Bruce Jeremiah Simons should have quit while he was ahead in Magistrates' Court last week.

Facing two drinking and driving related charges, the 42-year-old, South Road, Warwick, man could not make up his mind how to plead.

Simons first wanted to plead not guilty to one charge but guilty to the other, then not guilty to both, and finally guilty to both. Then he wanted to start all over again, but Magistrate the Wor. Cheryl Ann Mapp had heard enough.

"I don't understand the confusion,'' said Mrs. Mapp, instructing Simons to appear in court again today to settle the matter once and for all.

Simons -- who Mrs. Mapp had initially handed a $400 fine and a year off the road for refusing to give a breath sample -- was facing a much stiffer fine by the time he left court. Simons' changes of heart had allowed time for prosecutor Sgt. Donald Grant to alert Mrs. Mapp to a previous conviction Simons had for impaired driving in 1993.

"I think you should have gone with the flow in the first place,'' Mrs. Mapp said. "It seems that this is going to be worse for you. This is now a second offence, which attracts a different penalty altogether.'' Simons, who was not represented by a lawyer, was charged with impaired driving and refusing to provide Police with a breath sample after his car collided with a wall on North Shore Road in Hamilton Parish on December 23. When the charges were put to him the first time, Simons pleaded not guilty to impaired driving, but guilty to refusing to use the breathalyser.

Sgt. Grant accepted that plea and read the facts, noting that when officers approached Simons in his white Subaru, his eyes were glazed and he had trouble sitting up. Taken to St. George's Police Station, he refused to provide a breath sample.

"It was fortunate that no one was in front of the wall you struck, and it's fortunate that you didn't kill yourself in the process,'' Mrs. Mapp told Simons.

"It was a Christmas party I'd been to,'' the construction worker replied. "I know it's no excuse.'' Mrs. Mapp then fined Simons $400, and banned him from the road for 12 months.

But Simons, who apparently was unaware that refusing to blow also brought an automatic one-year driving disqualification, told the Magistrate he had "misunderstood''. "I plead not guilty to both,'' he said.

Mrs. Mapp allowed Simons to strike his guilty pleas, set a date for his trial, and moved on to other cases. But within a few minutes, Simons was before the bench again, asking if he could save time and change his pleas again, this time to guilty on both counts.

"I've been misadvised,'' he said.

When Simons pleaded guilty to the impaired driving charge, Sgt. Grant said he would offer no evidence on the second charge of refusing to provide a breath sample.

But before Mrs. Mapp sentenced Simons for impaired driving, Sgt. Grant told her Simons had been convicted of the same offence in Magistrates' Court on March 26, 1993.

Simons, now looking alarmed, said he wanted his original sentence -- a $400 fine and a year off the road. "I'm confused, now,'' he told the Magistrate.

But Mrs. Mapp said Simons should have quit while he was ahead. "This is now the third time this matter has been put to you, and I'm not going any further.'' If Simons wanted to make Police prove the earlier conviction, which he said he did, he could appear in court today, but "only to prove the conviction'' before sentencing, she said. She was not going to strike his guilty plea again.