Some folks in Suffolk must believe that Raleigh Isaacs Jr. leads a charmed life.

In court on Tuesday, Isaacs finally was convicted of an offense stemming from an arrest on drunk-driving charges. After four different DUI arrests since 2006, he still has a record free of drunk-driving convictions. But on Tuesday, his lucky streak was at least strained when he was convicted of refusing to take a blood or breath test after being pulled over in August by a Suffolk police officer who reported smelling alcohol on Isaacs’ breath and seeing an open container of beer in his car.

Isaacs’ record in court is an unusual one. Arrests for DUI are notoriously hard to beat, and their consequences can be harsh. In Virginia, the first conviction carries a fine of at least $250 and a one-year license revocation. A second conviction carries stiffer fines, license revocation for three years and the possibility of jail time. If the second offense occurs within five years of the first, 20 days of jail time is mandatory. A third conviction brings a mandatory $1,000 fine, indefinite revocation, vehicle forfeiture and jail time commensurate with a Class VI felony — including a mandatory six-month term if within five years of the previous DUI.

The conviction percentages in Suffolk were not readily available on Wednesday, but a 2003 report from the Governor’s Task Force to Combat Driving Under the Influence of Drugs and Alcohol indicated that nearly 85 percent of DUI arrests in the commonwealth result in convictions. If the numbers in Suffolk today are similar, then it would seem that Isaacs’ record of avoiding DUI convictions — his record of having those charges reduced, dismissed or not prosecuted and the resulting grand total of 10 days spent in jail — truly defies the odds, making him one of the luckiest (if not most fortunate) people in Suffolk.

There is another, extremely unpalatable, possibility, one that recognizes Isaacs is the son of Sheriff Raleigh Isaacs and might have benefited somehow from the sheriff’s community connections, especially in the judicial system. Not this time, of course. Without evidence from a blood or breath test, Isaacs could not have been convicted of DUI, and the one-year revocation of his license is the mandated sentence for a first refusal conviction. Therefore, it’s unfair to imply that his father’s connections saved his skin in this case.

Still, though, there have been three other cases that came to court previously, including dismissed and unprosecuted charges of refusing to take the blood or breath tests, dismissed and unprosecuted DUI charges and reduced DUI charges. It strains credulity to believe that the Isaacs name has had nothing to do with the light treatment this man has received in Suffolk courts. And a reassignment of courtrooms for Isaacs’ case Tuesday that kept the hearing out of public scrutiny did little to assuage the worries of the community in this regard.

Isaacs has appealed his refusal conviction to Suffolk Circuit Court. The people of Suffolk have a right to an utterly unbiased and unrestrictedly public hearing of his case. When Suffolk’s courts are done with Isaacs in this round of hearings, there must be no lingering taste of tainted justice, regardless of the case’s outcome.