Fredericton woman jailed for driving drunk... again
Samantha Jean Brooks, 35, was impaired at the wheel last summer just three months after a previous arrest for the same crime
A Fredericton woman was found driving over the legal limit last July just a month after being fined and barred from driving for the same crime the same year, court heard Thursday.
Samantha Jean Brooks, 35, of Maliseet Drive, appeared in Fredericton provincial court Thursday for sentencing, having previously pleaded guilty to counts of impaired driving and driving while prohibited by a court order.
Crown prosecutor Nina Johnsen said a police officer on patrol in the Royal Road area of Fredericton on July 29 spotted a vehicle doing 106 kilometres per hour in a construction zone marked with a limit of 60 km/hour.
The officer pulled the vehicle over and found Brooks at the wheel, court heard, and a record check found that the defendant had been prohibited from driving the month before in court.
That order stemmed from a conviction for impaired driving in April 2022, Johnsen said.
As the officer was dealing with Brooks, she said, he detected a smell of alcohol coming from her breath, ultimately leading to a demand for a breath sample.
The prosecutor noted that test revealed Brooks’ blood-alcohol level was 100 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, court heard. The legal limit is 80 mg.
Johnsen said the fact that Brooks drove while impaired twice in a three-month timeframe is an aggravating factor, as was her disregard for the driving ban imposed by the court only a month before the second incident.
She noted the second impaired-driving conviction carries with it a mandatory minimum jail term of 30 days, and she asked the court to impose consecutive jail terms of 30 days each for the impaired driving and violation of the driving ban.
Duty counsel Doug Smith said Brooks is employed by the Sitansisk (St. Mary’s) First Nation, and she contends with occasional seizures brought on by an earlier head injury.
“I take full responsibility for my actions,” a tearful Brooks told Judge Lucie Mathurin.
The defendant said she’s been sober for three to four weeks, and she’s been getting help with her alcohol issue.
Mathurin said the mandatory minimum jail term for the second impaired conviction is out of her hands, leaving her with a decision on what to do with the breach of the driving prohibition, which had been ordered just a month before Brooks’ latest crimes.
“It’s something of a disrespect to this court when you do something of that nature,” the judge said.
“Obviously, you’re consuming to a point that you’re putting yourself in predicaments here.”
While the Crown was seeking consecutive jail terms for the two offences, Mathurin said, she was encouraged by the fact that Brooks acknowledges she has a problem and has taken steps to address it.
As a result, she said, she felt it was appropriate to make the 30-day jail term for violating the driving ban concurrent, making Brooks’ total jail term 30 days rather than 60.
Mathurin also imposed a new driving prohibition of two years, emphasizing that will run consecutively to the one-year ban to which Brooks is already subject.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.