San Diego DUI defense lawyers and San Diego DUI criminal attorneys are told that ten years ago, Linda Davis' 19-year-old son was struck and killed in west Santa Rosa by a DUI driver. Just one day before the anniversary, her mother, Beverly Rick, was killed in a collision with a car driven by 52-year-old Rosanne Starr Webb, who also died.

Webb had a long history of drunken-driving convictions and was wanted for failing to appear in court to answer a DUI charge. The role of alcohol in the crash is still under investigation.

Five days later, Santa Rosa police responded to another major-injury collision after 35-year-old Mike Tweedie of Santa Rosa flipped his pickup several times and struck two girls waiting at a bus stop with their father.

Tweedie, who has three DUI convictions and is suspected of driving under the influence Saturday, fled the scene, police said, and was arrested later at a nearby apartment.

DUI convictions were not enough to keep Webb or Tweedie off the road, and local law enforcement officials say there are thousands of others driving with multiple convictions. Unless a drunken driver injures or kills someone, they are likely back on the road within days of their hearing.

And if, like Webb, they fail to complete their court-ordered sentence, the warrant for their arrest may go unserved because police agencies concentrate on violent criminals.

“It’s a scary world, and nobody is really monitoring what’s going on out there,” said Davis, angry at the personal toll impaired drivers have taken on her family. “This woman had absolutely no business behind the wheel of a car.”

Neither the DMV nor the Department of Justice maintains statistics on how many DUI collisions involving injuries or deaths in California involve a driver with prior drunken-driving convictions. But traffic sergeants said finding prior DUI convictions on a suspect is common.

In Sonoma County, of 3,468 drunken-driving arrests in 2007, 3,300 people were convicted of the charges, Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said. Figures for 2008 are not yet available.

Most convictions statewide and locally were for first offenses, earning the driver two days in jail. But approximately 28percent of drivers convicted of drunken driving statewide are being convicted for a second, third or even fourth time, according to DMV records.

That adds up to 42,849 drivers statewide in 2006, the most recent year for which the DMV has figures. Applying that percentage to Sonoma County, approximately 900 drivers convicted of a DUI offense are likely multiple offenders.

And each year hundreds of warrants are issued for drivers who fail to show up to court or complete court-ordered sentences. In 2007, 308 warrants were issued for DUI-related arrests.

“It’s pretty inherent to say they are a risk to all of us,” said Sgt. Ken Savano of the Petaluma Police Department’s traffic division. “And a lot of our drunk drivers have priors.”

Tweedie, 35, is expected to enter a plea on charges of drunken and reckless driving and hit-and-run on Friday. He appeared in court for arraignment Tuesday, but did not enter a plea. He was being held in lieu of $190,000 bail.

Like Webb, Tweedie has a lengthy history with the Sonoma County courts on DUI charges. He was convicted of DUI three times in the county, according to court records, and completed the county’s DUI education program after each incident before the latest crash, which could place him in state prison for up to 10 years, attorneys said.

“Aggressive prosecution is our best way of tackling repeat offenders,” Passalacqua said. In 2008, Sonoma County had a 97percent conviction rate for drunken-driving offenses, he said. Still, unless you injure someone, judges are sentencing offenders to DUI education programs and, eventually, the offenders are back on the road.

One repeat offender, Robert James Feenan of Santa Rosa, has 12 DUI convictions in Sonoma County.

In August, Judge Elliot Daum sentenced Feenan, 49, to one year in county jail and three years’ probation for his 12th DUI, a felony, when he was arrested with a 0.23percent blood-alcohol level.

Feenan pleaded no contest and admitted seven prior DUI convictions dating to 1990, those admissable in court. But his full criminal record showed four more since 1983.

Daum suspended a four-year prison term for Feenan and required him to get alcohol treatment. If Feenan violates probation, he could be required to serve the entire prison term.

According to Feenan’s sentencing report, probation officers recommended the aggravated term of four years in prison — three years for the June 2008 arrest and a one-year enhancement for his 11th DUI, in December 2003.

Because of their age, the previous 10 DUIs had dropped off the “prior” list for Feenan. Until recently, only DUIs within seven years could be counted as prior convictions. Now, they remain eligible to count as priors for 10 years.

Since 1983, shortly before Feenan turned 24, the longest stint he has gone without a DUI was four years between 1999 and 2003, when he was in prison for a total of 27 months.

In 1999, he was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for his 10th DUI. But jail time has been brief, largely because he has not injured others on the roadway.

In March 2005, Kathryn Black, 43, was struck and killed while bicycling along Mark West Springs Road by Joseph Lynchard. Lynchard, with six previous DUI convictions, was drunk at the time of the crash. He was also convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

On Jan. 6, 2006, Marian Tumbaga, 39, was killed when Arnold Anthony Silva’s Chevrolet Suburban rammed her Ford Escort from behind on northbound 101 near Shiloh Road, forcing it off the highway.

Silva had five prior DUI convictions when he was convicted of felony drunken driving and second-degree murder and sentenced to 43 years to life in prison.

“There are many tools out there to make sure that repeat offenses don’t happen,” Passalacqua said. “But it’s ultimately the responsibility of the person to turn his or her life around.”

Some repeat offenders, like Webb, failed to appear for a mandatory jail term ranging from two days for a first offense to 120 days for a third offense. Others didn’t pay a fine, and some never appeared for their court date.

But serving warrants for DUI offenses takes grant money to pay for officer overtime, Savano and Santa Rosa traffic Sgt. Doug Schlief said.

“Typically, people with a DUI warrant aren’t real easy to find,” Savano said.

Officers frequently knock on doors of friends and relatives without result, he said.

“It can be difficult and take a lot of time to just track down one person,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to try and find them, but it’s difficult.”

Until money from a two-year Office of Traffic Safety grant dried up in October, Santa Rosa police officers conducted regular DUI warrant sweeps.

The department also maintained a hot list of drivers with multiple drunken-driving convictions. Officers, armed with the descriptions of vehicles those people drove, kept a lookout for offenders’ vehicles. But this program is no longer in place.

Petaluma, still working with grant money, has a similar list and continues to actively search for those wanted on warrants and monitor those with multiple DUI convictions.

Savano said these efforts have reduced drunken driving from being the third most-frequent cause of traffic collisions in Petaluma to the fifth.

San Diego California Criminal Defense Attorney Rick Mueller recently spoke at the California Attorneys For Criminal Justice annual DUI seminar in Rancho Mirage, California: http://www.cacj.org/Events/forms/DUI%20Brochure%20Final.pdf . The California criminal defense lawyers who attended informed the President of the California DUI Lawyers Association that San Diego California DUI criminal defense attorney Rick Mueller was excellent. Rick has been asked to speak again - at the California DUI Lawyers Association (CDLA) DUI seminar.



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