Drunk Driver Is Given 3-Year Prison Sentence : Costa Mesa Man Was Convicted in Accident in Which MADD Chapter President Was Involved

A Costa Mesa man with a long drunk-driving record was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday after being convicted of felony drunk driving in an injury accident involving the president of the Orange County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The defendant’s lawyer claimed later that the case might not have gone to trial if not for the Orange County district attorney’s recent policy against plea-bargaining negotiations in judges’ chambers.

Dane Heftved, 26, was arrested last September after the car he was driving rear-ended a van carrying four people on Placentia Avenue in Costa Mesa. All six people involved, including Heftved and a friend in his car, were injured, according to police reports at the time.

Jurors found Heftved guilty of felony drunk driving involving an injury and of driving with a blood-alcohol content above the .10% legal limit. Heftved’s blood-alcohol level was .35%.

But Heftved’s attorney, Joel W. Baruch, was claiming victory after the trial. The jurors found that Heftved had caused just one injury instead of three, as the prosecution had contended. If the jury had found that he had caused three of the injuries, Heftved could have been sentenced to a seven-year prison term. But with the finding that he had caused just one injury, he could get no more than three years.

Superior Court Judge Phillip E. Cox gave Heftved the three-year sentence and told him he would have given him the full seven if the jury verdict had allowed it.

Settled on One Injury

The jurors found that Heftved had caused injury to Diane Hahne, 38, but not to Hahne’s husband, Charles W. Hahne, 41, the van driver. And two jurors refused to endorse a finding of injury to Laurie McCarthy, president of the Orange County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

“We might have entered a guilty plea, but we could never get the D.A.’s office to sit down and talk about it,” Baruch said.

Last October, Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks issued a policy prohibiting his deputies from discussing the dispositions of cases in judges’ chambers. The discussions could go on, Hicks said, but only publicly, in open court. With few exceptions, defense attorneys have refused to participate in such plea-bargaining discussions in open court.

“Hicks’ new policy is the only reason this case went to trial,” Baruch said. “Sometimes you just have to take a tough case to trial and lose it, just to make the D.A. respect you, let him know you’re not laying down.”

Baruch said Heftved asked for immediate sentencing “so he could get going on serving his time.” He asked for a 16-month sentence.

Baruch said later that Cox had indicated before the trial that he would sentence Heftved to three years in prison if he pleaded guilty.

Heftved was convicted of misdemeanor drunk driving twice in 1981 and once in 1983. A 1982 drunk-driving arrest resulted in a reckless driving conviction.