Oct 18, 2006 6:05 pm US/Central
DWI For Sealy's Killer Highlights Abuse Issues
by Mary Tan
(WCCO)
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Souksangouane Phengsene, 50, previously caused the death of Minnesota Timberwolves player Malik Sealy in a drunken driving collision in 2000.
CBS
Souksangouane Phengsene has been charged with another felony DWI. The 50-year-old previously caused the death of Minnesota Timberwolves player Malik Sealy in a drunken driving collision in 2000. Phengsene served four years in prison for that crash.
Now he has to fight his third DWI charge after an incident this past weekend. Crystal Police pulled him over just after midnight this Sunday morning. They say he was swerving and jumped a curb. He was also reportedly driving at nearly three times the legal blood alcohol limit, at 0.21.
"Even after a period of abstinence, you're no less alcoholic than you were before," said Berkeley Lewis of Addiction Recovery Professionals, Inc. "One drink, generally, will return people to problematic drinking."
Lewis is an alcohol addiction specialist. It is unknown whether Phengsene got alcohol treatment during his time in prison but, according to Lewis, a person has to want to change his habits. Sometimes it may take many offenses for that person to achieve this change.
This year, there have been more than 11,000 DWI cases in Hennepin County, and 134 of them like Phengsene, repeat offenders.
Hennepin County District Court judge Kevin Burke handles hundreds of these cases each year. He says while it might seem like if would be easy to sentence multiple offenders, that isn't the case. He remembers his first felony DWI case.
"I remember, the night before, saying 'What am I going to do?' And then the next morning I came to work and I discovered that the defendant had killed himself," said Burke. "Because he killed the woman he loved more than anyone else."
According to Burke, there has been a 10 percent increase in DWI cases, but he thinks the state's lowering of the alcohol legal limit from 0.10 to 0.08 may be partially responsible for the inflated numbers.
"There's an old song in A.A. -- the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result," said Lewis. "Most alcoholics have that mindset."
In Phengsene's case, the judge ordered him to pay $50,000 bail. She also ordered him to be under constant supervision and to have no drugs or alcohol in his system. He is forbidden from driving and his license plates will be taken away.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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