Widow Outraged at Release of Drunk Driver in Death : Sentence: Despite vehicular manslaughter conviction, 18-year-old is freed from jail after 31 days and placed on electronic surveillance. Sheriff’s Department defends its action.

Two weeks ago, Lori Cramer sadly recounted to students at El Capitan High School the grim consequences of drunk driving that had touched the school in a particularly eerie way.

Her husband, Phillip, 34, a 1975 alumnus of El Capitan in Lakeside, had been killed on his bike near the school last July when a Volkswagen bug rounded a 40 m.p.h. curve at 70 m.p.h. and pushed him off the road and into Interstate 8. The driver, 18-year-old Renee Reid, who had graduated from El Capitan the month before, was in jail serving a year’s sentence, Cramer said.

But as Cramer finished her March 11 talk along with Bonnie Helander, a representative of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in San Diego County, a student approached Helander.

Did not Cramer know that Renee Reid was no longer in jail? she whispered. The student said she had seen Reid at a mall three weeks before.

Cramer was shocked. She called the jail and found out that Reid had been released.

She called the state attorney general’s office, which prosecuted the case because Reid’s father was an investigator with the county district attorney’s office and there had been a conflict of interest. They confirmed the news.

Because Reid was permitted to spend the holidays with her family, she did not enter the jail until Jan. 17 of this year. In all, she spent 31 days in jail and was released to a county electronic surveillance program, in which she was permitted to leave her house only to visit her doctor.

“If someone can step out of jail after 31 days for killing someone, it’s crazy,” Cramer said Monday. “What can I say? I think you should get punished for what you do.”

Sheriff’s Capt. Benny McLaughlin, who runs a crowded County Jail in Las Colinas, said it was an easy call to release Reid early on electronic surveillance.

“She fit the criteria,” he said. “She comes from a good family. She has no history of problems. She’s not a threat to the community. She has permission to go for medical interviews and that does not include stopping at the mall. If she’s doing that, she’s liable to be right back in here.”

Reid is supposed to wear a radio transmitter on her ankle that sends a signal to the Sheriff’s Department if she leaves the house. If she calls her “correctional counselor” and is given permission to visit the doctor, the signal is turned off. About 50 inmates are part of the program.

Renee’s father, Frank Reid, denied that his daughter could have been seen at the mall. “She has followed the rules of the program to a T.”

Cramer, the 31-year-old mother of a 7-year-old boy, had pleaded with Municipal Judge Terry Knoepp “to consider what’s been taken away from us” as she described before a packed courtroom how she spent nights alone in bed thinking about how her husband was killed.

“I can see his face, his eyes,” she told the judge. “And I pray that he never saw Renee’s car bearing down on him, that he never knew. But I know. His friends know. And some day his son will know.”

At the time of the accident, Reid’s blood-alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit. Her bottom row of teeth was knocked out from the impact of the crash.

Reid pleaded not guilty but was convicted of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, which could have brought up to 10 years in prison. At her sentencing, she told Cramer that “if I could turn back time, I swear to God it would have been me.”

Prosecutor Rhonda Cartwright said she thought a year’s sentence was unusually light.

“I’m not real happy about all this,” she said. “This sends a terrible message about drinking and driving.”

Knoepp said Monday that he had not been informed of the decision by the Sheriff’s Department to place Reid on electronic monitoring.

“My sentence speaks for itself,” the judge said. “As for what the Sheriff’s Department does to relieve overcrowding, that doesn’t involve me.”