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Show About Drunken Drivers Drunken drivers have increased ten times as fast as automobiles on the public highways, says Dr. Theorn Kilmer, police surgeon, who would have them severely punished. The idea has our general support sup-port but we would like to know hew the drunken drivers are going to be punished. Mandatory jaii sentences have been suggested and this sounds like poison until you start to think and then you lealize, all at once, that you can't put anybody any-body in jail unless you get a jury to convict the defendant. This seems to be the main problem, prob-lem, the securing cf a verdict of "guilty;" from juries UVit handle this class of cases. The problem is Intensified in smaller cities where nearly everybody knows each other and even if the driver of the vehicle was drunk there are a lot of strings tied up with his conviction. Certainly no thinking citizen has any idea that a drunken man cr woman ought to be allowed to operate op-erate as dangerous a vehicle as an automobile on the highway. When somebody is caught doing this, however, the plea is that nothing happened to hurt anybody any-body and maybe he won't do it again. The point is that if you wait until some terrible accident occurs to enforce the laws against drunken driving of automobiles you will probably wait too long. |