Illegal immigrant with past DUI arrests drives drunk and kills missionary near DC

[alp227]

I was browsing the Washington Post website to try to find the investigative story about the American top-secret intelligence system (A Hidden World Growing Beyond Control, eventually found through google) and found this heartbreaking story. This is one of those stories that's gonna spread like wildfire on Free Republic and the right-wing web and inspire once again mass opposition to illegal immigration.

An alleged drunk driver involved in a crash Sunday morning that killed a Catholic nun in Prince William County and left two other nuns gravely injured has a record of numerous motor vehicle violations in recent years, including two drunken-driving cases for which he served 20 days in jail, according to authorities and court records.

The suspect, Carlos A. Martinelly Montano, 23, an illegal immigrant from Bolivia, was also detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a drunken-driving arrest in 2008. Montano was released on his own recognizance pending a deportation hearing, which has yet to occur because of a backlog, said ICE spokeswoman Cori Bassett.

Montano "has reported as required on a monthly basis to ICE" while awaiting the hearing, Bassett said. Gang members and other violent criminals are often jailed to await deportation hearings, but two drunken-driving arrests "aren't enough to warrant detention," said an immigration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the case against Montano is pending.

Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert voiced anger about the case in an interview Monday.

"He's thumbed his nose at the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia for years," Ebert said of Montano. "He continued to drive, even though his privilege had been revoked and he didn't have the right to drive. And he continued to drive drunk, which led to this horrible, horrible situation."

Montano was intoxicated when the 1997 Subaru Outback he was driving in the Bristow area struck a guardrail on Bristow Road near Wright Lane shortly before 8:30 a.m. Sunday, police said. The Outback, traveling north, spun out of control and careered into the southbound lanes, colliding head-on with the nuns' 2003 Toyota Corolla.

Sister Denise Mosier, 66, a former missionary in Africa who was riding in the back seat, was killed.

And this is the past record of Montano

Montano, hospitalized with injuries authorities said were not life-threatening, was charged with involuntary manslaughter, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and driving after an alcohol-related license revocation, which carries a potential one-year term, Ebert said.

Montano was also charged with drunken driving, Ebert said. Because the charge is Montano's third in less than five years, all in Prince William, it is punishable by up to five years in prison, Ebert said.

Reading from a computer printout, Ebert recited a list of Montano's arrests or citations -- under several names and Social Security numbers, he said -- for reckless driving in 2006; speeding on two occasions in 2007; public drunkenness in 2007; driving an uninspected vehicle in 2008; and three instances of driving after a license revocation, in 2008, last year and in April.

Ebert said Montano was not sentenced to jail for any of the offenses, all but one of which occurred in Northern Virginia.

The two cases that disturb him most, Ebert said, are Montano's drunken-driving convictions in 2007 and 2008.

About 3:15 a.m. on July 7, 2007, according to court documents, a police officer found Montano asleep behind the wheel of a car idling at a stop sign. After the officer ordered him to step out, Montano "was extremely unsteady on his feet and almost fell to the road," a police report says. It says Montano told the officer he had consumed about eight beers.

Tests showed Montano's blood-alcohol level was 0.13 percent, well above the 0.08 percent legal limit for driving in Virginia, court records show. His license was suspended after his conviction, but he was not sentenced to jail.

Just after 2 a.m. on Oct. 4, 2008, a police officer stopped Montano for driving erratically, court documents show. He told the officer that he had consumed five or six beers, a police report says. It says that a breath test given to Montano 90 minutes after his arrest found his blood-alcohol level to be 0.17 percent, more than twice the legal limit.

In Virginia, a second drunken-driving conviction within five years is punishable by up to a year in jail, and the defendant must serve at least 10 days. Montano was given a 363-day sentence with all but 20 days suspended, records show.

(sigh) Once again another big fat FAIL for justice. Seriously...Virginia only requires defendants in their second DUI convictions to serve at least only 10 DAYS??????? I'd put it at 100 days.

The basic issues:
- Backlog of deportation hearings causes some illegal immigrants to slip through the cracks and commit crimes at the cost of others.
- The state doesn't seem to take DUI too seriously for some defendants.

Hmm, I didn't know that Virginia lets any resident (regardless of legal status) to get a license. because the post reports that Montano had a license revoked even though he's illegal. Actually, Virginia does require proof of legal status for driver's license application. Virginia claims to be "tough" in its DUI laws...but how come they don't lock up first-time offenders unlike my home state of California (which provides up to 6 months for first-time offenders with excess BAC).

I betcha tonight that Glenn Beck is going to say: "The Virginia justice system conspired to kill a good ol' Christian by letting an illegal alien off the hook for TWO drunken driving convictions!" And the comment board on the Washington Post website is flooding with the usual immigrant- and Obama-bashing rants already.

But seriously, don't you think that at times justice is too soft on repeat offenders who pose risks to society? To counter the right-wing lunacy that "(only) illegal immigrants drive recklessly and rip shit up and kill good citizens", how about Cainan Schierholtz, the younger brother of San Francisco Giants outfielder Nate Schierholtz (all of whom are US citizens to be sure) who has previous DUI conviction from 2004 and got into a crash in 2009 before being arrested Sunday for alleged DUI; Cainan hit with his pickup a bicyclist, pedestrian, two vehicles, and light pole.

This isn't the first time I've seen a random incident of a good citizen being killed by a reckless driver.
- For example, the rookie Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim pitcher Nick Adenhart was killed in April 2009 after having played only 2 games in 2 years for the Angels and several for a minor league team in 2008.
- In November 2009, World War II veteran Isaac Hudson was killed after Arthur Lee Clark, Jr., a felon with convictions for drug, gun, and traffic crimes, hit Hudson's car and fled from the scene.

So is there really something that can be done to prevent tragedies that the cases of Adenhart, Hudson, and Mosier? Tougher, no-bargain sentences for drunk driving? While I as a liberal oppose the prison-industrial complex and the War on Drugs, DUI is serious enough of a crime that I'll accept any long sentence or fine for it as long as it takes for the driver to learn never to do that shit again. I would like government to do as much as constitutionally and humanely possible to keep the general public safe. Wouldn't tougher laws discourage the action better? It's one thing to merely take away one's license. But what's there to prevent said person from getting behind the wheel to begin with?

Finally, in the issue of immigration, given that this is reported as the consequence of a backlog, I guess that's the cost of an increase of deportations under this admin huh? BTW, I support comprehensive reform and a path to citizenship for any undocumented immigrant with clean criminal records but not for thugs like Montano.

[emilyg]

1. Almost identical to what

happened to my daughter. Thank God she and grandsons survived with just broken bones. This kind of story should spread.