May 30, 2010
Drunken-driving programs try to scare teens straight
Larry Hertz
Poughkeepsie Journal
As dusk fell over Pawling on July 27, 19-year-old Shane Smith was cruising down Route 55 on his motorcycle after a long day of work at a local landscaping company.
Without warning, a car driven by a young man who had been drinking alcohol and using heroin drifted across the double yellow line of the highway, slamming head-on into Smith and his bike.
About an hour later, Smith was pronounced dead at Saint Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, and the driver of the car, 21-year-old Keith Johnson, was in police custody.
Last month, a judge sentenced Johnson to prison for up to 10 years as more than 60 friends and relatives of the victim and the defendant watched from the gallery of the fourth-floor courtroom of the Dutchess County Courthouse.
Members of Smith’s family said they were gratified to see Johnson go to prison, but they said the pain of losing a loved one had not subsided.
“There will always be an empty chair at the table on Thanksgiving,” said Shane’s father, Larry Smith.
In schools, through social organizations, online and on TV, young people are often warned about the dangers of drinking and driving. They are taught, sometimes though stark images or heart-breaking stories of loss, what could happen if they get behind the wheel of a car after drinking. In the past month, some local schools had re-enactments of alcohol-related crashes as prom season approached.
Despite the education efforts, drivers 21 and younger continue to be arrested for drug- and alcohol-related driving offenses in disproportionate numbers.
According to statistics compiled by the Dutchess County District Attorney’s Office, about 6 percent of all drivers in Dutchess County are 21 or younger, but they accounted for more than 11 percent of 5,781 motorists arrested in Dutchess County in connection with such offenses between Jan. 1, 2007, and March 31, 2010.
The number of young drivers arrested on alcohol-related traffic charges dropped from 252 in 2007 to 175 in 2008 and remained level in 2009. But in the first three months of this year, there were 47 such arrests, on pace for 188 such arrests for the year.
Between 2004 and 2008, 280 people in the mid- and lower Hudson Valley died in alcohol-related traffic crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Of those, 45 were killed in Dutchess County. Only Westchester and Orange counties had more fatalities.
“I don’t know why people say time heals,” Shane Smith’s grandmother, Marilyn Smith, said last week. “I don’t feel any better today than I did the day Shane died.”
Jessica Segal, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Johnson, said such tragedies had become too familiar to her. Segal has seen nine defendants go to prison for drunken-driving deaths since she began prosecuting such crimes in 2005. Less than eight months before Smith was killed, 18-year-old Anthony Balzano-Schoen of Fishkill was sentenced to prison for killing 86-year-old George Chambers in an alcohol-related crash on Route 82 in Hopewell Junction.
“Nobody decides to go out one night and kill somebody with their car. It’s not an intentional crime,” she said. “But it has the same devastating effect on a victim’s family as a murder.”
Lessons for teens
Schools and several local organizations in Dutchess County are working with the District Attorney’s Office and the courts to try to curb the number of drunken-driving deaths.
Local judges routinely require defendants convicted of alcohol-related crimes to attend a session of the Victim Impact Panel, run by the Council on Addiction Prevention and Education of Dutchess County. The panel is composed of family members of victims of drunken-driving crashes who relate how such tragedies have affected them. Offenders younger than 21 are required to attend an hourlong session on the dangers of alcohol before they hear the speeches from the victims’ families.
Krista Wind, an education specialist at the council, said she hoped the additional information provided to the youths would encourage them to have a plan in place if they had no safe ride home.
Wind said research has shown the human brain is not fully developed until the age of 25, and the last portion of the brain to complete its development is the frontal lobe, which controls judgment.
“Add alcohol, which also impairs judgment, to that equation, and it’s not surprising” that teens are arrested for driving while intoxicated in greater proportions than older drivers, she said.
Wind delivers this message at teen Victim Impact Panel sessions.
Hopewell Junction resident Laurie Karagas — whose 19-year-old daughter, Francine, was killed by a drunken driver Nov. 18, 2005 — said every speech she delivers at victim impact panels and at school forums is painful. But she said she ignores the pain because she believes her message is important.
“I do it because people aren’t taking drunk driving seriously enough,” Karagas said this month after delivering a speech to Arlington High School juniors. “Francine’s story needs to be told.”
Peer groups
Elaine Trumpetto, executive director of the Council on Addiction Prevention and Education, said her organization works closely with students at most Dutchess County high schools through their chapters of Students Against Destructive Decisions.
“SADD chapters are an integral part of our community education program,” Trumpetto said. “I think we’re starting to see students and others in the community buy into the idea that these problems aren’t going away by themselves and more of us have to get involved.”
She said a coalition of school officials, parents, students, and business and civic leaders had been formed recently in eastern Dutchess County to address drug and alcohol issues among young people. The coalition recently surveyed students at Red Hook, Rhinebeck, Pine Plains, Webutuck, Dover and Pawling high schools and will analyze the data from the survey in the next several weeks. A similar coalition is being formed in southern Dutchess, Trumpetto said.
“We’re putting the message (about the dangers of drugs and alcohol) out there, but we have to ask how we might tweak that message to make it more effective,” she said.
John Jay High School freshman Gabriella Gurliacci said she joined her school’s SADD chapter last fall. Six months later, her best friend’s sister was killed in an alcohol-related crash in Fishkill.
“That brought the message home fast,” Gurliacci said. “I went to my friend’s house the day after the accident. That was horrible. That’s something you never want to experience . It makes you stop and think.”
Gurliacci recently took part in a Grim Reaper Day event at the school. Wearing signs carrying names of victims of alcohol-related crashes, she and other SADD members walked into classrooms in the school every 45 minutes, the average amount of time between fatal DWI crashes in the United States.
The president of Arlington High School’s SADD chapter, senior Elizabeth Raefryer, said she was proud of the events she and her classmates had organized to promote awareness of the dangers of drunken driving, including a Grim Reaper Day and a simulated DWI-crash, complete with an accident-damaged car and simulated rescue by local police, firefighters and paramedics.
Despite her chapter’s efforts to raise awareness, Raefryer said not everyone was heeding the message.
“I have friends who have been affected (by DWI crashes) and want to do what I can to bring more awareness,” Raefryer said. “But I’ve seen kids come to school drunk or high, and they think it’s a joke. It’s not funny.”
Jo Johnson, the president of Dutchess County’s chapter of the national organization Remove Intoxicated Drivers, applauded the work of local SADD chapters but said more must be done to raise students’ awareness of the dangers of drugs and alcohol before they get to high school.
“It has to start at home, and it has to begin in the schools when the kids are younger,” said Johnson, a Town of Wappinger resident who was seriously injured by a drunken driver in 1981.
Segal, the assistant district attorney, said she and other prosecutors will continue to speak at school forums until they are convinced that every student gets the message.
“We handle about 1,800 DWI cases a year, and 90 percent of the people we prosecute say they didn’t think they were drunk,” she said of the Dutchess County District Attorney’s Office.
Tougher laws
She said prosecutors have more tools to crack down on drunken drivers than they did even a few years ago.
Last year, the state Legislature adopted a law increasing penalties for drivers with previous alcohol-related convictions who are involved in fatal accidents in which drugs or alcohol were a contributing factor. It was under that law that Segal prosecuted Keith Johnson, the man who killed Shane Smith. Last month, County Court Judge Gerald V. Hayes sentenced Johnson to three to 10 years in state prison.
“I do not think it is fair he only received three to 10 years. He knew what he was doing,” said Shane’s aunt, Debbie Esposito.
“Of course, no victim thinks any prison term is enough,” Segal said, “but we’re now able to give these offenders some significant time.”
Johnson’s attorney, D. James O’Neil, said he had represented several clients accused of killing someone in a DWI-related crash. He said it’s never easy to explain to them that they’re probably going to prison even though they never meant to harm anyone.
Before the law was amended last year, O’Neil said, evidentiary standards were higher.
“It used to require a lot more proof to make these cases,” the attorney said. “Now, prosecutors don’t have to prove recklessness, only that the driver was legally drunk at the time of the fatal crash.”
Shane Smith’s brother, Ryan, said he and other members of the family were glad to see Johnson sent to prison for at least three years. But he said he planned to meet with state Sen. Vincent L. Leibell to ask that maximum penalties for such offenses be raised even higher.
“Everything I had to do the week Shane died was hard,” he said. “I had to call my dad in California and tell him Shane was dead. I had to pick out his casket. I had to pick out what clothes he would wear. And when I heard (Johnson) speak at the sentencing, I never heard his voice crack. I never saw any remorse. The penalties have to be harsher.”
Hayes, who could have sentenced Johnson to up to 15 years, said deciding on the proper punishment for such cases is one of the hardest decisions he has to make on the bench.
During Johnson’s sentencing , Hayes said, he had received as many letters from the defendant’s friends and family attesting to his character as he had from the friends and family of the victim.
“There are unfortunately two glaring differences,” Hayes said. “Keith Johnson had a heroin problem; Shane did not. Keith Johnson will one day have the chance to fulfill his potential; Shane Smith will not.”
The judge said he often speaks to high school students who visit his court on field trips. He asks how many of them plan to go to college or law school, and many of them raise their hands. Then he asks how many plan to kill someone on the highway.
“Nobody raises their hand,” he said. “Nobody thinks something like this will ever happen to them. But I see it, every year, in my courtroom.”
Shane Smith’s father, Larry Smith, who moved back to Pawling from California after his son’s death, said last week that he planned to speak regularly at Victim Impact Panel sessions and at local schools.
“It’s something I have to do,” he said. “I can sit at home alone and cry, or I can cry in front of people who need to see me cry.”
Additional Facts
How to help The family of Shane Smith is raising money through the Community Foundation of Dutchess County for two projects in the 19-year-old’s memory. One fund will be used to establish a scholarship for a graduating senior at Anza (Calif.) High School, Smith’s alma mater. The other will benefit drug and alcohol awareness programs in the Pawling Central School District. For more information, call the Community Foundation at 845-452-3077 or visit www.cfdcny.org.
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