APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Allen Mande was sentenced to five years in prison Friday for his ninth drunken driving conviction.
Mande, 60, previously pleaded no contest for the incident last February in Dale.
This sentence will be concurrent to one Mande is already serving for an unrelated battery conviction. He also placed on extended supervision for five years by Outagamie County Judge Emily Lonergan. He must undergo alcohol counseling. His driver’s license was revoked for life. He must complete an unspecified number of volunteer hours, and was fined $1,200.
Before the sentence was issued, Mande apologized for his actions and said he is trying to put his life together. He noted the icy conditions at time of the crash, as well.
“I have a past, a troubled past, and I won’t (challenge) that, to a point. I still have work. Like everybody else, life is a work in progress. And I’m ready to continue going forward,” Mande said.
Judge Lonergan called it a “significant” offense, noting he was lucky in the sense that many of mandatory punishments have been increased since the time he was convicted for his previous drunken driving offenses.
“The reality for you, Mr. Mande, is this is your ninth OWI. I cannot overstate the reality that you cannot have alcohol and get behind the wheel of a vehicle. And you should have learned that eight times before,” the judge said.
The prosecutor and Mande’s attorney both requested a three-year prison term, but Lonergan said that would be viewed as a “slap on the wrist.”
When deputies and first responders arrived at the scene of a crash on Feb. 11, 2022, they learned the driver of the vehicle had left the bar. The driver, identified as Mande, was located by a Wisconsin State Patrol trooper a short time later nearby. The vehicle was later found a short distance from the bar, crashed into a tree along State Highway 96.
According to the criminal complaint, Mande admitted to deputies he was drunk but would not submit to standardized field sobriety tests. A blood test determined his BAC was .133.
According to the criminal complaint, Mande was convicted of OWI charges stemming from arrests on:
- July 22, 1989
- Aug. 21, 1990
- April 5, 1997
- Aug. 21, 1998
- Sept. 14, 1998
- Oct. 9, 1998
- Feb. 7, 1999
- May 25, 2010
Online court records show on Oct. 15, 2010, Mande was sentenced to a year in prison, had his driver’s license revoked for two years and was required to have an ignition interlock on his vehicle for two years for the most recent drunken driving case.
