Crystal Lake man sentenced to 7 years on 7th drunken-driving offense

A Crystal Lake man with a record of drinking and driving dating back more than three decades won't be adding to that rap sheet anytime soon.

Steven St. John, 50, was sentenced to seven years in prison Monday for his seventh DUI conviction, despite his insistence that the first two actually belonged to someone else.

"Every time Mr. St. John gets behind the wheel of a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol, he is putting the lives of innocent citizens at risk," Judge Sharon Prather said when handing down the sentence.

The most recent conviction came in July when a McHenry County jury found that St. John was drunken driving in January 2006 when, police said, he repeatedly drove his car into a parked vehicle while trying to leave a Crystal Lake tavern.

His first DUI, authorities said, occurred in 1979. St. John, however, denied that 1979 DUI, and the next one on his record, belonged to him. He testified Monday that his wallet was lost or stolen in 1979 and that he first learned about those cases when charged with a third DUI in the late 1980s.

Prather did not believe the claims, and ruled that the 2006 incident was his seventh DUI, making a six- to 30-year prison term mandatory.

County prosecutors were seeking a sentence between 12 and 15 years, noting that St. John has continued to drive despite not having a valid driver's license for the last 30 years.