Proposals by two San Francisco Bay Area legislators that would impose even harsher penalties against repeat DUI offenders would be overkill, prominent local attorney Kerry Steigerwalt told a television audience today.

In an interview broadcast on KNSD, Channel 7/39, Steigerwalt said the criminal justice system and the state Department of Motor Vehicles already have measures in place to adequately punish repeat offenders.

Steigerwalt was interviewed by KNSD reporter Gene Cubbison in the fallout of a highly publicized case in Northern California in which a Burlingame man still had a valid driver’s license when he was charged with his ninth DUI offense recently.

State Senators Leland Yee and Jerry Hill told the San Mateo County Times that more laws are needed to automatically strip multiple offenders of their licenses.

Steigerwalt told Cubbison that California already has some of the strictest laws in the country against repeat offenders and that judges and the DMV already can strip a repeat offender of their license for from three years to life.
“There are adequate parameters in place within which to address the problem without getting into a 3-Strikes scenario,” said Steigerwalt.

Steigerwalt, who has over three decades of criminal defense experience in San Diego County ranging from drunken driving to death penalty cases, said any new laws would be, at best, duplicative.

“There would be constitutional challenges that would probably prevail,” he said. “Why should we spend this time imposing another law over one that already exists?”

Pacific Law Center

Tags: california, DUI, pacific law center, Penalties