Chicago DUI lawyer comments on DUI sentence to a nursing home

This Chicago DUI lawyer has posted here, here, and here about bizarre DUI arrests. Now comes the news of a very personal, if not peculiar, DUI sentence.

September 14, Panama City, FL

Last month, Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet sentenced Pulliam to one year of community control — essentially house arrest — for her fourth conviction for DUI and her seventh for driving with a suspended license. She was to serve her sentence at the nursing home where she’d lived for the prior three months.

However, Overstreet found out Monday that Pulliam’s original housing at Bay Center Nursing Home was for temporary rehabilitation, and her time there has run out.

He vacated the sentence and told Pulliam’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Georgette Beller, that she needs to find another suitable facility in which Pulliam can serve out her sentence before next Tuesday.

“You need to come up with a suitable plan for Ms. Pulliam,” Overstreet told Beller, “or I’ll put her in prison just like I promised.”

Pulliam, 48, of Youngstown, was arrested Dec. 17 after apparently driving her car into a ditch. Prosecutor Rob Sale described her as “wasted” at the time of the crash. Pulliam said she’d taken three prescription medications, including Valium and Loritab, that morning before going to the grocery story to get aspirin for her husband.

Sale said people at the grocery store that day were so concerned about her driving that they tried to snatch her keys out of the ignition before she drove off.

Pulliam has DUI arrests going back to 1984.

Well there you have it, a reminder that you can get a DUI for using prescription medications. Please do yourself, and the rest of your community, a favor and read those annoying labels on your prescription medications. If they make you feel the least bit out of sorts don't drive.