I think he just saw way too many innocent people that got killed by drunks slamming into them with cars. He claimed that if they did such (death penalty for DUI on first offense) that the same number or less people would get killed only it would be mainly drunk drivers getting killed instead of mainly innocents like it is now.

As I said I argued the other side against him many times and considered the idea draconian (which is saying a lot if I consider a tough on crime law draconian). It's just some incidents like this that sometimes make me wonder if he didn't have a point. Hitting a cyclist while drunk out of your mind in the middle of the day while the cyclist is way off the side on a wide shoulder edge is just completely inexcusable.