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Winthrop man convicted of OUI - for eighth time

Prosecutors plan to seek prison time for a Winthrop man found guilty today of driving drunk and then attempting to use the bench he was chained to at a State Police barracks as a weapon against arresting officers.

Joseph Limone, 61, will be sentenced Feb. 21 following today's conviction by a jury in Suffolk Superior Court, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

"From what we've seen, nothing short of incarceration is going to keep this defendant off the road," District Attorney Dan Conley said in a statement. "We'll be seeking prison time."

Limone's latest adventure in impaired driving came late on the afternoon of July 12, 2011 along Revere Beach, where a trooper noticed a crazy driver:

Limone was sounding the horn of his 1988 Lincoln Town Car repeatedly, swerving, driving very closely behind another vehicle, and yelling, apparently at its driver. He then pulled his Town Car alongside that vehicle while continuing to yell. The trooper activated his lights and siren, prompting Limone to pull away from that car, travel north a short distance, and drive the wrong way down Beach Street, a one-way street.

Limone, whose right to drive had already been permanently revoked by the Registry, was eventually nabbed. He failed all of his field sobriety tests, threatened to "fuck up" the trooper, kicked out a window in the cruiser in which he was placed and had to be pepper-sprayed several times on the way from the cruiser to the State Police barracks:

Once inside, he tried to swing a bench at the troopers, only to find that it was secured to the wall by a cable. At that point, he tried to pull the cable from the wall. Troopers again discharged their chemical spray to subdue him, then notified medical personnel, who treated him for minor, self-inflicted injuries to his hands and feet.

Limone's OUI record dates to 1983 and includes convictions in Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties. While he was awaiting trial on the Revere charges, he had his seventh OUI conviction overturned by the Massachusetts Appeals Court but then reinstated by the Supreme Judicial Court. In that case, he rammed an off-duty Somerville police officers's personal car in Woburn. At issue was whether the cop, on his way home from work, had the right to detain Limone until Woburn Police arrived - the state's highest court ruled he did, because he was acting like any private citizen could, not as a cop.

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Comments

The other Peter Limone.

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or is he older?

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No, not Peter Limone. Joseph Limone. Which I should have known because a) the DA's office correctly IDed him and b) I've written about this guy before. But I stupidly confused him with the other Limone (no idea if they're even related). Fixed now.

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Why was this person physically able to get behind the wheel of a car?

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Criminal behavior in a car isn't seen as criminal in MA.

It is nearly impossible to get even the most incompetent and impaired drivers off the road in this state.

Meanwhile, the bar for getting behind the wheel is very low.

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You can thank your Democrat lawyers in the Legislature for that. When they're not in session, they're in court defending drunk drivers, and making good money doing it. All efforts to increase sanctions on drunk driving have been blocked on Beacon Hill by the leadership over decades.

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Who shall we blame for the incredibly idiotically lax driving requirements? Lack of enforcement?

These were as much a problem under Weld/Cellucci/Swift/Romney as they are now.

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Drunk driving isn't taken seriously in this area because there's a certain "good ol' boys" attitude by Boston-area judges whereby because the judges drink all the time, they think that drunk driving really isn't any big deal.

Whoever the last couple of jusges were who let this guy off so easily should be reprimanded and the Gobe should do some sorrt of expose on them.

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If that be the case, it's beyond stupid and irresponsible of our state politicians and lawmakers to let the system swallow this guy whole and then spit him out again so many times. This guy belongs behind bars and deserves to have his driving priveleges taken from him, at least for awhile. That's wishful thinking, because the chances are that this guy won't be stopped until he runs over and/or kills somebody.

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