Man wants bail, despite having 6 DUI arrests

PALMER — It’s not quite a record, but Thomas Beattie’s tally of six drunken driving arrests in 10 years is getting close.

Beattie, of Wasilla, went before Superior Court Judge Vanessa White on Friday asking his bail be reduced from $20,000 to $5,000 and that he be allowed out of jail if he agreed to wear a pair of ankle monitors.

But it was a tough sell to say the least, especially considering that when Beattie was arrested for his sixth DUI he was already free on bail while appealing his fifth.

Assistant District Attorney Paul Roetman, who was covering the hearing for his colleague, Rick Allen, opposed the bail change.

“Mr. Allen, who I spoke to prior to this hearing, was quite vigorous in the last bail hearing saying, ‘You cannot allow this guy to be out on bail. This will happen again.’ And now it’s happened again,” Roetman said. “This is someone who is an extreme danger to the public.”

Beattie’s most recent DUI arrest came Feb. 3 when troopers were called to a report he’d driven into the ditch on Creekshore Circle in a 1992 Ford pickup. He was charged with DUI and driving on a revoked license.

Prior to that, the most recent DUI charge he picked up was in 2008. That case didn’t go to trial until January 2009 when a jury found him guilty. In March 2009 he received his sentence, but in June he appealed and Superior Court Judge Eric Smith agreed to let him out on bail while his appeal was pending.

At Friday’s hearing his attorney, Craig Condie, answered questions from White, first about whether Beattie was out driving without his court-ordered third party custodian.

Condie said that indeed his client was in violation of a court order that night — his third party was not with him. Which, he said, proved that third-party arrangements didn’t work for Beattie but ankle monitoring, especially of the type proposed here, with dueling monitors to watch where he was and whether he was drinking, would offer more assurances.

“This is a very stringent requirement,” Condie said. “This is as tight as you can get.”

Ankle monitoring companies, he said, are very strict.

“They have not hesitated, in my experience, to throw my clients back in jail, even if there’s a question,” Condie said. “He’s still entitled to bail.”

Roetman disagreed.

“All (the ankle monitors are) going to do is tell us when he’s violated. We don’t want him to violate,” Roetman said.

In the end, White agreed to modify Beattie’s bail conditions on the new case, but left the idea of bail on appeal in the 2008 case up to judge Smith.

“I’m not going to reduce his performance bond by much because he does present a palpable risk to the community,” White said.

So she reduced the bail to $15,000 and approved the monitoring plan. But before Beattie can get out of jail, Smith will need to decide what this new case means for his bail in the old one.

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