An “embarrassed” Colorado lawyer has pleaded guilty to three drink-driving charges - adding that she is “so thankful” she avoided hurting anyone.
But when employment attorney Denise Kay, 56, arrived for her sentencing in January 2024, the judge ordered she do a preliminary breath test due to a suspicion that she was under the influence. The results showed the alcohol content in her breath was .324 - four times Colorado’s legal DUI limit - so the judge “held Kay in direct contempt and remanded her to county jail for three days”.
Ms Kay says she has struggled with alcohol consumption and that “addiction has no boundaries”. She says she is “not proud” of her drinking under influence (DUI) offences, stating that she is “embarrassed by all of it”. It was after she received three DUI arrests in just 18 months, the lawyer agreed to be sentenced in Arapahoe County court in January.
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Ms Kay’s criminal record was clean until she backed into a parked car in Littleton in 2022, with her blood alcohol over three times the legal limit at .298, CBS reported. After pleading guilty in October 2022 she was given 12 months probation and had to use an interlock device, which acts effectively as a breathalyzer for a vehicle by requiring the driver to blow into a mouthpiece before operating the vehicle.
The attorney was stopped again by Sheridan Police in August 2023 on suspicion of DUI, while she was still on probation for her previous offence. Ms Kay allegedly backed her car - another one of her vehicles which was not fitted with an interlock device - into a police vehicle during the stop, authorities claimed. Ms Kay once again pleaded guilty to DUI, but had a charge of evading an interlock device dismissed.
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It was only a few weeks later when Ms Kay drove her car onto a pile of landscape rocks in Englewood, with her blood alcohol registered by police at .297. She was again charged with DUI - but the charges, probation, loss of her licence, and use of an interlock device were not enough to prevent her from driving under the influence.
Ms Kay told CBS Colorado: "I'm not proud of any of this and embarrassed by all of it. Addiction doesn't have any boundaries. I am so thankful and pray every day that I haven't hurt anybody, and that's what's getting me through this.” She says she will be serving jail time through October but will be allowed out on work release.
Colorado’s executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Rebecca Green said that someone with their first DUI “has probably driven 80 times impaired before they were arrested”. She acknowledged that Ms Kay really “needs care and treatment”, before explaining a new technology which may significantly reduce the amount of DUI cases: Driver Alcohol Detection System (DADSS).
DADSS is envisaged as standardised equipment across all new vehicles. It is a system which detects alcohol in the driver’s system through breath or touch, and quantifies the amount of alcohol in a driver’s system. If over the limit, the vehicle simply won’t move when they attempt to drive it.
“This is not an add-on, this is something similar to when seatbelts rolled out and car seats as well,” said Green. “It is actually saving a life if we can remove an impaired driver from the road.”
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