By all accounts, Gerald Gilman is back on the path. After decades of substance abuse and psychological hell stemming from his service in the Vietnam War, the 60-year-old veteran has gotten help and gotten clean.

He’s not the kind of guy who deserves two years hard time for speeding, which is what he faced recently before Franklin County Superior Court Michaela Murphy. His driving record is atrocious, pockmarked with serious infractions over 22 years.

But those were then. The new Gilman is sober and smarter than the guy who had four drunken driving convictions from 1973-2005. That guy wasn’t in Justice Murphy’s courtroom for sentencing under Tina’s Law, the 2006 legislation that stiffened penalties for habitual offenders after one driving a big-rig killed Tina Turcotte of Scarborough on the highway.

Gilman stood for judgment on his past, just as he was taking control of his future. Tina’s Law doesn’t care: Guys like him get prison, without exception. The statute was crystalline, and so should have been Justice Murphy’s decision.

Yet the judge blinked. Instead of executing the sentence prescribed under law, Justice Murphy exercised leniency on Gilman because of his progress and past troubles, and declared Tina’s Law to be excessive and perhaps unconstitutional.

We agree with her sentiment. It’s guys like the old Gilman that are the target of Tina’s Law, not the new version. But we must disagree with her judgment; the law is the law. It’s not up to judges to show discretion, when discretion is disallowed.

Tina’s Law exists because Maine has a significant problem with habitual driving offenders, who are dangers to themselves and others on the road. Mandatory prison sentences were enacted to force behavior changes, before more people were killed.

Judges are entitled to exercise discretion when discretion is needed. We hailed the thinking of Justice Robert Crowley, for example, who when faced with sentencing Long Lakes boat crash defendant Robert LaPointe, arrived at a stiff, but sensible, punishment.

Justice Murphy had no such leeway. By interjecting her discretion, she has impacted cases far beyond her court. Until the Maine Supreme Judicial Court reviews her decision months from now, Tina’s Law – for all intents/purposes – has lost its teeth.

This might have struck as being fair for Gilman, but this outcome is unfair for the remainder of us who travel Maine’s roads. Tina’s Law aimes to deter dangerous drivers and punish repeat offenders who never learned. It is a broad brush for a big problem.

It wasn’t meant, admittedly, to punish ostensibly good men like Gilman and maybe derail their laudable personal recovery against terrible odds.

But, under the law, this was his case to make, on appeal of his sentence.

Justice Murphy should not have done it for him.