SENATE PUSHES FOR MANDATORY JAIL TIME IN DRUG, ALCOHOL WRECKS

PHOENIX - A Senate panel Wednesday voted to require mandatory prison terms
for those who drink or do drugs and leave the scene of a crash that injures
or kills someone.

SB 1135 specifies that, if someone had any amount of alcohol or drugs in the
system at the time of the crash and then left the scene, a judge would have
to order him or her incarcerated and they would not be eligible for
probation or early release.

Sen. Slade Mead, R-Ahwatukee, said he introduced the bill in response to the
2001 death of Arizona State University student Jessica Woodin, struck and
killed by a car while she was crossing the street in Tempe.

But Jerry Landau, a special assistant attorney in Maricopa County,
acknowledged this law would have made no difference in the outcome of that
case: The driver, Mark Torre, was sentence to nine years in prison after his
conviction.

The problem, said Mead, is that a drunken driver who flees takes the
evidence of impairment with him or her.