Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 10, 1993 TAG: 9307100082
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
Shannon Nicole Doss was unlucky enough to be riding with her father - a four-time convicted drunken driver - when he ran off the side of a Henry County highway last October.
She was thrown from the car, becoming the first of four people in the Roanoke region to be killed in less than a year by drivers with suspended or revoked licenses.
Minutes after pleading guilty Friday to involuntary manslaughter and driving after being declared a habitual offender, Doss stood outside the Henry County Courthouse and fished his daughter's photograph from his wallet with trembling hands.
The prospect of going to prison is nothing compared to what he is going through now, Doss and his family say.
"He's got a sentence in his heart and on his mind for the rest of his life, so why throw him in jail?" said Danita Doss, who lost her daughter in the accident but does not want to lose her husband in its aftermath.
Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Bushnell has other plans for Doss, who remains free on bond to await a Sept. 15 sentencing date.
"It's my opinion that there ought to be a significant period of incarceration," Bushnell said. "He's shown an absolute defiance of the suspension of his driver's license, and he has obviously not gotten the message."
Doss, a wiry man whose face shows more lines than most 35-year-olds, faces a maximum punishment of 15 years in prison.
In court Friday, Bushnell provided a summary of the accident:
At about 5:30 p.m. Oct. 30, Doss was driving north on U.S. 220 near Bassett Forks. With him in the car were his two daughters, his wife and a friend.
He lost control on an uphill curve and ran off the road. The car slid into an embankment and overturned. Shannon Doss, who was riding in the back without a seat belt, was thrown out of a window.
When police arrived, Doss admitted he was drunk and responsible for his daughter's death. Tests found his blood-alcohol content to be .19 percent - nearly twice the legal limit.
Doss said he had been drinking beer at a friend's house before getting behind the wheel. In 1991, three DUI convictions and other traffic charges led a judge to declare him a habitual offender. He was banned from the roads for 10 years, and faced a mandatory prison term if he drove again.
"That I couldn't tell you," he said when asked why one of the other two adults in the car had not been driving. "I never dreamed that anything like this would happen."
Doss was charged under a new DUI manslaughter law. To obtain a conviction, prosecutors needed only to prove that he was driving drunk, without showing any other elements of "reckless disregard for life" usually associated with a manslaughter charge, such as speeding or other dangerous driving.
Doss entered a conditional guilty plea to the charge, meaning he can preserve one issue for appeal. That issue is double jeopardy - whether prosecutors can charge him twice with essentially the same crime, in this case both DUI and DUI manslaughter.
In November, Doss pleaded guilty to a drunken-driving charge stemming from the accident, his fourth DUI conviction. He was sentenced to eight months in jail.
At a hearing the following month for the manslaughter change, Doss' lawyer argued that because the charge rested on the drunken-driving offense, a second prosecution was double jeopardy.
Bushnell and the Henry County judge hearing the case disagree and the case has gone forward. But Doss's conditional plea allows his lawyer to raise the issue again with the Virginia Court of Appeals.
Since Shannon Doss was killed, another habitual offender has caused an accident that left himself and two other people dead on Roy Webber Highway. And a 9-year-old boy was killed in Roanoke County, allegedly by a driver whose license had been suspended for a prior DUI conviction. Concern over those cases has prompted the House of Delegates Courts of Justice Committee to schedule a public hearing in Roanoke for July 20.
While some people who have suffered personally from the actions of dangerous drivers may call for harsh punishment, the family of Shannon Doss will not be among them. They see his actions as nothing more than a terrible accident.
"All the family, his side and hers, is with him," said Karen Jones, the 5-year-old's aunt. "If his own family can't condemn him, why should anybody else?"
That type of attitude, Burrell says, "is a cop-out. The fact that he's trying to get out of this is an indication to me that he doesn't really care; that he doesn't want to be held accountable."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB