Drunken driver loses appeal

PALMER — A woman once described in court as a “poster child” for alcoholism lost her appeal on drunken driving and assault charges Friday.

Former Willow resident Dorotha Dupree, 55, crossed the centerline of the Parks Highway on Aug. 8, 2007, near Willow. Her Plymouth Voyager minivan struck an Oldsmobile Cutlass head-on, sending two people to the hospital with what troopers described at the time as “major injuries.”

It was a serious crash that closed the highway for two and a half hours. The collision happened on a particularly warm day, and a firefighter wound up in the hospital with heat exhaustion.

Media reports ended there, with troopers awaiting toxicology reports on Dupree. But troopers continued to investigate. The results of Dupree’s toxicology tests returned a blood alcohol level of .227, nearly three times the .08 legal limit for driving.

In April 2008, Dupree was charged with assault and drunken driving. In July 2009, she pleaded guilty to assault and drunken driving. Two months later she received her sentence, an event recounted in Friday’s ruling, penned by Alaska Appeals Court Judge Marjorie Allard.

“At the sentencing hearing, the Superior Court (Judge Gregory Heath) noted that Dupree’s offense was ‘about as bad as it gets’ for a first-degree assault, both in terms of Dupree’s level of intoxication and the seriousness of the injuries, which left the victims with lasting disabilities. The court also found that Dupree, at 51, was a ‘poster child... for alcoholism and a lifelong alcoholic.’”

Heath sentenced Dupree to 12 years in prison, with three suspended.

In handing down his sentence, Heath told Dupree that she had to serve at least a third of her sentence before she could be paroled, and that up to a third could be knocked off her sentence for good behavior in prison.

That “third-off” time is called mandatory parole. Parole any earlier than that is called discretionary patrol.

But Heath didn’t have that information quite right.

“Instead, she was not eligible for discretionary parole until she served her presumptive sentence of nine years imprisonment,” minus any time she earned off her sentence for good behavior, Allard writes. “In other words, Dupree would not be eligible for discretionary parole until around the time that she would otherwise be released on mandatory parole.”

And that’s what Dupree based her appeal on, saying that she was entitled to a new sentencing hearing.

But Allard and his colleagues disagreed, pointing out that Heath may have made a mistake, but it was a harmless one.

“The trial court specifically found that it had not relied on any assumptions about Dupree’s discretionary parole eligibility when it made its sentencing decisions,” Allard writes. “We fail to see how the remedy Dupree is requesting — a new sentencing hearing — would be meaningful given the Superior Court’s finding that the original sentence was not influenced by any assumptions regarding Dupree’s discretionary parole.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.