What was it going to take to get James Ruiz off the road? The senseless death of someone innocent?

The 34-year-old son of a longtime political operator had been a walking, talking, driving menace since before he could legally drink. Yet between lapses in New Mexico's judicial system and an absence of institutional treatment, the stage was set for tragedy.

It happened last Friday night on Cerrillos Road, when a family from the Navajo Nation, in town for a basketball game at Santa Fe Indian School, was rear-ended at high speed by Ruiz' oversize pickup. Deshauna and Del Lynn Peshlakai didn't have a chance: 17-year-old Deshauna and 19-year-old Del Lynn died; their parents, David Peshlakai and Darlene Thomas, cling to life in their hospital beds.

Ruiz saw his chance; uninjured to speak of, he fled on foot — but was caught and held by one of the drivers in the pile-up he caused. He's been jailed on $2 million bond; a bit closer to the mark than the $10,000 ($1,000 cash) he posted for his freedom after he was found passed out near the Cerrillos-St. Francis intersection in May of 2008. He was, at last, scheduled for trial this week on that drunken-driving charge.

What took so long? His dad, Joe Ruiz — yes, that Joe Ruiz, the former state insurance-office higher-up now serving a federal sentence for corruption — wrote to magistrate-court judge Buzzy Padilla seeking a postponement; seems the son had been accepted into a
60-day alcohol-rehabilitation program in California.

Granted — then, between lawyers for the prosecution and those for the defense, the trial kept getting put off — most recently from last month to this one.

So there he was, running free at the wheel of a friend's truck, having drunk three beers and three whiskeys before running out on his tab.

That case was Ruiz' fifth DWI, which is only part of his criminal record — but the part for which our non-system of justice failed the Peshlakai family and the rest of the state.

In late 1995, the 20-year-old faced DWI and other charges in Santa Fe Municipal Court — which, at the time, was famed for winking at such offenses. His case was put off for a year and a half, by which time Frances Gallegos had replaced Tom Fiorina as city judge. But he still got the house special — a deferred sentence.

The years went by, the arrests stacked up: 0.24 in Albuquerque, January 2001; 0.22 in Santa Fe, June 2003; 0.26 in Farmington, October 2005, and 0.35 in the Santa Fe arrest year and a half ago.

And the crash that killed the two young girls? 0.22 by the time he was tested by hospital personnel 10 hours later.

Leaving aside New Mexico's pathetic record-keeping and information-exchange operations, which citizens continually hear are being brought up to speed, our state's DWI-resource people argue, with good reason, that Ruiz should have been kept in jail, or on not-necessarily reliable electronic monitoring.

One official clearly stated a concern: "I think," she said to The New Mexican's Jason Auslander, "there are plenty more James Ruizes out there. It's just a matter of time."

So will our, uh, judicial system dawdle along until the next time runs out?