SPRINGFIELD -- Gov. Jay Nixon is getting tough on driving drunk.  He's throwing his support behind a host of sweeping changes meant to target repeat offenders.  The legislative package would boost penalties for offenders with higher blood-alcohol levels and is designed crack down on repeat drunken drivers.

No legislation will bring back Kim Kinnaird's son.  Her story, however, is just one of many that could help change a flawed system.

Law enforcement officers believe a drunken driver plowed into 20-year-old Daniel Kinnaird on U.S. 60 on Nov. 3.  The crash landed him in critical condition. His mother held onto hope but her son died six days later.

"I tell people, when people ask me, I say it's like going to hell and back," said Kinnaird.

What made the loss hurt even more is when Kinnaird found out the young man who hit her son was a repeat offender.

"He got out on a DWI on Monday night for $50, Monday night, the 2nd of November, and killed my son the 3rd," she said.

Nixon said the current laws on the books are doing an "incomplete job" of protecting families like the Kinnairds.

In multiple news conferences across the state Wednesday, the governor joined lawmakers to back the following changes:

•  Require repeat offenders to appear in state courts rather than municipal courts'
• Expand the use of ignition-interlock devices when a driver's blood alcohol-level was .15 percent or above;
• Make it a crime for any driver to refuse a blood-alcohol test;
• Require all jurisdictions to enter DWI arrests in a Highway Patrol database and eliminate current law that lets DWI offenders have their records erased after 10 years without another offense.

   

"As we have seen in our system in the last few years, we have seen increasingly the refusal numbers rise; that must stop," Nixon said.

The changes are meant to target repeat offenders, which made up about a quarter of all DWI cases in Greene County during 2008, according to associate circuit court statistics.

"There is a bigger problem then just the fact that these people are driving drunk. They're being enabled through our system to continually do it," Kinnaird said.

In Kinnaird's case, the driver even had a drug conviction that couldn't keep him behind bars or off the road.

"How do we send a message we're serious if you can't even get them into jail for four offenses, four felonies?," she asked.

Nixon hopes the new legislative package is that message, and Kinnaird supports the goal.  When she reads the state law, however, she thinks the right ideas are already in place.   What is needed, she says, is the courage to live by them.

"I want to see it enforced.  How about that? Just enforce it," she said, referring to the current laws.

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