A long, winding road to jail

"I know I told you I wasn't drinking, but I was. I'm an alcoholic. It runs in my family. I've made a lot of mistakes. I need to learn from my mistakes." — Statements by Kirk K. Denis to a Utah Highway Patrol trooper Jan. 15, 1998, according to a police report on his DUI arrest.

Kirk Kenneth Denis is finally in jail.

For nearly 10 years, the 48-year-old man who now lives in Sandy virtually escaped punishment for a string of drunken driving arrests and convictions, which raises questions about the way drunken drivers are charged and punished in Utah.

Deseret News research of arrest report and court files — coupled with interviews of prosecutors, court clerks, officers and judges — shows Denis has been arrested and convicted six times for driving drunk. And, despite state laws intended to take drunken drivers off the road, he had spent, until last month, only a few days jail time.

In five of the cases, he was caught in busy traffic on Utah's freeways. On one occasion, he swerved across lanes of traffic on I-15 and rolled his car.

He was arrested once with a young child in his car.

And in one case where prosecutors pushed for a felony conviction, which was for Denis' latest DUI charge, the case was pleaded down to a misdemeanor.

While Denis has a record, it's not easy to piece together. The documents are a chaotic mess, which may have contributed to Denis' avoiding a felony conviction and stiffer penalty.

Confusion permeated one of Kirk K. Denis' recent court hearings on an arrest for driving under the influence.

Faced with conflicting and incomplete information in two official state computer databases, a perplexed Murray Justice Court Judge P. Gary Ferrero considered what to do with the man who had been brought before him on drunken driving charges.

In court, nothing could be verified about various court dispositions on Denis' various DUI cases.

A report from the state's Bureau of Criminal Identification reported two instances, while a report from the Utah Driver License Division reported two, and it wasn't at all clear that they were the same two. Convictions for driving on a license suspended because of the DUIs further muddied the record.

Denis' public defender, Mikel Boley, alluded to "another case that is pending" but did not identify where that case was located. Boley declined to speak with the Deseret News.

Unable to conclude from the records the exact nature of Denis' DUI history, Ferrero determined he was considering "at least a second offense" and proceeded to pronounce a 30-day jail sentence "based on faulty information."