Melanie's Story

A first-hand story from the grandfather of 13-year-old victim Melanie Powell
Memories of Melanie: A photo slideshow

STORIES

State ranked among the worst in nation
Quincy judge was among first to take a hard line

GRAPHICS

PART 1
TIMELINE: How Massachusetts drunken driving law has changed
Alcohol's causes and effects
How local and state courts treat repeat drunken drivers
Busiest courts in state for drunken driving arraignments

PART 2
The cost of drunken driving

PART 3
Massachusetts fails compared with other states
Death toll from drunken driving

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Editorial

Melanie’s Bill gets a hearing

Tuesday (Sept. 13, 2005) is a day of reckoning on Beacon Hill.

Tuesday is the day legislators will reckon with the wreckage left behind by repeat drunken drivers.

Not the shattered glass and twisted steel but the human wreckage: unfinished lives, injuries that are a reminder for decades of a meeting with metal, torment and sorrow that never ends.

The Judiciary Committee hearing on Melanie’s Bill has been anticipated all summer by victims of repeat drunken drivers and their families and friends.

Melanie’s Bill is where they have chosen to make their stand. Enough.

They want new laws that will reflect the severity of the crime and measures to keep drunken drivers from getting on the road again. On the eve of the hearing, 67 of 200 legislators have pledged their support for Melanie’s Bill. That’s good, but not good enough. The Legislature is considered notoriously unsympathetic to legislation targeting drunken drivers.

Some specifics of Melanie’s Bill:

• A new crime of manslaughter by motor vehicle, with an automatic loss of license for life. The minimum sentence would be five years in prison, a far cry from the current maximum of 21/2 years.
• Jail time for those who drive with a suspended license and mandatory jail time for anyone driving drunk on a suspended license.
• Failure to submit to a breath test will result in a mandatory one-year license suspension, rather than the current 180 days.
• New penalties for those who drive drunk with a child under 16 in the vehicle and those with a blood alcohol level of 2.0 or higher, which is more than twice the legal limit.

There is more, and we do not agree with everything in the legislation, but provisions increasing jail time for those who repeatedly drive drunk are desperately needed.

A sample of stories in The Patriot Ledger in a one-week period last month illustrates the extent of the problem:

Aug. 23 - George R. Santos of Plymouth, found guilty of a reduced charge of fourth-offense drunken driving, leaving the scene of an accident.

Aug. 30 - A Hanson man with a history of alcohol-related driving offenses was accused of driving drunk on Route 27 during the weekend.

Aug. 30 - Scituate police arrested a man on what is his seventh drunken-driving charge. Police said Paul McAuliffe of Weymouth flunked field sobriety tests at about 11 a.m.

And these were cases in which no one was injured.

The public should not be satisfied until the Legislature acknowledges the obvious: tougher penalties are required to deter people who think they can drink and drive and get away with it.