A Young Man with a Long History of Driving While Impaired

Rabah Samara, the young man who took the wheel of the Cadillac after it crashed into and killed sports reporter Stephen Gates as he was changing a tire on I-40 in 2003 and drove away from the scene, was back in Wake County criminal court yesterday. Samara, now 37, plead guilty to misdemeanor impaired driving—resolving his fourth charge for that offense—and was sentenced to three years of probation and 14 days of imprisonment, which he may serve on weekends. The News and Observer reported that Stephen Gates’ mother, Pat Gates, watched Samara’s hearing from the front row of the courtroom. Advocates of stiffer penalties for impaired driving might point to Samara's case as evidence of the need for reform. Despite recent legislative acts increasing the punishment for misdemeanor DWI, Samara’s punishment did not approach the three-year maximum sentence that may be imposed for the highest level of misdemeanor DWI. That’s because Samara was punished at Level II, the level of punishment that applies to DWI sentencing when only one grossly aggravating factors is present. And Samara could not have been indicted for habitual impaired driving, a felony, because he had not been convicted of three or more offenses involving impaired driving within ten years of the offense to which he pled guilty yesterday. How could Samara have only one grossly aggravating factor?  The News and Observer reported that while Samara had been charged with DWI four times since Gates’s death, he was convicted of only three of those charges. The first DWI conviction was based on [...]