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| 8 Nevada DUI offenders to return to be returned to prison today |
| By rgj.com |
| Published: 02/19/2010 |
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Eight DUI offenders were jailed Thursday and will return to prison today after being required to finish their two-year mandatory sentences, causing some offenders' families to blast the decision while victim families felt vindicated. Charlotte Berryman, mother of one of the offenders, said the decision to return her son to prison was "destroying" him. "He was cooking dinner last night on the deck, and they snuck up on him and put handcuffs on him," she said of her son, John Berryman, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.288 percent when he smashed into another vehicle on Interstate 80 in November 2008. "He has two daughters. He had made a whole new life," Charlotte Berryman said while sobbing. "He has paid so dearly. He knows he did wrong and to this day he carries this hurt. It's not fair, I'm telling you." But Lisa Fuimaono of Fernley, the woman Berryman hit, said she was pleased that he'll serve his sentence behind bars instead of on house arrest. Fuimaono was in a coma for a month and in intensive care for two months after the crash. She said she remains unable to work because of her injuries, she said. "I feel bad for his children because I have kids of my own, but he's the one who did it to them, not me," she said. "I think having him spend only four months and six days in prison was a joke. I really don't think him being on house arrest was much of a punishment. "Maybe, he'll learn his lesson now." Eight people convicted of killing or injuring someone while drunken driving were held in county jails Thursday and will be moved to prisons today, following an order by Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto that the law requires them to spend at least two years behind bars. Masto's decision was in response to a Reno Gazette-Journal investigation released Sunday that found that 40 of 113 people convicted since 2000 of DUI causing death or substantial bodily harm did not spend two years in prison as required by law. Some were released on house arrest after serving three or four months in prison. In response to the attorney general's ruling, the Nevada Department of Corrections reviewed its cases and found that eight serious drunken-driving offenders were out on the house-arrest program. The agency ordered the Division of Parole and Probation to take them into custody. Read More. |
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Instead of incarceration, how about restitution, garnishment of wages to the victims. If Ms. Fuimaono is unable to work because of the injuries inflicted by Mr. Berrymans bad choice then it would seem to benefit the victim better to have him support her financially,than draining the already debt-ridden state budget.