Brian H. Holloway will be spending the next six months in jail for leaving the Justice Center on foot when approached for a breathalyzer test July 11, according to Logan County attorney Joe Ross.
Holloway appeared in court on July 11 for his trial on an aggravated DUI charge. When bailiffs smelled alcohol on his person, they were ordered to give him a portable breath test. Holloway left the justice center and went home where officers later that evening arrested him and took him to the detention center where he was held under a $5,000 cash bond. Holloway was charged with bail jumping.
Even though Holloway fled the Justice Center, his trial for aggravated DUI still went on. He was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to four days in jail and losing his licence for a period of time. Now he will add to that sentence six months.
What makes Holloway’s case stick out among others is his past record.
This is the third DUI charge Holloway has received in the past 20 years. The first was in 1992 when he was 32-years-old, one in which claimed the life of baby. He was traveling north on 431 from Adairville to Russellville when he struck a vehicle in the rear that held an Adairville family, resulting in the death of 9-month old Justin Baldwin.
Holloway was arrested again in 2009 after police stopped him at a checkpoint, smelled alcohol and he performed poorly on a standardized field sobriety test (SFST). A preliminary breath test (PBT) at that time of his stop showed his blood alcohol content at .093 and .096; however, a jury found him not guilty due to another breathalyzer test given to him at the detention center later showing his blood alcohol levels at .o76. According to Kentucky law anything below .08 is not considered legally intoxicated and the field PBT cannot be used in a court of law against an individual, it is only used as an investigative tool.
The most recent arrest was April 24, 2012, where his blood alcohol content was a .171, over twice the legal limit. This is why he was charged with Aggravated DUI. If aggravating circumstances are present, minimum periods of jail time are doubled, and service of that minimum period becomes mandatory, with no possibility of an early release. The aggravated charge, if convicted, is considered a class B misdemeanor that carries a license suspension of between 30-120 days, a fine between $200-$500 and incarceration of 48 hours to 30 days for a first offence. His prior conviction of murder, two counts of first degree assault and five counts of first degree wanton endangerment in 1993 cannot be used against him.
“I feel confident with the outcome,” said Ross. “I am very pleased with the outcome in both cases. As I stated previously, a DUI first offense, in a case such as this, causes significant problems for a prosecutor in sentencing because the jury is not allowed to see a lot of relevant information regarding an offender’s prior record. In this case, it prevented the jury from seeing Mr. Holloway’s 1990 DUI related convictions, because they did not occur within the past 5 years. If Mr. Holloway commits another offense, in the next five years, the Commonwealth will have a separate sentencing in which the jury can consider his prior convictions.”
“I am also very pleased with the result of the Bail Jumping charge, for which Mr. Holloway will serve six months in jail. Bail Jumping is a serious charge in any case, because it prevents the court system from doing its job. It was even more significant here, because it involved running from a proceeding while the jury was actually waiting to be selected. A significant sentence such as this, should show Mr. Holloway and others that such behavior is unacceptable,” Ross said.
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