Flathead District Court was the scene Sept. 19 for a pair of hearings in drunk-driving cases that provided one example of the wide range of punishments that can be meted out for similar crimes.

Anna Alcock, 46, of Kalispell, and Rachel Hansen, 30, of Bigfork, each admitted they drove while under the influence of alcohol on public roads in Flathead County.

For each, it was their fourth offense. Both were involved in crashes as a result of their drunk driving and both had suspended licenses.

Both also had accrued no violations while under remote alcohol monitoring for several months and had taken advantage of plea agreements.

But in back-to-back hearings, the Flathead County Attorney’s Office recommended 13 months in a residential treatment facility followed by three years of probation — both under the Montana Department of Corrections — for Alcock and a four-year deferred sentence to run concurrently with a six-month suspended sentence for Hansen.

Alcock was the first to enter her change of plea.

According to court documents, she crossed the center line and crashed head-on into another motorist, then got out of her vehicle and offered the victim $5,000 not to call police. 

When the victim did call police, Alcock left the scene.

The victim followed Alcock to her home and reported her location to Kalispell police.

When an officer responded, the document states, he asked Alcock to step outside and speak with him and she nearly fell over as she walked down the steps of her porch. He also reported she had red, glossy eyes, slurred speech, smelled of alcohol and continued having trouble keeping her balance, although she denied having had any alcohol.

Alcock also reportedly tried to leave the police department through the back door after being arrested while the officer was processing her paperwork. She refused to provide a breath sample and was transported to Kalispell Regional Medical Center to have a blood sample taken.

While there, she reportedly refused to cooperate, yelling curses and causing a disturbance. The blood draw eventually was successful, and, according to Deputy County Attorney Ken Park during the hearing, Alcock’s blood-alcohol level registered at 0.32, four times the legal limit.

It was later determined that she had been convicted three previous times for drunk driving: in January 2005, November 2009, and June 2011.

Alcock’s plea agreement includes the option for her to withdraw her guilty plea if the judge does not follow the agreement — as only the defense and prosecution are bound by it, the judge is not. That agreement calls for her to serve 13 months in a residential treatment facility followed by three years of probation, both under the corrections department.

District Judge Heidi Ulbricht denied a motion by Alcock’s attorney to allow her to remove her alcohol-monitoring bracelet until her Nov. 14 sentencing over arguments that she had no violations in her entire participation of a year and that the $300-per-month cost of the monitoring was causing her problems.

 HANSEN’S CASE was called immediately after Alcock’s hearing was complete.

She also was charged with misdemeanor counts of driving with a suspended license and failure to have insurance in addition to her felony drunk-driving charge.

A court document states that a Montana Highway Patrol trooper found Hansen behind the wheel of her vehicle, still running with its headlights on, after a minor crash. She then reportedly admitted she had been driving, but when asked what happened, responded only “car stuck ditch.”

The trooper noted that he could smell alcohol on Hansen’s breath and that her eyes were watery and glassy, and when she got out of her vehicle, she had to use the car to prop herself up.

It was then that he asked her how much she had to drink and she said “way too much.”

Further notes from the trooper indicate that she displayed 16 out of 18 indicators for drunkenness across three field sobriety tests.

Hansen’s three prior convictions for drunk driving came in August 2006, March 2011, and June 2012, and she also had three convictions for not having insurance.

Unlike Alcock, Hansen was given a plea agreement allowing her to plead guilty not to her original three charges, but instead to felony criminal endangerment and misdemeanor drunk driving — the latter charged as if it were a first offense for sentencing purposes.

According to the plea agreement, the County Attorney’s Office is recommending a four-year deferred sentence for the criminal endangerment conviction and a six-month suspended sentence for drunk driving, to run at the same time as her criminal endangerment sentence.

In addition, the agreement included a stipulation that Hansen no longer be required to participate in remote alcohol monitoring between now and her Nov. 7 sentencing.

 PART OF THE challenge in recommending sentences in drunk driving cases is the lack of leeway available in most criminal cases, according to Deputy County Attorney Alison Howard.

State law limits the sentence available for a felony drunk-driving conviction to 13 months in a residential alcohol treatment program run by the corrections department, a consecutive, suspended sentence of five years either to the corrections department or the Montana State Prison, or between 13 months and five years of incarceration with the corrections department if the defendant already has been placed in treatment due to a prior conviction.

But just getting a drunk-driving conviction can be very difficult, Howard said.

In some cases there is no recorded blood-alcohol level for the defendant, which leaves the attorney’s office unable to prove the offense of drunk driving, forcing them to consider a different charge, such as criminal endangerment.

“And criminal endangerment is not, across the board, a lesser offense than DUI,” County Attorney Ed Corrigan said. “It carries a possible 10-year prison sentence.”

Corrigan added that in drunk-driving cases that become criminal endangerment, his office recommends sentences including treatment, which is part of a standard sentence for a felony drunk-driving conviction.

There are still other reasons a felony drunk-driving charge might be reduced to a misdemeanor. A couple of such cases were handled by Howard several months ago.

“In both of those cases, I had charged it as a felony DUI, but was unable to prove three prior convictions, and therefore I don’t have a felony DUI any more,” Howard said. “The reality was, it was accurately a misdemeanor. I had improperly charged it based on a criminal history that indicated there was prior DUI convictions when in fact they weren’t valid convictions for whatever reason.”

To charge felony drunk driving, the attorney’s office must show the defendant has at least three prior drunk-driving convictions.

Corrigan noted that with the number of people who come and go in the Flathead Valley, a lot of the prior drunk-driving convictions his office is relying on in making a charge of felony drunk driving come from other states.

When the attorneys contact the state to confirm that information, they sometimes find the state has no record of the conviction at all.

“If we can’t ultimately prove those earlier out-of-state DUIs or DUIs from the ’70s or ’80s, sometimes we have to get rid of felony DUI in favor of criminal endangerment or misdemeanor DUI,” Corrigan said.