Drunken driver's jail time cut

Drunken driver's jail time cut

Judge rules man shouldn't get 'enhanced' penalty

Saturday, May 19, 2001

By SAM SKOLNIK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

A King County judge yesterday punched a hole in a 3-year-old state law allowing for "enhanced" penalties for repeat drunken drivers.

Superior Court Judge Anthony Wartnik ruled that a Kirkland man's vehicular homicide sentence should be reduced from five years to three.

On Jan. 24, 2000, David Shaffer's Nissan Pathfinder crossed into oncoming traffic in Kenmore and slammed head-on into a Subaru, killing the driver, Corrinne Tevis, a 61-year-old retired teacher.

Police measured Shaffer's blood-alcohol level at 0.30 percent, almost four times the legal limit of 0.08.

When Shaffer was initially sentenced last year, prosecutors relied on the enhancement law, passed in 1998, to give the state more leverage in going after drunken drivers. The law allows prosecutors to tack on two years to sentences in alcohol-fueled vehicular homicides if the defendant has prior DUI convictions.

Shaffer -- who didn't show up in court yesterday -- had been arrested twice in the late 1980s for drunken driving. But his lawyer, John Henry Browne, argued that the law didn't apply because Shaffer wound up pleading guilty to lesser charges of reckless driving and negligent driving.

Defense attorneys filed a motion to have the extra two years removed from Shaffer's sentence, and the judge granted the resentencing.

During yesterday's hearing, the Tevis family urged the judge not to reduce Shaffer's five-year sentence.

"When David Shaffer had his first drink on Jan. 24, 2000, he condemned my wife, Corrinne, to death," said John Tevis of Port Ludlow. "To know her is to love her, and he took her away from me and our three kids."

But Wartnik ruled there weren't "substantial and compelling reasons" to grant the prosecution's request for an exceptional sentence.

Wartnik noted that Shaffer's driving record was clean for more than a decade before the fatal crash.

Shaffer "may not have avoided drinking, but he did avoid drinking and driving while intoxicated," the judge said. "He drove legally."

"This is bad news, very bad," Richard Billings of Mothers Against Drunk Driving said of the decision and its potential impact.

John Tevis said he was disappointed.

"To get such a low sentence, the law is just not adequate," he said.

P-I reporter Sam Skolnik can be reached at 206-467-1039 or samskolnik@seattlepi.com

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