Habitual Motor Vehicle Offender Sentenced
Posted on Nov 9, 2010 8:03pm PST
Belfast resident, John E. Lynch, has been found guilty by two jury trials in one year for charges related to driving under the influence, as reported by the Marshall County Tribune.
Lynch was sentenced on November 3, the day after his 48th birthday.
In September Lynch was found guilty of driving - after being declared a habitual motor vehicle offender (HMVO). He was also found guilty of the felony count of driving under the influence and in violation of the implied consent law.
By October Lynch was found guilty again, by another jury, for his failure to appear.
Lynch has been sentenced by Circuit Judge Robert Crigler to 11 years in prison - of which 35 percent, or just less than four years, must be served - before he will be eligible for parole. He also was sentenced to 11 months and 29 days in county jail - for this he must serve 75 percent, or 274 days - for his violation of the implied consent law. His pre-trial credit stands at 129 days.
A grand jury indicted Lynch February 2008 after his arrest for running a stop sign on Belfast Avenue in December of 2007.
A jury trial was set for August 4, 2008 but he failed to appear. He was then arrested a month later, on September 6, for a DUI and other charges in Monroe County. Marshall County was then notified that he was being held in the Monroe County Jail in Key West, Florida.
When Lynch was ready for extradition, Florida authorities notified officials and he arrived in Marshall County by June 28, 2010. Crigler set Lynch's bail amount at $500,000 to prevent him from fleeing again.
Jim Grimes, with the Board of Probation and Parole, stated he was unable to obtain cooperation from Lynch in his pre-sentencing report. Lynch would only say to Grimes that, "I don't want to talk to you. They are all crooks. If you are working for the state then you are a crook."
The only thing Grimes had to go with was an earlier report from 2005 by Beth Flatt. Her record stated that Lynch had "worked as a mechanic most of his adult life."
Lynch's criminal record is three full pages long with notations that though he was employed as a mechanic, he didn't hold each position for very long as most were "lost when he went to jail."
Starting in 1993, Lynch has been indicted for a total of 11 DUI charges. The last one, in 2008, was in Tennessee. In 1996 he was declared a habitual motor vehicle offender. He has had three prior convictions for violating that order alone.
Flatt's report also included a little of Lynch's personal history. He was born and raised in Melrose Mass., and at 22, he moved to Tennessee.
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