For Hamid Ahmad Baritz of Laguna Niguel, the price of two Vodka cocktails in January 2010 wasn't just $5 each.
In fact, Baritz is still paying for the drinks 22 months later.
And, worse for him, he'll continue to pay until 2015 thanks to Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick Donahue.
A jury found Baritz guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol with a blood alcohol level of .19,
running a red light and crashing into two occupied vehicles.
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The conduct won him a four-year prison term because he'd been found guilty of drunk driving on two prior occasions.
It could have been worse. Donahue sentenced Baritz to a total of eight years in prison but suspended four of them.
Nevertheless, Baritz appealed the conviction, claiming that his defense lawyer was incompetent.
But a California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana rejected the claim this month and left his punishment intact.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.