Washington State Man Gets Light Sentence after 7th DUI Conviction

In December 2013, a Washington State Man led police on a high speed chase in his $70,000 Ferrari after leaving a bar one night.  During the chase, the driver, Joshua Shaun Goodman, drove at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour before hitting two cars and a house, injuring a passenger in his car.  Goodman was arrested for his role in the chase and for having a .16% BAC.  The DUI was Goodman’s seventh.  In the months that followed, Goodman made repeated requests for modifications in the terms of his bail, once to attend a soccer competition in Las Vegas, which was denied, and again to see the Seahawks play in the Super Bowl in New York, which was approved.

Goodman was sentenced in his DUI case last week, and in a move that sparked protests, was only sentenced to a week of work release for the DUI, despite the number of prior DUI offenses.  Under Washington State law, he was supposed to get at least 120 days in jail, but the judge found that such as sentence would cost Goodman his business and the jobs of the people that he employed, putting too substantial a burden on him.  The result has been protests that Goodman was given justice based on the amount of money he has, rather than any definition on what the punishment for a seventh DUI should be.

In Florida, any DUI past a third DUI would be considered a third degree felony.  This would mean that under Florida law, someone who was convicted of a seventh DUI would be facing a fourth felony conviction.  The sentence for such a felony would be a maximum of 5 years in jail.  However, that does not necessarily mean that there is a minimum sentence if all the felonies on someone’s record are non-drug offenses or do not involve a violent crime.  While Florida judges are suppose to follow a standard set of sentencing guidelines that create a type of formula that would determine sentence, judges still have a great amount of discretion when it comes to sentencing non-violent felony offenders, even repeat ones such as Goodman.

The chances of Goodman being on the road at all that night would have been significantly lower if he was in Florida to begin with, however.  After his fourth DUI conviction, he would have had a permanent loss of his license, with no chance of it being given back.  This means that he would not have been allowed to be driving at all.  Even if by some chance he had been allowed to get his license back, he would have been required by Florida law to have an interlock on cars he drove for at least five years.  This would mean that the car would not have been able to start for him in the first place.