News-Record.com

Thursday's lead editorial.

Speed and alcohol contributed to a car crash that killed four people and critically injured a fifth in Winston-Salem Tuesday night.

Two of the dead were teenagers. The suspected driver ran from the scene but was found by police Wednesday.

Beer cans were scattered across the wreck site outside Forsyth Memorial Gardens cemetery on Yadkinville Road.

North Carolina cemeteries are collecting too many victims of drinking and driving, despite changes in state law that were supposed to increase penalties for violators.

Until now, Winston-Salem’s most notorious recent drunken-driving fatality case involved former television news anchorman Tolly Carr. He was convicted last year of felony death by motor vehicle and sentenced to three years in prison. He’s confined at the Guilford Correctional Center in McLeansville.

Carr’s punishment was just, and it sent a message that, when drunken driving causes someone’s death, the killer will go to prison. That was the intent of a tougher state law that went into effect in 2006.

Unfortunately, the message apparently hasn’t been heard everywhere. Just last month, a young man from Graham pleaded guilty in Wake County to exactly the same charge as Carr but was given an active sentence of five weekends in jail for driving into a bicyclist and killing her while legally impaired. That’s how little a life is worth?

The cost is adding up. Drunken-driving fatalities increased in North Carolina last year more than in any other state, and in contrast to a national trend, the federal government reported in August. The total number of deaths was 487, 16 percent higher than in 2006. Nationally, the number fell by 4 percent. North Carolina was getting worse results despite having better laws.
A possible scandal in Johnston County could offer some explanation.

“The State Bureau of Investigation has seized dozens of files on dismissed impaired driving cases to examine for evidence of tampering,” The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Wednesday. A former assistant district attorney has been interviewed by the SBI and a deputy clerk of court has been suspended from her job as agents look at cases she might have handled.

An investigation doesn’t prove wrongdoing, but the possible implications are frightening. Leniency in sentencing is misguided, but tampering with DWI cases amounts to obstruction of justice. The people of North Carolina want drunken drivers kept off their streets and highways, and they expect the courts to make that happen when evidence of impaired driving allows.
This demands a high priority. Good for law-enforcement agencies that made 2,821 DWI arrests across the state in a special effort from Aug. 15 through Labor Day. How can so many drivers not know better?

Next, the courts should apply the law forcefully. Too many people are dying, sometimes by the car full.