Española man given 18 months for 4th DWI

Joel C. Leyba, 52, of Española was sentenced Monday to 18 months incarceration as part of a plea deal for his fourth DWI conviction.

District Judge T. Glenn Ellington suspended 12 months of the sentence, and Leyba has already spent almost six months in jail or on electronic monitoring awaiting disposition of his case, so he’ll be released from the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Center on Aug. 3.

Leyba had been charged with his seventh DWI in the case, but Assistant District Attorney Marko Hananel told Ellington that despite multiple prior arrests Leyba had only been convicted of the crime three times in the past, once in 1986 and twice in 1996.

“Thirty years of this is about enough, don’t you think?” Ellington said to Leyba at his plea hearing Monday, adding that the Legislature has since increased penalties for DWI and that if Leyba did not address his problem his next stop would be the state penitentiary.

“Most people don’t believe that because they are alcoholics or addicted to something they might end up in prison,” Ellington said, repeating something he says frequently to defendants in his courtroom, “but it happens every day.”

Asked if he had anything to say Leyba said, “No, I just want to get out of jail.”

Leyba — who will be required to spend five years on supervised probation as part of his plea deal — asked the judge if he could be released Monday, and spend the remaining nine days of his sentence on electronic monitoring instead of going back to jail. But the judge denied his request.