I think he'll be out by the third act (maybe the third episode.)

All that said, I am agnostic towards his drinking, his partying, or even his showing up in a sex tape.

But if there is a god, we won't see his junk exposed when he steps out of his car.

This actor and celebrity can easily afford to take a car service or a limo everywhere he needs to go for the rest of his life, yet he insists on drinking and driving, no doubt using the defense that his judgment was impaired when he decided to get behind the wheel of his car.  Or, I have a drinking problem that I can't be held responsible for.  At least working class people can make an insufficient resources claim when it comes to calling a cab and leaving their car somewhere, but Sutherland and other wealthy individuals can't even make those pathetic excuses, which the law rightly gives very little if any weight to anyhow.

I've long thought that offenses like this should be tied to an individual's income.  You get busted for the fourth time in a given period,  and the judge has the discretion to make you cough up 10% of your income, based on your tax returns.  That way someone who makes $10,000 a year will have to fork over, at most, a grand to the court, but someone who makes 10 million a year could be made to come up with a million in cash.

Now that's the kind of fine that will motivate a wealthy celebrity to hire a driver for $40,000 a year plus benefits, to look after them, and stop them from getting behind the wheel of a car when they're inebriated.  It will also prevent the state from raising fines to levels that are unfair to the poor and middle-class.

As to jail sentences,  I love these lawyerly discussions about how many days a person should spend in jail after they've been busted for the fourth or fifth time drinking and driving.  These offenses are like speeding or running lights, you know the people that are committing them, like Paris Hilton, are doing it all the time, and maybe get caught 1% to 3% of the time.

Perhaps throwing people in jail for longer sentences is not the route we want to go, instead we sentence Sutherland and others who commit multiple offenses of this sort, to a year or two of community service, working at a nursing home, cleaning up soiled sheets, bedpans and vomit from people who have been brain damaged or are quadriplegic and bedridden as a result of drunk drivers.  Let Sutherland spend every weekend of his life for a few years helping to take care of these people, so he will come to understand the consequences of dismissing his personal responsibility to the society he lives in.

Anyone who decides that it's OK to operate heavy machinery (cars) while they are even slightly impaired as a result of your own choices, needs a wake-up call.  

As those of you who've read my comments in the past on this issue know, I've lost a number of people who were close to me to drunk drivers, and some of those were chronic offenders who went on to kill others before they finally got prison time.  They went on for years without being held accountable, not only by the system, but by their friends and family who were well aware of what they were doing, but chose to overlook their behavior. I count my own family members among the ranks of such people.

Just the other night I was at a get together for people from a blog we all know and visit, at a local bar and eatery, and someone I was talking to was obviously under the influence and significantly impaired. I asked them if they were driving.  "Of course, I don't live very far away" they responded.  I didn't say anything because I didn't know this person and was reluctant to embarrass them or impose myself in what polite society tells me is their business, perhaps I should have though because I have no doubt that there obvious impairment increased the risk to themselves and everyone else on the roadways when they got behind the wheel.  So I guess that makes me something of a hypocrite.  And herein lies the problem, the strong inhibitions that seem to be deeply embedded in us all when it comes to addressing this issue in social situations.

If we as a society allows people to get away with this kind of behavior, and people die as a result, before you know it distraught grieving relatives of those who have been killed or maimed for life, will start taking the law into their own hands, and I need not go into where that leads.

Most everyone who drinks or imbibes in some kind of drug, is guilty of operating some kind of motor vehicle while they were impaired to some degree, myself included, so we have a tendency to dismiss the danger of someone just having a few drinks and getting behind the wheel of a car. But driving is serious business, which often proves fatal to even the most skilled, alert and sober driver.  

When a celebrity cooperates and accepts a plea bargain they're basically 'going quietly' and allowing the courts to retain their image.  This keeps voters happy.