Drunk Driver Steers Clear of Tough Punishment

By his own admission, Adison Dean Taylor has been drinking heavily for more than 30 years. He prefers Scotch.

Repeatedly, according to court records, he has driven while drunk. He has been convicted at least nine times of drunk driving dating back to 1969. Earlier this month, he was charged in Los Angeles Superior Court with yet another DUI.

Over the years, Taylor, 52, has managed to draw only probation or short stays behind bars. He’s been in and out of courtrooms and jail cells. Yet the system hasn’t been able to deter him. It hasn’t reformed him. And it hasn’t dealt him truly severe punishment.

In part, that’s because he has managed not to kill anyone on the highway and even the stiffest penalties for drunk driving are not particularly harsh. And it’s partly because he long ago seems to have divined an inelegant truth about the criminal justice system: It needs to dispose of as many cases as possible as quickly as possible.

Taylor consistently has pleaded guilty at an early stage in court proceedings, sometimes as quickly as he possibly can. By avoiding the exercise of his constitutional rights, he has spared all involved the time, expense and turmoil of a trial--and, according to court records, received his just reward.

In general, Taylor’s various convictions have resulted in fines, a few days or weeks in jail, probation or a psychiatric check. Only three convictions--the three most recent--have led to state prison.

Even then, in two of the three cases, he got the low term of 16 months after entering earlyguilty pleas. In the other, he was sentenced to two years. Each time, he was soon free--in fact, he served barely a year of the two-year term.

Taylor’s court appearances were so brief that virtually no one in the system even remembers him. That worked to his advantage, too; he was just another entry on the docket in the grinding mill that is the Los Angeles criminal courts.

One judge said it was no mystery how Taylor had managed to avoid a maximum sentence.

“The fellow is apparently con-wise,” said the judge, who took one of Taylor’s guilty pleas but--like several other judges--didn’t recall it or him.

“Or he has a lawyer who knows his background so well that at his very first appearance he enters a plea--before the prosecution has had a chance to run all its records.”

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Prosecutors rejected even the slightest intimation that any blame was theirs alone to bear. Several countered that many judges still seem reluctant to impose harsh sentences for felony DUI.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kent Cahill, who authorized the plea bargain that led to Taylor’s second 16-month prison term in 1993, said it was his experience--he served 12 years as a front-line deputy--that judges long have perceived drunk driving differently than crimes such as rape or robbery.

Saying he did not recall Taylor and stressing that he was speaking in general about the court process, Cahill said:

“The rapist or robber says, ‘I am going to victimize somebody.’ The drunk driver says, ‘I hope I am going to get home without victimizing anybody.’

“When a judge looks at that--compared to the volitional crime of trying to hurt someone--especially in a case where there are no injuries, if you can get [a plea-bargained sentence of] two years, you had a good day. A judge isn’t going to go any higher than that--almost never.”

Taylor’s latest arrest also underscores the dilemma in dealing with a habitual drinker who persists in driving.

Taylor’s license has been revoked six times, most recently in 1994, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Judges have warned him he has a problem. And yet, should Taylor be convicted again, he can look forward to a maximum sentence on the DUI charge of five years in state prison--a three-year base plus a year apiece for each of two prior convictions.

And, of course, the prospect of again winning early release from California’s overcrowded prisons.

Though he already has three felony convictions, Taylor cannot be sentenced under the state’s “three strikes” law, which mandates a term of 25 years to life for a third conviction. Felony DUI does not count as a prior conviction toward a third “strike.”

Even if it did, safety experts said, long prison terms don’t deter alcoholics from drinking and driving.

“The 48 hours in jail that’s mandated for a first-time offender is enough to scare the bejeesus out of what we call a ‘NORP’--a normal, ordinary, responsible person,” said Alameda County Municipal Judge Peggy Hora.

“Short of amputating half his liver, a [repeat offender] needs to be taught to be responsible,” said Ed Kuwatch, a criminal defense lawyer based in Mendocino County and author of the California Drunk Driving Law handbook.

According to court records, Taylor, who has given police addresses in Los Angeles and Compton, has been drinking since his teens and has shown little or no interest in treatment programs.

“I pray for him every chance I get,” said his mother, Kay Taylor. “But the decisions he makes about what he does have to come from within himself.”

Taylor, now in County Jail, did not respond to a letter requesting an interview.

A state Department of Justice rap sheet indicates Taylor has used 14 aliases and three Social Security numbers.

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Because he has used different names and because older court records have not been computerized, it’s virtually impossible to know exactly how many times Taylor has been arrested for drunk driving and how many of his arrests have led to convictions for DUI. Court files show at least 20 DUI arrests.

The rap sheet shows clearly that he was first arrested for DUI on June 27, 1969. Three days later, he pleaded guilty--to the lesser charge of reckless driving.

Until 1989, Taylor’s convictions were for lesser misdemeanors.

On Nov. 21, 1989, he was nabbed by Los Angeles police officers after crashing a 1975 Chevy into a fire hydrant, a fence and a garage door in South-Central Los Angeles.

According to a police report, three breath tests put Taylor’s blood-alcohol level at 0.25%, 0.28% and 0.28%. At the time the legal limit was 0.10%.

That year, a new state law had taken effect that made driving drunk with three or more prior convictions for DUI a felony.

Three weeks after being arrested, Taylor pleaded guilty in Municipal Court to felony drunk driving.

In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed--in a bargain called a “certified plea”--to recommend that he receive the low term in state prison, 16 months.

Under a certified plea, a defendant pleads guilty in Municipal Court; the case then proceeds immediately to Superior Court for sentencing. Only if the deal seems entirely out of line--which happens infrequently--does a Superior Court judge take a fresh look.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James Dabney, who handled the sentencing in Superior Court, said it was standard operating procedure then--and remains that way now--for prosecutors to offer a 16-month term for a first felony DUI conviction.

On Jan. 2, 1990, Taylor appeared in Superior Court.

Judge Marsha N. Revel noted in the court files that Taylor had said he would refrain from using alcohol if granted probation. In red pen, Revel wrote in the file, “Ha!”

In court, she commented that the case marked Taylor’s “seventh or eighth [DUI] conviction.” She also told him, “You are lucky you are alive,” adding, “you have got a problem.”

Still, she sentenced him to the agreed-upon sentence, 16 months. “Pretty much, certified pleas are followed unless it’s so egregious you say, ‘This is outrageous,’ ” Revel said.

That August, Taylor was paroled.

On Feb. 9, 1993, he was arrested again for DUI, again in South-Central Los Angeles.

On Feb. 25, he pleaded guilty in Municipal Court to felony drunk driving--another certified plea, another 16-month term.

On March 11, Superior Court Judge Daniel Curry handed down the 16-month sentence.

Taylor was paroled Nov. 23.

Precisely a year later, at 10:35 p.m. on Nov. 23, 1994, California Highway Patrol officers arrested him for drunk driving.

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On that occasion, Taylor ran a red light at the intersection of Wilmington Avenue and Imperial Highway, smashing into a car carrying two Los Angeles men, according to court records.

Paramedics took one of the two men, who complained of leg, head and back pain, to Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital. On Nov. 29, Taylor was charged with drunk driving causing injury, felony drunk driving, and driving with a suspended or revoked license.

The next day, Taylor entered a no contest plea in Compton Municipal Court to felony drunk driving. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the two other counts and to a two-year stretch in prison.

On Dec. 15, in Superior Court, Judge Gary Hahn sentenced Taylor to the two-year term. A probation report noted, “There appear to be no mitigating factors.” The judge wrote on the report next to that statement, “Early plea.”

In an interview, Hahn said he was merely following the plea bargain. He also stressed that California court rules instruct a judge to consider, as a mitigating factor in sentencing, whether a defendant admits “wrongdoing . . . at an early stage of the criminal process.”

“It doesn’t come any earlier than [at a first appearance] in Municipal Court,” Hahn said, adding of the two-year sentence, “It’s not long enough. But it was something, anyway.”

Taylor was paroled again last Dec. 24.

On April 8, he was arrested after police allegedly saw him riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Officers allege he led them on a brief chase, then pulled to the side of West 53rd Street and surrendered.

Prosecutors charged Taylor with felony drunk driving and with evading officers. If convicted of the latter charge, he could draw an added eight months in state prison.

On May 3, at his first appearance in Superior Court, as prosecutor Kelly Chun pored over his record, Taylor pleaded not guilty to both charges.

Sources said a plea bargain had been in the works. But that was before Chun got her first look--that morning in court--at the file.

“He definitely poses a danger to the community,” she said after the hearing. Deputy Public Defender Arthur Braudrick, Taylor’s lawyer, declined to comment on the case.

Judge Michael Tynan set Taylor’s next appearance for May 23.

Meanwhile, the court files also indicate that, as Taylor was being arrested in the 1994 crash, a CHP officer asked if he “thought it was acceptable to drive drunk.”

“No way, man!” Taylor responded. “That stuff can get you in trouble. I ought to know.”