Broward DUI Lawyer Blog

A 45-year-old woman will spend the next two decades in prison after recently being convicted of DUI manslaughter in West Palm Beach when she drove into construction workers, killing two of them, The Palm Beach Post reports.

In Florida, DUI manslaughter is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and judges are typically unlikely to scale back the penalties in order to make a statement to others.

Fighting these charges is the only way to go. That requires the skills of an experienced West Palm Beach DUI defense lawyer. Police can and sometimes do make mistakes in these types of cases. It's the job of a lawyer to analyze every aspect of the case and ensure that all evidence is scrutinized.

In this case, the woman was charged with plowing into three construction workers. Two of them -- a 34-year-old Palm Beach County man and a 53-year-old Stone Mountain, Georgia, man -- were killed.

In a video introduced into evidence, it shows the woman with slowed reflexes and slurred speech telling officers she wants to speak with a lawyer. But they then tell her at least one person was dead. She then tells the officers to take her to jail since she "killed somebody."

The judge told her that it was her ability to choose to drive and have that type of conversation with police that led him to sentence her to 20 years in prison.

"For someone to be that impaired, but still be able to put a key in the ignition and drive for at least a few miles before this crash, that shows that there was some cognitive ability there for you to know that you were drunk," Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath told her.

The emotional sentencing hearing included family of the Georgia man telling stories and playing a photo slide show of the man's life. The wife of the Palm Beach man told the judge she will now have to raise her four children alone.

The crash happened on Alternate A1A around 12:30 a.m. June 26, 2009, in Jupiter. A third man, a 39-year-old from Palm Beach County, was injured but not killed. The woman told investigators she was driving home from a party at the time. Police said her blood-alcohol level was .235, which is almost three times the state's legal limit of .08.

Hearings involving DUI manslaughter are always emotional. The victim's family is always enraged that such a preventable death happened, while the defendant's family tries passionately to convince a judge that such a one-time mistake shouldn't ruin their life.

In some cases, taking a pro-active approach, such as entering into alcohol treatment and volunteering to talk to people about the dangers of drinking and driving before trial, can help mitigate the sentence.
The strategy of a defendant and their attorney depends on the facts of the case. And every case is different. Investigators sometimes have very little to work with or a lot of evidence and whether it is credible or not makes a big difference.