Four Oahu drivers charged with habitual drunken driving are looking at Class C felony convictions instead of petty misdemeanors under a tougher drunken driving law that went into effect July 1.
Gov. David Ige last month signed a bill into law aimed at cracking down on habitual drunken drivers who have more than two arrests in a 10-year period. If convicted, each of the four drivers charged this month will face up to five years in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Under the old law, they would have faced maximum penalties of 30 days in jail and a fine of $2,500 for a third conviction in five years.
In all four cases the drivers had two prior convictions in 10 years for driving under the influence and would have needed two more arrests before they could be charged with a
felony.
Because of the new law, their “third strike” means they can now be charged with a Class C felony, according to Capt. Ben Moszkowicz, executive officer of the Honolulu Police Department’s Traffic Division.
State Rep. Chris Lee (D, Kailua-Lanikai-Waimanalo), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, pushed HB 703 through the Legislature because “this kind of reckless behavior cannot be tolerated in our community any longer,” Lee told reporters Thursday at a Capitol press conference.
Lee was joined by Moszkowicz, representatives of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Hawaii and acting Honolulu Prosecutor Dwight Nadamoto.
“The Legislature, HPD and the prosecutor’s office are working together to make the streets of Honolulu a safer place,” Nadamoto said.
The law applies statewide, and Lee said it is one of the few pieces of legislation “that actually save lives
immediately.”
It also increases the fines to $250 from $150 for a first offense for driving under the influence; increases the maximum penalty to $3,000 from $1,500 for a second offense; and makes it easier to impose a maximum fine of $5,000 and five years in jail for a third offense in
10 years, Lee said.
“It makes it easier to be prosecuted, resulting in fines instead of hundreds, now thousands of dollars,” Lee said. “Instead of months of license revocation, years of license revocation. And instead of probation, in many cases it could be years in prison. This is something that is absolutely deadly serious, and we’re treating it that way.”
The new law additionally calls for the creation of a task force to consider other changes to curb drunken driving, such as barring the sale of alcohol to anyone with a revoked driver’s
license.
Overall, Lee said, the task force will try to figure out how to keep “the wrong kind of drivers from getting behind the wheel at the wrong time.”
