Remember the summer of 2006? The midterms were heating up, that freak who wanted attention confessed to killing Jon Benet Ramsey, Israel was bombing the hell out of Lebanon, and an Oscar winning director was spending his summer getting wasted in Malibu bars. It was on the sultry night of July 28 that Mel Gibson was pulled over for speeding on the Pacific Coast Highway. What happened next was equal parts hilarious and sad. It involved Mel Gibson drunkenly yelling about “the f-cking Jews” and claiming to “own Malibu”. It involved an open bottle of tequila in the front seat, and refusing to be handcuffed. It also allegedly involved Mel asking a female officier, “What are you looking at, Sugart-ts?”

Of course all hell broke loose, and Mel’s reputation has pretty much never recovered. Mel didn’t have to go to jail – he was formally charged with a misdemeanor DUI, and Mel pled no contest. Mel got three years probation and treatment for his alcoholism. He also volunteered to do public service announcements. The judge praised him for his good work, and now Mel’s probation is officially over. So, of course, Mel wants his record expunged. Because that’s the way to make this incident go away?

Mel Gibson will ask a judge to expunge the DUI heard round the world.

We’ve obtained legal papers (on Yom Kippur, funny enough) revealing that Gibson’s lawyer, Blair Berk, will go to court in exactly one week and ask the judge to remove the DUI from Gibson’s record — because he has successfully completed all the terms of his 3-year probation.

You may recall Gibson was arrested in Malibu back in July, 2006 and went on an anti-Semitic rant that authorities tried to bury. TMZ broke the story of the tirade after obtaining four inflammatory pages that had been removed from the deputy’s report.

[From TMZ]

I don’t care for celebrities being given special treatment, so I think that if it’s common in California to have your misdemeanor DUIs expunged, then Mel should be allowed. If it’s uncommon, then the charge should remain on his record. I hate when DUIs are treated like just some random driving charge, though. A DUI isn’t like a failure to signal, or expired tags or whatever. I believe DUIs should remain on a person’s record, and affect their insurance and any future charges they may face. Many states do that now – if you get two or three DUIs, you lose your license for life. I think that’s the way it should be – regardless of the sad hilarity of “sugart-ts” and “owning Malibu”, Mel could have killed somebody with his drunk driving.