Former Utah lawmaker Kevin Garn arrested for DUI in 2006

SALT LAKE CITY — Former Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn was arrested for DUI in 2006 while he was running for the Legislature.

Salt Lake City prosecutor Sim Gill said Monday that records show Garn was arrested May 6, 2006, after someone called police. The case had never been made public.

"It was a standard DUI prosecution," Gill said. "We treated him like everyone else."

Gill said his office rarely issues press releases and only in situations where there has been an unusual level of interest by the press and the public in a particular case.

"It is not our practice to ask for the political credentials of the people we prosecute. For us, it's just a citizen who has violated the law. We prosecute based on evidence," Gill said.

Garn resigned from the Legislature on March 13 amid a controversial admission during the last moments of the session that he had engaged in a 1985 hot-tubbing incident with a girl, then 15, while Garn was 30 and married. Garn also admitted he paid the woman $150,000 in 2002 and she signed a non-disclosure agreement. The woman, Cheryl Maher, worked at a Layton record store Garn owned at the time.

Before the start of the 2010 Legislature, then-Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack resigned after being arrested on suspicion of driving drunk. The Utah Highway Patrol made his arrest public.

Garn served in the Legislature from 1991 until a failed race for Congress in 2002. He had refiled for his legislative seat in March 2006 and was re-elected that November.

In May of 2006, officers arrived at the Red Lion Hotel to find a man who appeared to be drunk and passed out in a car that had the ignition turned off. "He indicated he had gotten sick and he had gotten off the interstate," Gill said. "Police noticed a small abrasion on him and initially were concerned if he was intoxicated or ill."

Police pulled the man from the car, could smell a slight odor of alcohol on him and asked him to perform a field sobriety test, which he did poorly, according to Gill.

Police asked him for a breath sample, but Garn refused. He was arrested and then charged in Salt Lake City Justice Court with driving under the influence, a class B misdemeanor.