WGEM.com: Quincy News, Weather, Sports, and RadioA chronic DWI offender kills a husband, father
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Associated Press - December 5, 2009 10:04 AM ET
ST. LOUIS (AP) - Shelley Layton runs an emergency room in Crystal City where victims of drunken driving crashes arrive on a regular basis.
Nearly two years ago 1 of those victims was her husband, Nick. Three hours after he was brought in, Nick Layton was dead and Shelley was a widow.
The driver who took Nick's life was 45-year-old Michael Bruce Whitaker, who had been arrested four times for drunken driving but had never spent a day in jail.
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigation found that many drunken drivers in the St. Louis area were being let off the hook by police, prosecutors and judges.
That report has led Gov. Jay Nixon to call for dramatic and immediate changes to a system riddled with loopholes.
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