Houston's Bobby Gene Martin - who was convicted this week of drunken driving for the 10th time - finally may have had his last drink.

Martin, 64, was sentenced by a Montgomery County jury Wednesday to two life sentences for a 2014 incident in which he crashed his elderly mother's pickup truck, then tried unsuccessfully to hide in waist-deep water in a drainage ditch.

He is headed back to state prison, where he's already done two stretches for drunken driving. That includes 15 years for the last time he was caught in the act in Montgomery County.

"It is amazing he hasn't killed anyone yet," said Assistant District Attorney Kyle Crowl, who prosecuted the case. "As he gets older and drinks more, he is only going to get worse and kill someone, if the jury didn't act as it did."

It is relatively rare for a defendant to be sentenced to life in prison for drunken driving. Texas Department of Criminal Justice records show that Martin would mark the 33rd inmate serving life for having three or more such convictions. As a habitual offender, he faced at least 25 years.

Martin, who apparently has never harmed anyone while drunk behind the wheel, had more than twice the legal blood-alcohol limit. He didn't try to testify to explain himself at trial. The jury found him guilty of driving while intoxicated as well as threatening to kill a sheriff's deputy, the deputy's family and a jailer.

"Help is not an option," Crowl said of Martin's drinking and driving. "He is beyond that."

Martin's mother, Irene Brast, said she's now putting her faith in God and the appellate process.

"I am hoping and praying we can get some help," she said of challenging the conviction. "He is all I got left," she said of her son, who she said has brain damage from an all-terrain vehicle accident years ago. "I need him to come back home."

Since January 1981, Martin has racked up most of his drunken driving convictions in Harris County.

By 1999, he'd notched his eighth drunken driving conviction - after being caught for the first time in Montgomery County - and was sentenced to 15 years.

But by 2009, he was back out on the streets and again caught drunk behind the wheel in Harris County. He pleaded guilty and spent a year in jail. That marked his last such conviction prior to this latest arrest that landed him a life prison sentence.

Feared another DWI

In the August incident, the truck Martin was driving ended up in a ditch near Peach Creek in the eastern part of Montgomery County. Several people reported seeing him standing outside of the vehicle. He asked a wrecker driver to tow the truck and take him home, fearful he would get another DWI, prosecutors said.

A deputy who investigated the crash found Martin behind a bush in a drainage ditch where the water came to this waist. He failed a field sobriety test and when en route to jail, he threatened several times to kill the deputy, the deputy's wife and family. At the jail, he continued his threats, prosecutors said, this time aiming them at a jailer. Martin's blood-alcohol level was .217, more that twice the legal limit for intoxication.

But even observers versed in the justice system say the combination of a person getting 10 drunken driving convictions as well as a life sentence seems rare.

'He has not learned'

Frank Harris, director of state and government affairs for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said he had never before heard of such a mix.

"It is an interesting case," he said, contending that in Texas and much of the country it is rare to serve even five years after killing someone in a DWI crash. "With this, a 10-time offender getting a life sentence, it is the first time I've heard of this."

Harris pointed to federal government statistics that show Texas beat out California to lead the nation for drunken driving deaths in 2013, with 1,337.

Amanda Peters, an associate professor at the South Texas College of Law, said sending Martin to prison repeatedly didn't seem to do much over the years to stop him from drinking and driving.

"There are people out there who have some underlying issue that is not being addressed, and as long as that is not addressed, they are going to keep on offending," she said.

"Clearly he has not learned from his experiences," said Peters, a former Harris County prosecutor. "It is hard to see someone sentenced to life in prison. I never did a fist pump. It is sad."