Former Lawmaker Gets 6 Months In Jail For Breaking Probation

BALTIMORE (WJZ)--Former Maryland State Delegate Don Dwyer is spending the next 6 months in jail after being sentenced today for violating his probation.

WJZ's Pat Warren has more on Dwyer's case.

In 2012 Don Dwyer crashes his boat into another vessel on the Magothy River, injuring 6 people, four of them children, and himself.

A year later Dwyer gets charged again, this time for drunk driving.

"You fall off the wagon. That's what happened essentially between the time of my boat accident and my DUI charge," Dwyer told WJZ during a previous interview. "I will never again get behind the wheel of a vehicle if I have been drinking. Odds are I probably won't drink another drop of alcohol as long as I live because it almost killed me and it certainly almost destroyed my career."

At the time of this interview he was serving 30 weekends in jail and three years probation with no drinking allowed.

And that's not all.

"I've got an ignition lock now, god only knows when it'll come off. I can't drink and drive unless I drive a vehicle illegally, and if I do that and get caught I go to jail for a year," Dwyer said.

And that's what got him. The ignition lock system detects and records alcohol on your breath. Dwyer admitted he had six beers one night this summer and when he got in his car the next morning, the interlock nailed him.

Don Dwyer has never publically denied he has a problem.

"I can tell you both professionally and personally that I benefitted from every sentence that was handed down to me. Every section of that sentence that was given to me I've personally benefitted by," Dwyer said.

Today during his sentencing he told the judge, "I stand before you as a broken man."

Dwyer's probation was scheduled to end in October of next year.

Dwyer lost his seat in the House of Delegates in the republican primary last year.