May 28, 2023 11:00am by David Farrar

Killer drink driver gets reduced sentence

The children of a woman killed by a drink-driver who had dozens of previous motoring convictions have branded a judge’s decision to cut his sentence “sickening”.

Damian and Emma Hands said the justice system was “unfair” and designed to “protect even clear-cut guilty criminals” after Justice Jonathan Eaton slashed five months from a jail term handed to Brian Ralph Lewis.

Lewis, who had already been convicted 10 times for drink-driving, was more than three times the legal limit when his car weaved across a West Coast road on April 30 last year and ploughed into one driven by Kathy Sexton.

Sexton was killed, and her two young passengers both almost died.

Lewis was jailed in Greymouth District Court for three years and two months in March, a sentence which Emma Hands called “pathetic”.

But now she and her family are further heartbroken after Justice Eaton reduced it to two years and nine months following an appeal by Lewis

Both sentences are insultingly light for loss of life. His actions at a minimum should be manslaughter.

This is not a case of someone who made a one off bad decision to drive having had a couple of drinks too many. He is a hardened recidivist who doesn’t; give an off about the law.

He has 43 driving related convictions, including 26 for driving while disqualified, seven for dangerous/reckless driving and 10 for drunk driving. Leaving him at large meant him killing someone was almost inevitable. And having killed someone, he’ll be out again in barely a few months.

As most of us will know, it is rare to be pulled over at a checkpoint. At best it might happens once every hundred times you drive in the evening, So this guy hasn’t driven drunk ten times, has has beyond doubt driven drunk thousands of times.

We should have a graduated regime for recidivist drink drivers, along the lines of: