Man pleads guilty to 10th DUI

The 10-time DUI offender should never drive again, a prosecutor says.

staff report

YOUNGSTOWN — The prosecution is recommending a four-year prison term, an $800 fine and a lifetime driver’s license suspension for a Sebring man who pleaded guilty to his 10th drunken-driving offense.

Paul Stillion, 46, of South Johnson Road, entered his guilty plea to the third-degree felony charge Wednesday before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who revoked his $200,000 bond and ordered that he remain jailed pending his 10 a.m. June 16 sentencing.

J. Michael Thompson, assistant county prosecutor, explained why he is asking for the four-year prison term. “There’s no helping this guy at this point. He needs to be prevented from hurting others,” Thompson said.

Stillion faces a mandatory prison term of one to five years, plus a repeat offender specification that gives him a mandatory consecutive additional prison term of one to five years, for a total sentencing range of two to 10 years in prison.

Also mandatory is a fine of $800 to $10,000 and three years to lifetime driver’s license suspension. “He just needs never to be allowed to drive again,” Thompson said of Stillion.

Stillion’s history of 10 DUI convictions began in Stark County Juvenile Court in 1977 and includes convictions since then in Stark, Columbiana and Mahoning counties.

When he was arrested for his most recent offense Jan. 6 in Sebring, he was on parole after serving seven months in prison for a previous DUI conviction.

When Sebring Police Officer Michael Porter arrested him Jan. 6, Stillion was driving under license suspension from his last previous drunken-driving offense, failed the field sobriety test, and refused the breath-analysis test, Thompson said.

The officer found the car Stillion was driving littered with beer cans, including a half-empty cold beer can, Thompson added.