Judge hands Santa Fe man sentence for 7th DWI
A Santa Fe man was sentenced Monday to nine months in jail and nine months on house arrest for his seventh drunken driving conviction.
Paul Heidel, 63, also was given 12 months of suspended jail time and five years probation. State District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer imposed the sentence.
Heidel has spent seven months in jail awaiting adjudication of his case, meaning he’ll likely only spend another month or two behind bars before he begins serving house arrest.
Under state law, he will lose his driver’s license for life and be forced to have an ignition interlock device on his car for life. He can petition the court to have those sanctions reviewed every five years.
DWI becomes a felony upon the fourth offense, which is also when the mandatory lifetime license revocation takes effect.
Heidel was convicted in February on a DWI charge from 2015. Police said they found him passed out behind the wheel of his pickup, which was parked at his ex-wife’s house.
Heidel’s blood-alcohol level measured above 0.16 — twice the legal presumption of intoxication in New Mexico — more than three hours after police arrived on scene, according to court documents.
According to his attorney, Heidel’s last DWI conviction was a decade ago.
Richard Roth, executive director of Impact DWI, a nonprofit that provides education on drunken driving prevention, said it’s rare for New Mexico residents to pick up as many DWI charges as Heidel.
Roth said more than 50 percent of all people arrested for DWI have never been charged with the crime before and another 25 percent are second offenders. The remaining 25 percent is made up of people who have been charged more than twice.