SYSTEM FAILS ON KEEPING TRACK OF DRUNK-DRIVING OFFENDERS

The case of a Cape Girardeau man with 19 drunken-driving arrests over the past 30 years illustrates how the courts are failing to deal with such menaces to society.

Despite all of the public-awareness campaigns designed to convince people not to drive when they have had too much to drink, drunken drivers like James M. Bailey, 55, of Cape Girardeau will continue to plague the highways until judges start dealing out harsh punishments to those who insist on driving drunk.

The anti-drunken-driving campaigns might persuade the casual drinker not to drive when he has had too much to drink, but they have little impact on people like Bailey or the problem drinker who has managed to go unpunished far too many times while driving in an inebriated state.

It is outrageous that Bailey, who had at least 17 drunken-driving arrests, wasn't behind bars to begin with when he was first caught driving drunk on Nov. 1 in Cape Girardeau and again on Nov. 9 in Jackson, two charges that he pleaded guilty to. His arrest at Jackson followed an accident in which the vehicle he was driving struck a vehicle in which four people were injured. Bailey didn't even have a driver's license.

Prior to that Bailey had been arrested 17 times since 1967 for drunken driving in other Southeast Missouri counties and outside Missouri. His November arrests were his first drunken-driving arrests in Cape Girardeau County. They happened soon after he had been released from a Missouri prison on an appeal bond. He was in prison serving a two-year sentence for an unlawful-use-of-a-weapon conviction.

Because the arrests occurred over a period of 30 years, prosecutors couldn't determine dispositions of each of Bailey's 17 previous drunken-driving charges. They did learn that some were dropped because he didn't have legal counsel. But a number of his arrests resulted in convictions, and he was ordered by judges to attend various programs for people convicted of drunken driving.

Circuit Judge William Syler, who accepted Bailey's pleas, ordered a presentencing investigation and set sentencing for Feb. 18. For pleading guilty to the two class-D felonies, Bailey could be sentenced up to 17 years in prison because he is considered a prior and persistent offender.

Since everything else has failed to keep him from the behind the wheel, 17 years in prison would.