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MANSFIELD - Patricia Lestan is frustrated.

Frustrated - but not surprised - that the man who killed her husband in 1989 in a drunken-driving crash in Mansfield was freed from prison and was arrested again for drunken driving.

"He will keep recommitting until he dies or until he's incarcerated for the rest of his life," Lestan said of 46-year-old Joseph R. Merryfield of Jamaica Plain.

"He got 14 years, but the rest of us got much more," she said in an interview.

Merryfield, 48, is now being held in jail on $25,000 cash bail on a fifth-offense drunken-driving charge stemming from an arrest earlier this year in Quincy. In January 1989, he ran a red light at routes 106 and 140 in a stolen car, crashing into a pickup truck driven by Lestan's husband, Vincent "Buddy" Lestan, 49, and another car. A couple and their two children were also injured.

Merryfield had just gotten out of jail for drunken driving at the time of that crash.

He served a 12- to 14-year sentence in the case and was released from prison in March of 2003. After his release, he was jailed twice afterwards on separate motor vehicle larceny and breaking and entering cases.

When he was convicted in 1991 of killing Lestan, he was originally sentenced to 41 to 45 years in prison. But the consecutive sentences the judge handed down were later overturned on appeal on a technicality.

"When he kills some big shot's wife or somebody important, that's when something will happen to him. I'm just small potatoes," said Patricia Lestan, now 66.

Lestan went to every court hearing when Merryfield's case involving her husband was pending for two years. She also wrote to the parole board in opposition to Merryfield's release after his last jail stint.

"I've done everything I can. There's only justice for the criminals, not the victims," Lestan said.

Merryfield's latest trouble occurred in April of this year, allegedly for driving drunk in a pickup truck with stolen license plates in Quincy, according to court records.

He would not stop for police, then resisted arrest, putting the vehicle in reverse after he was boxed in, according to court records.

The pickup truck backed into a cruiser before police were able to handcuff Merryfield, according to court records. In addition to the drunken driving charge, Merryfield faces charges of driving to endanger, driving with a suspended license, possessing an open container of alcohol, receiving stolen property and resisting arrest.

He pleaded innocent and is scheduled to stand trial in Dedham Superior Court Dec. 6.