Dallas Lawrence Is a Serious Alcoholic

The Oregonian's great court's reporter, Aimee Green, has this tale of the "serious alcoholic."

"Dallas Lazar Lawrence fell off his bar stool and drove away from Duke's Country Bar & Grill even though others reportedly told him not to.

He made it about a half-mile before he veered off the street and struck two 21-year-old women who were walking on the sidewalk near Southeast 158th and Division Street. They were on their way to catch a cab because they also had been drinking that night.

Share Monday, Lawrence was sentenced in Multnomah County Circuit Court to nearly six years in prison -- and another 2 1/2 years hangs over his head if he doesn't cooperate by testifying in a civil case against the bar that served him.
Both women have hired attorneys, but no lawsuit has been filed against Lawrence or the bar. The pedestrians' medical bills are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Lawsuits against bars for overserving are relatively rare in Oregon, often because it's difficult to prove in court that bar employees served a visibly intoxicated person.

But investigators say that Lawrence, now 25, was stumbling drunk as he downed drinks with friends that night. His blood alcohol content was about three times the legal limit when he plowed into the women at 12:30 a.m. Feb. 20.   Lawrence pleaded guilty last month to driving under the influence of intoxicants and two counts of second-degree assault.

Chuck Sparks, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, described Lawrence's actions that night as 'stupidity.' Under Measure 11, Lawrence will have to serve all 70 months of his sentence, with no possibility of early release.  'Thank goodness for Measure 11, frankly,' Sparks said.

Marie Ann Drennan and Rachel Nichole Barber suffered broken bones and ruptured arteries, among other injuries.  Drennan was still using a wheelchair at Lawrence's plea hearing nearly six months later.  The impact sent Barber 60 feet and into a parked car. Monday, she spoke about how she has suffered since the crash. She said she spent two months in the hospital, and during that time her 3-year-old son 'thought I'd abandoned him.' Her daughter, who wasn't yet a year old, didn't recognize her voice when she came home.

'I used to be very confident in myself and now because of his choices, my body is covered in scars,'  Barber said. '... I can't breathe normally anymore. I have to use an inhaler at times, just doing normal things like making my bed because my lungs get exhausted.'

Lawrence, now 25, offered an apology: 'I'm so sorry I did this to you guys.'   Lawrence's attorney, Scott Raivio, said his client has admitted he's a serious alcoholic, which shows he's working on his problem."
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As an attorney, I've handled a number of cases on behalf of clients injured by drunk drivers who were killed in situations not dissimilar to this story. 

The depositions that I took of the OurCounty coroner and toxicologists in those cases should have sufficed to have kept me and any rational person from behind the wheel of a car after drinking.  Nah, it didn't stop me.   Alcohol in my experience is one of those substances that has the cunning, and baffling power to convince your neurons that: "You're Ok to drive"  when in fact you are a menance to all other living things within range of your automobile. 

Don't drink and drive.

Grand Rapids', MI "Ridiculously" Drunk Driver on Trial for Murder

Barton Deiters a reporter for the Grand Rapids Press reports on the murder prosecution of Leonel Franco-Avina (pic) who killed local resident Aaron Haynes after stumbling behind the wheel of his pick up truck with a BAC of 0.425 percent.  This is the account from MLive.com:

Death came for the 30-year-old teacher in the pre-dawn hours, from a curvy stretch of the East Beltline at the hands of a man whom authorities say had a blood-alcohol level high enough to make four people legally drunk.  And that is why a jury should convict Leonel Franco-Avina not simply of drunken driving causing death, but of second-degree murder for the head-on collision on Nov. 23 that killed Aaron Haynes, Assistant Kent County Prosecutor James Benison told a jury Tuesday.  It was the opening day of testimony in Franco-Avina's trial in Kent County Circuit Court.

Defense attorney Christine Tober said the state has failed to gather evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that her client committed actions that he should have known could end in someone's death. Tuesday, the jury got to see video of Franco-Avina wandering around the Northland Drive Family Fare Store where he worked overnight in the hours before the fatal crash. It showed him cleaning the floors and spilling water as he tried to work a cleaning machine.

Employees who came into work that morning said Franco-Avina left big puddles throughout the store and did a lousy job cleaning. But none of them said they smelled alcohol on the defendant, and there was nothing on the video that showed him drinking.  But when he left work around 7 a.m., people getting coffee at the Starbucks or eating their Egg McMuffin from the nearby McDonald's say they saw Franco-Avina stumbling and falling down as he walked to his pickup, then drive over a shrub-decorated traffic island before exiting out the entrance of the strip mall parking lot.

Rebecca Kohn said she was driving on the East Beltline not far from Plainfield Avenue NE when she saw a southbound pickup without its headlights on slide into the northbound lanes. Around the same time, Robenna Banfill and her 18-year-old son, Joshua, also saw the wrong-way pickup.

'I said 'Oh my God, he's going to hit someone,'  Robenna Banfill said. 'And a few moments later, a vehicle came over the hill.'

Benison projected pictures taken at the crash scene showing the massive damage done to both vehicles; the engine compartments had collapsed into the cabs of the trucks.  Kent County Sheriff's Deputy Joseph Glynn was the first to arrive on the scene and saw Franco-Avina with his head gushing blood on the blacktop, his feet pointed at the truck's cab roof, trapped in the collapsed vehicle. He checked on Haynes, who was dead.

Kent County Coroner Stephen Cohle said Haynes suffered massive trauma, including a broken neck that killed him instantly. But he also had a ripped aorta that would have killed him if the brain stem trauma had not.

Michigan State Police crash reconstructionist Bruce Cojeen testified the impact of the crash was so violent that the two vehicles lost 45 mph of velocity in one-tenth of a second.

Personnel at Spectrum Health did a blood test on Franco-Avina, showing his blood-alcohol level to be 0.425 percent. A person is considered drunk under state law with a 0.08 percent content.

The prosecutor [said] that to Franco-Avina, whom he said was 'ridiculously intoxicated. This wasn't just drunk driving, this crosses the line,' Benison said."
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Terrific reporting of details by the Grand Rapids reporter. 

I don't have an answer but at some point we have to ask why our motor vehicle laws make a distinction between vehicular homicide and murder if alcohol is involved.  Are we "over-criminalizing" drinking and driving?  What was the intention of the legislators when they enacted separate provisions for vehicular homicide, manslaughter and murder 2?    If a person is so impaired by alcohol how does he or she form the requisite mens rea--or do we track back intent to the decision to drink, to drink too much?

I know that alcohol has the effect of "telling the alcoholic" that he or she is "okay" and okay to continue drinking and okay to drive.