When habitual drunks drive, tragic results are inevitable

The death of two young people in a senseless head-on collision is a tragedy. When the driver of the other vehicle is fleeing a state trooper, it is a crime. And when the other driver has a history of 11 drunken driving arrests, that is an outrage.
Two weeks ago, Kirtland mourned the death of Grace J. Chamberlain, 18, a freshman at Hiram College who was killed in a March 2 crash near Burton. Today, Champion mourns the loss of Andrew Hopkins, also 18, who was injured in the same accident and died Monday. A third Hiram student, Evan C. DaSilva, 19, of Rhodes Island, remains hospitalized.
Only now, the driver of the truck that rammed into Hopkins car, James D. Cline, 47, of Burton, is where he belongs: in jail. If convicted of the charges that are piling up against him, he will spend a very long time in prison, but not long enough.
Too many breaks
The state of Ohio failed Hopkins, Chamberlain and DaSilva miserably. Time and time again, judges had the opportunity to put Cline behind bars, and time and time again, he got a break.
Ohio law has been tightened up in recent years, but it remains inadequate to deal with the likes of Cline, and, as inadequate as it is, judges seldom give habitual drunken drivers the maximum penalty. The law provides for a 4th-time drunken driver to be sentenced to a year in prison and fined $10,000. We wonder, would Cline have racked up six or seven more drunken driving convictions if he had gotten the maximum sentence? We doubt it.
As it is, Cline now faces one count of aggravated vehicular homicide two counts of aggravated vehicular assault and one count of 4th degree felony DUI. A second count of vehicular homicide is almost certain.
It appears that Cline's life is now ruined. He's in the Geauga County Jail on a $150,000 bond on the charges filed against him in Chardon Municipal Court, and is also being held without bond because his latest arrest violated his probation for one of his previous DUIs.
That is little or no consolation to his victims and their families. And it is a decidedly bad deal for society.
Weighing the cost
Imprisoning people is expensive. But in Cline's case it was clearly in order. Short jail terms, license suspensions or revocations and fines did not work. For whatever reason, judges in three counties -- Trumbull, Lake and Geauga -- felt compelled to give Cline another chance. For some reason, Ohio's legislators cannot bring themselves to say that at some point -- five, six, seven arrests? -- a recidivist drunken driver should start looking at five, 10 or 15 years in prison.
By all accounts, the three young Hiram students had every reason to anticipate bright futures and productive lives. Two of those lives were snuffed out, and one changed forever. In exchange, society got to have James Cline drink and drive without any regard for others. Ohio law and its judges made a bad bargain.
This is not a new topic for us. Seven years ago we railed against weaknesses in the law that allowed a Mahoning Valley driver to accumulate 18 DUI charges in a half-dozen courts without facing a felony count because the law at the time required four arrests in a single jurisdiction before the felony provision kicked in. The law was changed.
But the carnage continues A year after we wrote about the 18-time loser, another multiple-arrest drunken driver killed a Lordstown woman and her daughter. Others have been killed and maimed.
Why must Ohio's legislators and judges wait until it is too late to realize that freedom for a James Cline is not worth the life of a Grace Chamberlain or Andrew Hopkins?