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Notorious drink driver jailed for 3 years

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Notorious drink driver jailed for 3 years

3News NZ

Police had applied to confiscate Laing's car, but it had been sold (file)

Police had applied to confiscate Laing's car, but it had been sold (file)

By 3 News online staff

The country’s worst drink-driving offender has been sentenced to three years in prison this afternoon.

Raymond Charles Laing, 45, has been convicted 26 times for driving under the influence of alcohol and has more than 30 convictions for driving while disqualified.

Judge Richard Watson sentenced Laing to 18 months prison for drink driving and 18 months for driving while disqualified - to be served cumulatively. The maximum sentence was four years for both charges combined.

Laing’s drink-driving sentence was discounted by six months due to an early guilty plea. His 18-month sentence for driving while disqualified also had six months taken off it.

Police applied for his vehicle to be confiscated, but Laing said it had already been sold.

Sensible Sentencing spokesperson Garth McVicar says there needs to be a change of thinking towards repeat drink-drivers. 

He says it is not until the seventh or eighth offence that perpetrators face jail, which is too late in their career. He wants them treated the same as violent offenders.

3 News

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Comments

6/07/2012 2:40:07 p.m.

Mike wrote:

An ideal addition to the car crushing for boy racing.

If had thier car crushed at the 3rd conviction, it may have encouraged a stop to this behaviour 23 drunk driving convictions earlier, and about 30 driving while disqualified convictions earlier. If they suffered some effect of their offences, would be more likely to convince them to change.

It isn't NZ worst offender this way, just the most recent in the news with lots of repeat convictions for drunk and disqualified. Again a small number of repeat offenders putting NZ lives at risk.

Even here they have given the law the bird, as when the police wanted to confiscate the car, it had magically been sold. It probably hasn't been sold, and has just been stashed with some other drunk/disqualified driver to avoid the confiscation. I bet they didn't pay the proceeds of the sale either.