Bill would make fifth DUI a felony

OLYMPIA – Five times, it seems, is the charm for lawmakers fighting drunken drivers.

After years of weighing the societal costs of drunken driving against the price of a prison cell, state lawmakers have hashed out a compromise intended to keep chronic drunks off the road.

Rep. Pat Lantz, D-Gig Harbor, on Monday launched a bill to allow prosecutors to charge drunken or drugged drivers with a Class C felony for their fifth DUI arrest in seven years. As things stand now, lawmakers say, drivers can get only a gross misdemeanor, no matter how often they’re arrested for driving under the influence.

At a hearing in Olympia last month, Rathdrum’s Anita Kronvall held up a photo of her daughter, killed three years ago in Spokane Valley by a driver who was on drugs. Kronvall begged lawmakers to toughen sentences for repeat offenders.

“I’m willing to accept it,” she said of the five-strikes bill Monday night. “I’m not happy with it, but I guess we have to start somewhere.”

Jim Reierson, a Kootenai County deputy prosecutor who lives in Spokane, said the bill is weak. He cited a federal report that estimated that chronic drunken drivers drive impaired 80 times a year. In Idaho, prosecutors can charge a driver with a felony after a three DUIs in five years.

“The reality is that this is an empty shell,” Reierson said. “If they’ve been charged and convicted at least four times, think about how many other times they were out, impaired, on the road driving to meet their friends at a bar.”

Under the new bill, Lantz said, the “presumptive length” of prison terms would be 13 to 17 months. And it would be prison time, instead of jail time. Inmates could be released early if they complete a 10-month treatment program.

“This bill is forged on compromise,” Lantz said Monday. “In my opinion, it is better to pass some kind of legislation rather than none at all.”

‘On the books’

“None at all” looked like the likely outcome – yet again – when lawmakers got the price tag for an earlier proposal from Rep. John Ahern, R-Spokane.

Ahern wanted a four-strikes-you’re-out version of the bill, instead of Lantz’s five strikes.

But the Department of Corrections predicted a flood of about 1,000 inmates – enough to nearly fill up a new prison. Lawmakers said the tens of millions of dollars for Ahern’s bill, HB 3076, was too high.

Ahern, who’s a co-sponsor of Lantz’s new HB 3317, said he’s satisfied. He said the bill is just a start.

“The No. 1 thing I want is to get a felony DUI (charge) on the books,” Ahern said. “We can always scrunch the thing down in a year or two.”

Lantz’s five-strikes bill would cost the state about $3 million next year in prison costs, according to an estimate by the House Office of Program Research. That works out to about 141 drivers in prison.

“We’d get the absolute worst of the worst,” Ahern said.

‘These are real people’

Kronvall’s taking Ahern at his word and hoping that lawmakers will ratchet down the strikes in coming years. She was appalled by the debate over the $25,000-a-year cost of prison cells.

“What the hell is a life worth over there?” she said. “These are real people, with real children.”

Her granddaughter, one of two children that survived the wreck that killed her mother, lost two baby teeth. Yet there’s no mother for the girl to proudly show the teeth to. “They don’t even look at the costs to families when something like this happens,” Kronvall said.

Reierson’s skeptical that the number of strikes in the bill, if it passes, will ever be reduced. For years, he notes, Washington lawmakers have killed similar proposals in committee.

“I think it’s irresponsible” to pass a bill that waits until the fifth offense to allow a felony for chronic offenders, Reierson said. “It’s not a question of will they kill somebody, but a question of when and how many,” he said.