26. Why the hell was the passenger not driving?

Were they as shitty as he was? It's also probable he's either driving on a suspended or revoked license: Most places require that for your 2nd DUI.

What are we going to have to do, require breath-o-lyzers on EVERY car in order to make them run?

No. That's just about one of the worst solutions. Perhaps make it mandatory for DUI/DWI offenders for a year on the first offense and indefinitely on the 2nd. Even then anything can be bypassed by someone that wants to do it badly enough.

Edited to add: He doesn't deserve jail, he deserves prison. Which is what he's going to get.

[elocs]

28. Any of us here are probably in more danger from being injured or killed by a drunk driver

than of being the victim of any kind of violent crime. Where I live here in WI I routinely read of people being arrested for their 5th, 6th, 7th, or more DUI. It is still not treated seriously here in WI.

Oh yeah, remember the PSAs: Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving!

"Oh I just had a few beers, I'm not really drunk". What a crock.

[tango-tee]

29. This guy is tanked to the gills.

Three DWIs? He ended up killing someone other than himself and is now charged with murder? Good.

[thotzRthingz]

31. re: "What are we going to have to do" ... three strikes and you're out?

Actually, in my mind, there is no excuse for DUI ... it's not as if everyone issued a driver's license isn't keenly aware of the law! I say:

1st DUI -- where there is no personal or property damage... mandatory 90 days in prison!

2nd DUI -- where there is no personal or property damage... mandatory five years in prison!

3rd DUI -- where there is no personal or property damage... mandatory ten years in prison!

... penalties to be more severe, where property is damaged and/or personal injury occurs.

[malaise]

34. Bet he's against all that big govmint nonsense

like records of DUI. Throw away the fugging key.

[Blue_Tires]

37. I hope Bill O' gets right on this...

After all, he made a NATIONAL case (and publicly called out our Dem mayor at the time) about a local incident where an EVUL illegal Messican killed a blonde teen in a DUI...

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

40. One DWI = suspend license for a year. Two DWIs = revoke license forever.

Caught driving while in any of the above situations, EVEN SOBER = serious prison time.

[LanternWaste]

42. There's simply no good reason for me to be around drunks...

There's simply no good reason for me to be around drunks. Especially the weekend-drunk crowd.


A shame we don't have an auto-detector for the buffoon who thinks he's "sober enough to drive...", or the dolt who thinks "I can text and drive safely...".

[Romulox]

48. This puts the thread about testing drivers for marijuana into perspective.

Don't need to drown any witches to tell that the guy above was impaired. :hi: