Drunken Driving

Former Orioles pitching star Sidney Ponson was released from the Central Booking and Intake Center in Baltimore yesterday after serving a five-day sentence for drunken driving - ending a year fraught with legal problems for the embattled athlete. Wearing a black Adidas sweat shirt and jeans, Ponson walked silently from the center's Eager Street entrance before being whisked into a black limousine shortly after 9 a.m. With the drunken-driving incident behind him, Ponson must now contend with a new charge lodged against him last week - a citation of knowingly making a false statement on a Motor Vehicle Administration application.

The entire undergraduate student bodies of the Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Naval Academy combined. The population of Bel Air, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. The average attendance at a Hershey Bears hockey game (the highest in the AHL). Every one of those descriptions represents roughly 10,000 people. By any way of looking at it, that's quite a large crowd. It's also the same number of people who are killed each year in vehicle crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers in this country.

Long-sought drunken-driving legislation to toughen penalties for repeat offenders and prohibit open containers of alcohol in vehicles appears likely to win approval in the General Assembly. But other proposals to crack down on drunken driving - including raising the penalties for drivers with particularly high blood-alcohol levels and automatically suspending licenses for those who refuse to take Breathalyzer tests - will face much tougher opposition, according to key legislators. "I think the open-container and repeat-offender bills will pass this year," said state Sen. Walter M. Baker, a Cecil County Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.

Carl O. Snowden, the former director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Maryland Attorney General's Office, has been ordered jailed for violating probation in an Anne Arundel County drunken driving case, according to court records. Snowden, 59, a longtime civil rights activist, was ordered Monday to spend 10 days in the Anne Arundel County jail, beginning April 12. Retired Judge Diane O. Leasure found that Snowden had violated probation in his 2010 drunken driving case because he had been convicted last year of possession of marijuana in Baltimore City, according to Henry P. Dove, chief trial counsel in the State's Attorney's Office in Talbot County.

A 43-year-old Carroll County woman was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for her 10th drunken-driving offense. Besides receiving the maximum term for her May conviction for driving under the influence, Brenda Lee Sawyer was given two consecutive one-year sentences for driving with a revoked license and leaving the scene of an injury accident. Those sentences were suspended. Sawyer was sentenced for crashing her vehicle into the rear of a state police car and fleeing into a wooded area in November - less than three weeks after she had been released from jail on probation from a previous drunken-driving offense.

A 43-year-old Carroll County woman was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for her 10th drunken-driving offense. Besides receiving the maximum term for her May conviction for driving under the influence, Brenda Lee Sawyer was given two consecutive one-year sentences for driving with a revoked license and leaving the scene of an injury accident. Those sentences were suspended. Sawyer was sentenced for crashing her vehicle into the rear of a state police car and fleeing into a wooded area in November - less than three weeks after she had been released from jail on probation from a previous drunken-driving offense.

A 43-year-old Carroll County woman was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for her 10th drunken-driving offense. Besides receiving the maximum term for her May conviction for driving under the influence, Brenda Lee Sawyer was given two consecutive one-year sentences for driving with a revoked license and leaving the scene of an injury accident. Those sentences were suspended. Sawyer was sentenced for crashing her vehicle into the rear of a state police car and fleeing into a wooded area in November - less than three weeks after she had been released from jail on probation from a previous drunken-driving offense.

CHICAGO - When a boss gives an employee a task, it's best for the employee to accept it. When the federal government tells the states to do something, it's prudent for the states to submit. In either case, the consequences of refusal are generally too painful to bear. But lately, something unusual has occurred: Washington has demanded action from state legislatures, and many of them have invited Washington to go pound sand. In 2000, President Bill Clinton and Congress decided that drunken driving required a national remedy.

Weekend in jail for man who drove car through field A 28-year-old Westminster man will spend this weekend at the Carroll County Detention Center for driving through a soybean field in September - a violation of the conditions of his release after his conviction in a June 1998 drag-racing accident on Route 140 that killed a Mount Airy Middle School teacher. Mark E. Eppig pleaded guilty in 1998 to automobile manslaughter and second-degree assault and served 19 months. Geraldine Lane "Geri" Wu died and her 15-year-old daughter was injured in the crash, which occurred as they were driving home to Westminster from Finksburg.

Drunken driving is a heinous specter hovering over our highways. So why would Sen. Walter M. Baker want to be its guardian?Maryland is one of only four states in the nation without a law that makes it illegal to drive with a blood-alcohol concentration of In fact, 27 states toughened drunk driving laws in 1994, some even lowering the level at which operators are considered impaired to .08.The House of Delegates just approved the .10 law by a whopping 122-9...

Michael D. Eaton ran up a tab for 17 beers plus other drinks before he left a Gaithersburg tavern, according to court records. Forty-five minutes later, behind the wheel of his Range Rover, he slammed into the back of a Jeep Cherokee at a speed estimated as high as 98 mph. Ten-year-old Jazimen Warr had nestled on her sister's shoulder, the two children sleeping in the back of the family's Cherokee on the drive to a relative's home in Bowie....

The civil rights director of the Maryland attorney general's office has lost an appeal of his drunken-driving case, with the state's second-highest court allowing the conviction and suspended sentence that replaced an illegal outcome to stand. Carl O. Snowden, a former Annapolis alderman, had contended before the Court of Special Appeals that an Anne Arundel County judge was wrong to take away the original probation before judgment he received on a 2010 charge of driving while impaired.

Concerned about drunken driving on a holiday weekend notorious for the crime, Maryland State Police pulled over more than 8,900 motorists this past weekend — and nearly 100 were drunk or impaired by alcohol. Troopers from all 22 state police barracks "made their presence known" by conducting stops targeting drunken, distracted, aggressive and lead-footed drivers, as well as those without seatbelts on, state police said Monday. Of those pulled over, 96 were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, 56 were arrested on drug violations and 133 were arrested for other crimes, police said.

Over the years, we have often disagreed with Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr. on numerous matters of law and social justice. But it gives us no satisfaction to learn of the Anne Arundel Republican's involvement in a horrific boating accident Wednesday on the Magothy River. The accident caused serious injury to six people, including Mr. Dwyer, another adult and four children. Mr. Dwyer had been drinking and operating one of the vessels, the "Baja," a 26-foot runabout that collided with an 18.5-foot Bayliner and sank near Cornfield Creek.

Preliminary toxicology reports show both drivers in a head-on collision early Saturday on Route 50 were drunken driving, Maryland State Police said Tuesday. Police have been investigating the Anne Arundel County accident that killed Terry Davis, 55, of Severna Park, who was driving a BMW convertible, and Brittany Ann Walker, 19, a 2010 Meade Senior High School graduate who was driving a Chrysler Sebring the wrong way in an eastbound lane of the highway near Davidsonville Road. Also killed were Walker's passengers, Breanna Marie Franco, 18, and Zachary Tyler Rose, 18. Rose was a 2011 graduate of Meade High and Franco graduated from Severna Park High School in 2011 Police haven't reported a reason that Walker was driving the wrong way on the divided highway.

A former Annapolis and Baltimore police officer is facing manslaughter and drunken-driving charges in a car crash last year that left one man dead. James Salyers, 52, of Gambrills was indicted last week by a Baltimore grand jury in the October death of Andrew Arnold-McCoy 19, of Glen Burnie, according to court records. He is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 9 in Baltimore City Circuit Court. Charges against Salyers in the 10-count indictment include running a red light and speeding, according to court records.

It's hard to believe after witnessing the daily idiocy that pervades Maryland's roads, but there's a glimmer of hope that the state's drivers might be getting a little more serious about safety. The hopeful signs come in a recently released study by the University of Maryland School of Public Health in College Park, which surveyed 850 licensed drivers each year between 2003 and 2009 about their driving practices, attitudes and concerns. The findings are a mixed bag. It turns out we're increasingly concerned about cell phone use while driving.

Maryland is one of only four states in the country without an illegal per se drunken driving law. What possibly could be the reason for abetting willful drunken driving?Vehicle crashes involving alcohol killed 200 people in Maryland last year. Such accidents are the single largest cause of death for Americans ages 6 to 33, dwarfing handguns. The economic toll of this carnage is put at $160 million by highway safety advocates, if one can cost out such loss of life.And yet Maryland law maintains a loophole that mocks this epidemic.

It might not look that way now, but MADD and its allies won a battle in the war against drunken driving during the General Assembly session that ended a week ago. The bill that passed in Annapolis will increase the number of drunken drivers who are compelled to go on an ignition interlock program, where they must mount a device in their vehicles that won't let them start the engine unless their breath is free of any significant amount of alcohol....