Searchable database of multiple repeaters to be online by Dec. 31
By Holly Zachariah
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A click of a computer mouse soon will be all it takes to find out whether a repeat drunken driver lives in your neighborhood.
A law that takes effect today requires courts to send information on such drivers to the Ohio Department of Public Safety, which will create and manage a searchable online database.
The name, birth date and address will be listed for anyone convicted of drunken driving at least five times in a 20-year period. Other related convictions, such as vehicular assault, vehicular homicide or driving under the influence of drugs, also will count toward the five-conviction minimum.
The department has until the end of the year to get the database up, but officials aren’t sure when it will ready, said spokeswoman Lindsay Komlanc.
Scott Woodworth, who was convicted this year of drunken driving for the 13th time, admits that he has always been a public danger. He says the database is a good idea.
People have a right to know who among them is a drunk, he said.
Woodworth, 49, is serving five years at the Pickaway Correctional Institution in Orient.
On Jan. 8, he swung through a drive-through near his Fairfield County home and bought two packs of cigarettes and a six-pack of 16-ounce beer. He was at home and had just cracked his fourth tall boy when his niece called and said she was drunk and needed a ride home from a Kirkersville bar in Licking County.
Woodworth grabbed his open beer and went to get her. A state trooper nabbed him as he pulled up to the bar. He took a Breathalyzer test and hit 0.177 percent. In Ohio, you are considered to be driving drunk at 0.08 percent.
He said he continued to get behind the wheel all these years because he always figured he was OK to drive.
“I was a functional drunk,” he said.
No one was ever around to stop him from driving. He tried treatment, but it was always court-ordered. It did him no good, he said, because he wasn’t ready.
Maybe he is now. This is his second prison sentence, and he feels old and tired. He attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in prison and says he enjoys them.
People can be helped if someone gets to them soon enough, said state Sen. Timothy J. Grendell, a Geauga County Republican who was the force behind this new drunken-driving database.
The legislation that Grendell pushed through goes much further. Anyone with at least two drunken-driving convictions can no longer refuse a blood test when stopped by officers.
Prosecutors say this is a powerful change.
“You don’t come up to a murder scene and have a man standing there with a smoking gun and allow him to say, ‘No, I refuse to hand you the best evidence you’ve got,’ ” said Delaware County Prosecutor David Yost. “So why should suspected drunk drivers be allowed to keep our evidence from authorities?”
The new law also mandates earlier court-ordered treatment and calls for more widespread use of a device that requires drivers to blow into it and prove that no alcohol has been used before a vehicle’s engine will start.
And those who violate their drunken-driving probation may have to now wear specially outfitted ankle bracelets that monitor the amount of alcohol in their sweat.
The legislation sets aside $1.8 million for more treatment and monitoring costs. An additional $2.5 million was earmarked in the state’s budget bill.
The county jails are full of drunken drivers. But repeat offenders such as Woodworth land in prison.
In the past 11 years, 2,979 people have gone to an Ohio prison for felonious drunken driving. An additional 462 went in for drunken driving and other crimes.
The repeaters are overwhelmingly male and white. Their average age is 39 1/2 .
In July, the most recent month for which statistics were available, Woodworth was one of 541 impaired drivers in Ohio prisons.
He is appealing his maximum sentence and already counting down the days until his Jan. 4, 2013, release.
He knows he’ll never own a vehicle again, and he hasn’t had a license for years. Once out, he says, he will get a bicycle and hope to land a job close to his home.
The devices that require someone to blow before starting a car, he said, would have kept him off the streets all these years. He said it was only by God’s grace that he never killed anyone.
“I don’t think I ever hit anything,” he said. “At least that I know about.”
Copyright 2008 The Columbus Dispatch