Man sentenced for 9th Orange County DUI

Man Sentenced for 9th Orange County DUI

A man sentenced for 9th Orange County DUI was from Placentia.  He was arrested in Placentia for Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID), and had 8 priors.  His case ended last week, on June 20th, 2017, with his plea.

The 53-year-old Placentia man was sentenced to four years in state prison for his 9th DUI conviction since 2011 in Orange County.  The Orange County District Attorney had brought the charges, but the DUI defense lawyer in Orange County, Marlon Stapleton, was wise enough to bypass the DA’s offer and obtain a sentencing offer from Judge Roger Robbins, the felony judge at the North Justice Center Courthouse in Fullerton, who handled the case.

The prosecutor handling the case, Christine Simmons, objected to the sentence.

His sentence, for his most recent DUI with all of his priors, including priors for driving on a suspended license, was as follows:

• One year in state prison under Penal Code 663 as a felony;
• Three years in state prison, the maximum for a multiple offense DUI;
• Credit for 283 days in jail against the prison time
• An order to pay restitution in the amount of $15,272.54.

He also admitted three misdemeanors for driving on a suspended license and without an ignition interlock device (IID) as required.

The most recent DUI case in Placentia, his ninth DUI, involved a DUI with an accident.  It was alleged that he drove into a Southern California Edison electrical box.  He was found to be a .11% blood alcohol level, and police discovered he didn’t have an ignition interlock device in his vehicle as required.

His prior case, (his eighth), a DUI in Laguna Beach, occurred on June 7, 2015. He was lane straddling and failed to yield when police tried to pull him over, according to probation officials. He kept going for a half-mile at about 4 to 7 mph, according to a probation report, which said the vehicle “stopped for about two minutes, then began rolling again before driving onto a sidewalk and colliding with a cement light pole.”

Police found a prescription bottle containing GHB, a drug which is undetectable in blood, breath, or urine in DUI cases, in his car.  His probation officer stated, at the time, “Despite any success the offender has demonstrated under supervision, he has shown by his recent arrest that he has substituted his alcohol addiction with another substance that is not detected by standard drug screening”.

His Orange County DUI lawyer, Mr. Stapleton, had shown evidence that his client had paid someone $50,000 a year to drive him around, and was undergoing family turmoil that had triggered his addiction. The man sentenced for 9th Orange County DUI likely needs help with conquering his addiction, rather than state prison time.

Contact our firm.

If you have questions about a DUI with a prior, please contact us today. We can help you with your case and minimize the impact on you from sentencing with the priors.