DUI BLOG

Ok, the cop said I looked bad on the field sobriety tests, but I know I’m not guilty: I only had two drinks and I’ve got witnesses. No matter what the police say, I can tell my side of the story to my fellow citizens and let them decide. Right?

Well….Not necessarily. This right to jury trial, handed down centuries ago from England’s Magna Carta, was considered so fundamental to the framers of our Constitution that they included it in the Bill of Rights? Sixth Amendment. It makes no exceptions to this sacred right to trial by a jury of peers.

So why do some states today deny a person accused of drunk driving a jury trial? Why, for example, does an American citizen arrested in New Jersey have to accept the decision of a politically-appointed judge? After all, the Sixth Amendment is pretty clear on the subject:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed…”

How did the government get around this fundamental right? Well, once again they started whittling away by playing around with words. (As the Red Queen said in “Alice in Wonderland, “A word means precisely what I say it means”.)

It started some years ago when the federal courts decided that the framers of the Constitution didn’t really mean “in ALL criminal prosecutions”. So they changed one little word. They said what the framers really meant was that there was a right to jury trial in “serious” criminal prosecutions — not in “petty” ones. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968).

So what is “serious”? Well, a couple of years later, the Supreme Court decided that there was no right to a jury trial if the maximum authorized prison sentence did not exceed six months. Amazingly, going to jail for one-half year was not enough to justify giving a citizen a right to trial by his peers. The Court added, however, that a defendant could have a right to jury trial “only if he can demonstrate that any additional statutory penalties, viewed in conjunction with the maximum authorized period of incarceration, are so severe that they clearly reflect a legislative determination that the offense in question is a “serious” one”. Baldwin v. New York 399 U.S. 66 (1970).

Well, what about DUI cases? They usually involve maximum sentences of six months in jail — AND a bunch of other stuff: fines, license supensions, DUI schools, ignition interlock devices, 3-5 years of probation. And the possibility of even stiffer punishment for a repeat offense. Doesn’t that show that lawmakers think drunk driving is pretty serious?

Inevitably, a citizen accused of DUI and (inevitably) convicted by a judge in Nevada took the case up to the U.S. Supreme Court. With all the additional punishment over and above the six months in jail, his attorney argued, wasn’t it “serious” enough to have a right to a jury? No, the Court held: “Considering the additional statutory penalties as well, we do not believe that the Nevada Legislature has clearly indicated that DUI is a “serious” offense.” Blanton v City of North Las Vegas 489 U.S. 538 (1989).

Hmmm…..Drunk driving seems “serious” enough to justify ever-harsher DUI laws because of the oft-mentioned “carnage on the highways” — but apparently not “serious” enough to give a citizen his constitutional right to a jury trial.

We’ve come a long way since those historical words “In all criminal prosecutions…”

As any experienced DUI attorney knows, many police officers are considerably less than honest in their written DUI reports and in their testimony. One of the practices where this is most readily apparent is the use of what I’ve called "Xeroxed Symptoms". This is the tendency to "observe" exactly the same "symptoms" in every person the officer arrests for drunk driving.

With Officer Jones, for example, the suspect fumbles with his wallet when getting his driver’s license, leans against the car for support, and misses "R" in the alphabet recitation — in every case. Officer Smith, on the other hand, seems to only encounter citizens who weave on the highway, admit to having three martinis, and in the walk-and-turn test lose their balance on the third step back. If a criminal defendant did this, we would call it "signature" evidence. When a DUI officer does it, we call it "coincidence".

The phenomenon is so common that I described it in the original edition of my book, "Drunk Driving Defense", published 25 years ago (now in its 5th edition). "To determine whether xeroxed symptoms exist", I wrote, "counsel should include in his discovery motion a request for all reports made out by the officer in other DUI cases during a given period of time — for example, for 15 of the officer’s working days before and after the arrest". In later editions, I commented on the increasing use of computers by DUI officers to create reports — and on the tendency to "patch" text from one report into another.

These claims have, of course, been loudly and indignantly denied by prosecutors and law enforcement.

Well, imagine my surprise when a fellow DUI attorney, Cole Casey, forwarded a news article from the San Francisco Chronicle (October 13, 2004) a few days ago with the headlines "Suspicious Reports Ensnare Officers". The sub-headlines further declared, "False, repetitive statements filed in dozens of cases": "Seven times in the past three years, veteran Pittsburg (California) police officer James Hartley reported remarkably similar behavior by drunk driving suspects as they tried to walk a straight line." "Hartley wrote in his reports that each suspect "stumbled after the second step" but kept walking, then "flung" his arm or leg out for balance before turning around, staring at the officer and asking, "Now what?".

It wasn’t a coincidence. Hartley and Officer Javier Slagado — Officer of the Year in 2001 — admit filing dozens of falsified reports. "While it’s not clear whether the two men discussed the practice, authorities said they used old arrest reports as templates — often with few changes — rather than writing reports from scratch on drug and alcohol cases. "In some cases, prosecutors said, entire paragraphs appeared verbatim from one report to the next. Much of the redundant information involved field sobriety tests used to establish cause for an arrest and a blood or urine test…."

So what does an officer get for filing false reports, felonious perjury, and sending dozens of possibly innocent citizens to jail? Six months of watching TV at home for each.

Bryan is presently facing criminal charges for driving under the influence of alcohol. Except that he wasn’t under the influence of alcohol. He had one drink after work and was stopped at a DUI sobriety checkpoint on the way home. The officer smelled the alcohol on his breath and asked Bryan to step out of the car to take some field sobriety tests. He did fairly well on the tests but, to be sure, the officer asked him to breathe into the breath machine that had been set up at the checkpoint. The results: .09%. Bryan was arrested for DUI, handcuffed and taken to jail; his license was immediately confiscated and he was served with a notice of automatic suspension. When finally released six hours later, he was given a notice to appear in court for arraignment on drunk driving charges.

What happened? How could Bryan have only consumed one beer but registered .09% on the machine — at least four times higher than would be expected?

Well, to begin with, breath machines (commonly referred to as “Breathalyzers”, although there are many competing makes and models) are notoriously inaccurate and unreliable. Calibration, maintenance, repair and use by inexperienced or poorly trained officers are always problems. And there are inherent design defects, such as being “non-specific” for alcohol — that is, they don’t actually measure alcohol; due to the nature of infrared analysis, they will report thousands of other compounds as “alcohol”. Another recurring problem is “mouth alcohol”.

What is “mouth alcohol” — and how could this have caused Bran’s false reading? The machine measures alcohol on the breath, and an internal computer then multiplies the reading 2100 times to get a reading of alcohol in the blood. This is because the amount of alcohol in the blood is greatly reduced as it crosses from the blood into the alveolar sacs of the lungs and into the breath; the average person has 2100 times more alcohol in his blood than in his breath (this varies widely among individuals, however, and is another inherent defect in the machines).

But what if the alcohol in the breath sample did not come from the lungs? What if the alcohol came from Bryan’s mouth or throat? Then it will not have been processed through the body, into the blood and finally out through the lungs — and it will not have been reduced 2100 times. But the machine, being a machine, will always multiply it 2100 times. Result: false high reading and Bryan is facing DUI charges.

So what was alcohol doing in Bryan’s mouth or throat?

Well, alcohol will usually stay in the tissue of the oral cavity or esophagus for about 15 minutes until it is finally diluted and flushed down into the stomach by saliva. So if Bryan had “one for the road” just before being tested, he could have a problem. Or the alcohol could have become trapped in dentures or gum cavities and lasted much longer. Bryan may have burped or belched within 15 minutes before taking the test, sending up alcohol from the beer in his stomach into his mouth and esophagus. But what actually happened was that Bryan suffers from a very common condition: GERD, or “gastroesophageal reflux disease”. This causes “acid reflux”, often experienced as heartburn.

Acid reflux is commonly caused by a “hiatal hernia” – damage to the pyloric valve separating the stomach from the esophagus. When the valve cannot close completely, then liquids and gasses from the stomach can rise into the throat and oral cavity, to remain there until once again flushed back down. Since a bout of acid reflux can be caused by stress, it is not unusual to find that people stopped by police officers for suspicion of DUI and subjected to field sobriety tests experience the condition.

Bryan is now ordered to breathe into the machine’s mouthpiece. With alcohol from his stomach now rising into and permeating his mouth and throat, it is mixed with the breath passing from the lungs through the throat and mouth and into the machine. Since this alcohol is being multiplied by the machine 2100 times, it takes only a tiny — invisible — amount of absorbed alcohol to cause a disproportionately high reading. In Bryan’s case, an “innocent” reading of perhaps .02% became a “guilty” .09%. And Bryan lost his driver’s license….and now has to try to prove his innocence in court.

Prove his innocence? Aren?t we presumed innocent in America? Here we have the notorious “DUI exception to the Constitution” again. Strangely, Bryan is not presumed to be innocent as we all thought: almost all state laws legally presume a person is under the influence of alcohol if if the machine’s reading is .08% or higher.

Yes, we have a system where citizens are convicted by a machine….A very fallible machine.

If you are arrested for DUI and a breath test shows a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08% or higher, you are guilty. It does not matter, of course, whether you are a man or a women: the laws do not discriminate.

Maybe they should…

Researchers at the University School of Medicine in Trieste, Italy, found that the stomach lining contains an enzyme called gastric alcohol dehydrogenase that breaks down alcohol, and that women have less than men. To determine the relative effects of the enzyme, they gave alcohol both orally and intravenously to groups of alcoholic and non-alcoholic men and women. They found that women reached the same levels of blood alcohol as men after drinking only half as much; with weight differences taken into account, they found that women reached BAC levels illegal in a DUI case after drinking 20 to 30 percent less alcohol than men.

The scientists’ conclusion: legislatures may need to consider sex differences in drunk driving laws when defining safe levels of drinking for driving motor vehicles. Frezza and Lieber, "High Blood Alcohol Levels in Women: The Role of Decreased Gastric Alcohol Dehydrogenase Activity and First-Pass Metabolism", 322(2) New England Journal of Medicine 95 (1990).

Yet another study has found that women have lower "partition ratios" of blood to breath. What kind of ratios? Well, all breath machines in DUI cases measure the amount of alcohol in a person’s breath. But the what we really want to know is the amount of alcohol in the person’s blood. So how do we get that? Simple: a small computer in the Breathalyzer multiplies the amount of alcohol it detects in the breath sample by 2100 times.

This is based upon the theory that, on average, there are 2100 units of alcohol in the blood for every unit of alcohol in the breath. (Note: that’s an average — but it varies from person to person.) According to the study, women have a significantly lower partition ratio. Jones, "Determination of Liquid/Air Partition Coefficients for Dilute Solutions of Ethanol in Water, Whole Blood and Plasma", Analytical Toxicology 193 (July/August 1983). And the lower the ratio, the higher the reading — even though the true BAC does not vary. Example: a woman with a true BAC of .06% and a ratio of 1500:1 (rather than the presumed 2100:1) will get a reading on the machine of .09% — above the legal limit. Put another way, the breath machine will show an average man accused of drunk driving to be innocent — but a woman with the same blood alcohol level to be guilty.

And then there’s the problem of birth control….

Scientists in Canada have found that "women taking oral contraceptive steroids (O.C.S.) appeared to eliminate ethanol significantly faster than women not taking O.C.S." Papple, "The Effects of Oral Contraceptive Steroids on the Rate of Post-Absorptive Phase Decline of Blood Alcohol Concentration in the Adult Woman, 15(1) Canadian Society of Forensic Science Journal 17 (1982). That means that women will reach peak BAC faster, and return to lower levels more quickly. This, of course, can create serious problems in a DUI case when attempting to estimate BAC at the time of driving based upon a breath test administered one hour later. Making the problem worse, researchers have also discovered that women who were taking birth control pills or who were pregnant had higher levels of acetaldehyde on their breath, due to the decreased ability to metabolize the enzyme as the level of sex steroids increases.

So what?

Well, most breath machines use infrared analysis in measuring the breath sample of a DUI suspect. But these machines don’t really measure alcohol, rather they measure any compound which contains the "methyl group" in its molecular structure. And acetaldehyde is one of these compounds. Result: a higher "blood alcohol" reading on the Breathalyzer. Jeavons and Zeiner, "Effects of Elevated Female Sex Steroids on Ethanol and Acetaldehyde Metabolism in Humans", 8(4) Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 352 (1984). It’s always a problem when the law, in its infinite wisdom, assumes that all of us are exactly the same.

Let me tell you about one of our DUI cases that ended up on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times last year. My law firm had a young client, I’ll call him "Steve", who had been arrested for drunk driving by the Los Angeles Police Department and a blood sample drawn from his arm. He swore to us that he was innocent, and we believed him.

Problem: the blood alcohol content of the sample was .15% — almost twice the drunk driving limit.

Now what?

We obtained a portion of the sample from the LAPD crime lab and sent it to a private lab that we use for reanalyzing blood of all our DUI clients. The lab reported the blood alcohol level to be .13% — lower, but a long way from being under .08%. As we requested, they also tested for preservative and anticoagulent (either fermentation or coagulation can raise the alcohol level in the sample), but everything was in order. Steve still insisted he was not driving under the influence of alcohol.

The only other possibility was a faulty "chain of custody". In other words, LAPD lab got the vial mixed up and tested someone else’s blood. Kind of like the work they did in the O.J. Simpson case. So we had the sample blood-typed to see if it was that of another arrestee. Result: type "O"– the same as Steve’s. But, then, that’s the most common type of blood.

We decided to try something different, something that, to our knowledge, had not been done before in any DUI case. We had blood taken from our client and, with a portion of the remaining sample from the LAPD lab, shipped to a laboratory that specialized in DNA testing. A month or so later the report came in: the blood tested by LAPD was conclusively not Steve’s.

The prosecutor in the case initially refused to accept these results. But after we proved that the comparison blood had come from our client and after LAPD checked the blood themselves, he reluctantly dismissed all criminal charges. Predictably, LAPD tried to point the finger at someone else: "Police officials said they are investigating how the mix-up occurred and who is responsible, But, they said, they are fairly confidant that the lab did not make a mistake.

One possible explanation, they said, was that the blood was mistakenly labeled when it was initially drawn by nurses at LAPD’s jail intake facility in Van Nuys." So how could this have happened? The truth is that it probably happens far more commonly that we suppose.

When a blood sample is drawn from the suspect in a DUI case rather than using a breath machine, the sample is supposed to be inserted into a vial containing preservative and anticoagulent, then sealed. Procedures then require that a "chain of custody" be established: the location of the vial of blood must be identifiable at all times so that it does not become contaminated or mixed up with someone else’s vial. This is done by labelling the seal with identifying information, then usually placing the sealed vial in an evidence locker (which should be refrigerated but often is not) until it is transported to the crime laboratory for further storage.

At any stage of this chain of custody, of course, things can go wrong with the vial or the records. It may be a week or so before the vial is finally analyzed. This is usually done using gas chromatograph instruments, and the vial is one of many analyzed in large "batches". A "batch" is a group of vials, perhaps 40 or more of them, which are analyzed in sequence; this is much faster and more economical than isolating, identifying and separately analyzing one vial afer another.

Of course, it is critically important that the sequence of tests by the gas chromatograph coincide with the sequence of vials in the records. If the sequence of numbering of the vials is off by one, then the records will show a result from the analysis of another vial. And it won’t be just one person whose blood is falsely reported: every other vial may also be one off — and will all be wrong. And you have 40 people people facing criminal charges based upon false evidence.

"How do I know the blood they tested was mine?" Simple, if you can get a portion of the sample from the crime lab and have an extra $1200 laying around. Otherwise, I guess you’ll never know….

Until a few years ago, attorneys attempting to defend a client against drunk driving charges were general practitioners who had little, if any, understanding of the nature of the offense. They were unfamiliar with such DUI investigatory methods as field sobriety tests, and there was an almost complete lack of seminars on how to defend these clients.

Most importantly, defense lawyers were completely ignorant about the complexities of blood alcohol analysis — whether of blood, breath or urine. How does this Breathalyzer work? What is infrared analysis? Gas chromatography? How is alcohol metabolized in the human body? What is "Widmark’s formula"? Hematocrit? What is "retrograde extrapolation" and how does it work? What physiological variables occur between individuals? What medical conditions can effect a breath reading and how? What happens if blood samples ferment or coagulate? Chemical analysis of blood, breath or urine involved knowledge of such highly technical fields as physiology, organic chemistry, physics, biophysics, electrical engineering — subjects far beyond the experience and training of lawyers.

Then a few years ago twelve of the most prominent DUI defense attorneys in the country met in a hotel conference room at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Over the following three days they hammered out plans for a new professional organization: "The National College for DUI Defense". They created this as a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of the DUI Bar, primarily through providing educational seminars.

An important secondary purpose of the organization was to address the problem of insularity in the profession — the isolation of lawyers; the College would be a tool with which attorneys across the country could share information, ideas and experiences. I am proud to say that I was one of those twelve original founders, and have since served as Dean and on its Board of Regents. For each of us, the College was a true labor of love.

The first national seminar was held at Harvard Law School. It was an intense 3-day series of lectures, demonstrations and workshops, featuring a faculty of 22 of the top lawyers, scientists and forensic toxicologists in the field. The experiment was a huge success, and has been repeated every July at Harvard for the past ten years. In fact, the College’s governing Board of Regents soon expanded this educational effort by creating a second annual 3-day seminar in the winter. This proved another resounding success: in the recent session held in Las Vegas in October, 2004, there were over 500 lawyers attending from all over the country.

The National College for DUI Defense also created an internet website, along with an email discussion group where attorneys could share information and ideas. There are currently hundreds of members across the country using this forum — and discovering that what one lawyer in Texas has found effective in dealing with DUI sobriety checkpoints can be helpful to another in Oregon.

Having provided the means to develop greater skills in this demanding field, the College next addressed the need to recognize those lawyers who had achieved the highest levels of competence. Within recent years, they began certifying attorneys as specialists in DUI defense. In order to be Board-certified, an applicant must satisfy demanding requirements of practice and trial experience, as well as pass intensive written and oral examinations.

Most recently, the College has been successful in applying to the American Bar Association for recognition of a new legal specialty: DUI defense. After considerable study, the ABA went further and recognized the National College for DUI Defense as the sole organization authorized to certify attorneys as specialists in this new field. The College maintains its headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, and currently has a membership of over 600 attorneys.

When a person is arrested for DUI, his driver’s license is confiscated by the arresting officer and he is given a notice of "administrative suspension". He is also given a citation to appear in court to face criminal drunk driving charges.

These are usually two very different procedures: (1) the administrative suspension for driving with blood-alcohol of .08%, in most states administered by its department of motor vehicles, and (2) the criminal prosecution for the two separate offenses of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) and driving with .08%, which takes place in the courts.

In other words, even though he only drove once, the individual is being prosecuted for two different crimes: DUI and driving with a .08% BAC. He can even be convicted of both offenses (although he can only be punished for one). How is this possible?

It gets worse….

The driver has already been punished for driving over .08% by having his license suspended by the state’s motor vehicle agency. If he is later convicted in the state’s criminal court of driving over .08% (and/or driving under the influence), he will be punished again. The sentence may involve jail, fines, DUI schools, probation — and a restricted, suspended or revoked license.

How many times can the state punish a person for a single crime? Our Constitution says only once. The Fifth Amendment specifically provides that no person shall "be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life and limb". So is this another example of "the DUI exception to the Constitution"?

Let’s first take the question of charging defendants with both DUI and .08%. The courts in the different states wrestled with this one for awhile, but eventually came to the conclusion that the driver actually commited two different crimes. As an Indiana court reasoned, "the test to be applied to determine whether there are two different offenses or only one, is whether each provision requires proof of a fact which the other does not." Sering v. State, 488 N.E.2d 369 (1986).

The .08 statute required proof of blood-alcohol concentration; although blood-alcohol evidence was used to prove the DUI crime as well (a person is presumed to be under the influence if his BAC is .08% or higher), the offense could be proved without it. So it’s ok to prosecute and convict him for both crimes – so long as you don’t punish him for both.

Hmm… Well, what about punishing the driver by suspending his license when he’s arrested — and then punishing him again in court? In fact, punishing him in court with a sentence that may include another suspension? This one caused the courts a bit more trouble. This wasn’t a case where the person was committing two different crimes: he was being punished by two different state agencies for the same crime: driving with .08% BAC. But there had to be some way to get around the Constitution….

The courts could not agree. Some said that there was no double jeopardy since the DMV license foreiture was not really a "punishment" but only a "civil sanction". Others took the position that this was, in fact, a violation of the Fifth Amendment, and they relied upon a U.S. Supreme Court decision (U.S. v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435; 1989) which involved civil forfeitures and criminal punishments for selling marijuana. In that case the Court held that a "civil sanction" was actually a punishment — and thus double jeopardy — if (1) the "clear focus of (the statute) is on the culpability of the individual", and (2) the legislature "understood these provisions as serving to deter and punish". The Court added that "the historical understanding of forfeiture as punishment" weighs heavily in favor of the conclusion that forfeiture continues to serve punitive purposes.

Well, relying upon the Supreme Court’s ruling, an alarming number of courts around the country were throwing out criminal DUI charges on double jeopardy grounds. This, of course, infuriated MADD, legislators, prosecutors, law enforcement and pretty much everyone else who did not take the Constitution too seriously. But rescue arrived from a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court. In 1997, Chief Justice Rehnquist revisited the forfeiture-punishment problem and did something that is rarely ever done: he criticized and flatly rejected the earlier Supreme Court’s ruling:

"We believe that Halper’s deviation from longstanding double jeopardy principles was ill-considered….Halper’s test for determining whether a particular sanction is "punitive", and thus subject to the strictures of the Double Jeopardy Clause, has proved unworkable". Hudson v. U.S., 592 U.S. 93 (1997).

Since then, the courts have had little trouble finding that a police officer who confiscates and suspends the driver’s license of a drunk driving suspect is merely administering a "civil sanction", not punishment….and that when he is later convicted in court and is fined, jailed and has his license suspended again, well that’s not really double jeopardy. It just looks an awful lot like it.

As the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland" said, "A word means exactly what I say it means".

The drunk driving case rests heavily upon the subjective opinions of the arresting officer — the abilities of that officer to correctly assess DUI symptoms of intoxication: observations of driving, personal symptoms (slurred speech, flushed face, etc.), answers to questions, performance on field sobriety tests. It is his DUI report (and his opinion in that report) which will largely determine what, if any, criminal charges will be filed by the prosecutor; his decision which will or will not result in a suspension of the driver’s license; his testimony at trial which will largely decide the guilt or innocence of the person he arrests.Just how expert is the average police officer at judging levels of intoxication in a DUI case?

To answer this question, researchers at Rutger University’s Alcohol Behavior Research Laboratory conducted a series of experiments. For purposes of comparison with officers, two groups of non-police witnesses were first tested. In one, 49 lay social drinkers sat in a room as various subjects were brought in one at a time for observation and questioning. Each subject had either consumed varying amounts of alcohol or had consumed nothing; each had been given tests for blood-alcohol levels. Each in turn answered questions from the lay witnesses until all were finished, then got up and left. Each of the 49 witnesses was then asked to judge each subject’s state of sobriety or intoxication. The researchers’ conclusion: “The assumption that social drinkers would prove to be accurate judges…was not confirmed.”

In the second group, 12 bartenders were tested in the setting of a large cocktail lounge. Again, the researchers found that “the bartenders correctly rated a target in only one of four instances”.

The researchers then turned to 30 experienced DUI officers from various New Jersey law enforcement agencies. Separated into two groups, the first group of 15 officers were tested under laboratory conditions similar to those in the experiment involving lay social drinkers. The second group of 15 were tested under circumstances commonly encountered in a drunk driving traffic stop — at night, with the subject behind the wheel of a car, who is then asked to step out and conduct a series of DUI field sobriety tests.

Results? “When police observers in the laboratory conditions were compared to social drinkers who had experienced an identical procedure, no difference in rating accuracy was found…. Officers in the arrest analogue were somewhat more accurate than their colleagues in the laboratory condition but not significantly so.”

The scientists concluded that “the results of the three experiments described here are not reassuring. All three of the subject groups studied — social drinkers, bartenders and police officers — correctly judged targets’ levels of intoxication only 25 percent of the time.” Langenbrucher and Nathan, “Psychology, Public Policy and the Evidence for Alcohol Intoxication”, American Psychologist 1070 (Sept. 1983).

For years now the "DUI crackdown", along with the accompanying loss of constitutional rights, has been justified by the numbers of deaths on the highways caused by drunk drivers. As the U.S. Supreme Court in Michigan v. Sitz said, for example, DUI "sobriety checkpoints" appear to violate our Fourth Amendment right to be free of suspicionless stops by the police — but this illegal intrusion on our privacy is "outweighed" by the "carnage" on our highways of 25,000 deaths caused each year by alcohol.

From where did these statistics come? Years ago, the statistics kept on traffic fatalities included a category for "alcohol-caused" deaths. To justify such things as sobriety checkpoints, lowered blood alcohol levels and automatic at-the-scene DUI license suspensions, however, these statistics were subtly changed to "alcohol-related". Not "caused", but related.

This meant that a perfectly sober driver who hit and killed an intoxicated pedestrian, for example, would be involved in an "alcohol-related" incident. Similarly, a sober driver who is struck by another sober driver carrying an intoxicated passenger chalked up another "alcohol-related" death. Further, if the officer believes the driver to be intoxicated but chemical tests show he is not, the death is nevertheless reported as "alcohol-related". In fact, if the tests indicate the presence of any alcohol at all, say .02%, the fatality will be chalked up as "alcohol-related".

In 1999, the federal General Accounting Office (GAO) reviewed these figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — and issued a report stating that they "raised methodological concerns calling their conclusions into question ". The statistics, the GAO report said, "fall short of providing conclusive evidence that .08% BAC laws were, by themselves, responsible for reductions in alcohol related fatalities." In other words, the statistics weren’t even valid when applied to alcohol-related fatalities, much less alcohol-caused deaths.

So what are the real numbers? The Los Angeles Times also decided to investigate the validity of these statistics. In 2002, NHTSA’s figures claimed 18,000 deaths on the nation’s highways attributable to drunk driving. The Times found that only about 5,000 of these involved a drunk driver causing the death of a sober driver, passenger or pedestrian. (Research by other groups, such as "Responsibility in DUI Laws, Inc.", indicate the figure is actually under 3,000.) 5,000. A fraction of the number being used by the government and political pressure groups like MADD.

Despite this irritating little truth, MADD, law enforcement and federal and state governments continue to use the same false statistics to justify the passage of unfair and unconstitutional DUI laws.

So you got stopped last night and arrested for drunk driving. And right after the Breathalyzer showed a blood-alcohol reading of .12%, the officer confiscated your driver’s license and gave you a a piece of paper that said it was immediately suspended.

What happened?, you ask. Can they do that? I thought I was presumed to be innocent, and the state has to prove my guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before they can punish me. And I remember something about "due process": Can they suspend my license for DUI before giving me a chance to defend myself?

Good questions.

The Department of Motor Vehicles (or whatever they call it in your state) is required by law to immediately suspend the driver’s license of anyone arrested for (not convicted of) DUI who (1) has a .08% breath reading, or (2) takes a blood or urine test (which will be analyzed later), or (3) refuses to take any test. This means immediately — on the spot: the license is grabbed and the DUI suspension is legally effective the moment the officer signs the notice and hands it to you.

Viewed another way, the officer in a DUI case is constable, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. You have absolutely no rights. In fact, if you took a blood or urine test, they don’t even wait for the results (which will come back from the lab days later): they not only presume you are guilty, they also presume that the evidence will eventually show it!

So, again: How can they do that in America?

Well, at first MADD and various state legislatures decided to find a way to get drunk drivers off the highways RIGHT NOW — and not be diverted by any technicalities like, well, the Constitution. So they enacted so-called "APS" laws (the phrase stands for "administrative per se", referring to the "per se" crime of .08%, as opposed to the crime of driving under the influence of alcohol, which is for the courts). They justified this by saying that a license was a "privilege", not a "right" — and since the license holder had no rights, the state could do what it wanted.

Well, the U.S. Supreme Court blew that justification out of the water. In Bell v Burson (402 U.S. 535) the Court acknowledged that the right to drive is a privilege. However, once the state gives someone a license, that person then has a property right in it — and that right cannot be taken away without giving him due process. And due process means a fair procedure by which he can contest the confiscation of his property.

The reaction to this has generally been to continue to suspend licenses on the spot, but to then give the driver a short-term temporary operating permit during which he can request an administrative hearing. (In a few states, the process is handed over to the courts and the suspension merged with the criminal proceedings.)

MADD has been successful in getting the Feds involved; a highway appropriations bill was passed which pretty much coerced states into adopting APS suspensions — or else no funds.  Do these APS hearings in DUI cases provide due process? In other words, how fair are they?

Let’s take California’s APS hearings. They are conducted by a "hearing officer". Is this an impartial judge? Well, he’s hardly impartial: He’s an employee of the DMV — the very agency that is trying to suspend the license (kind of like a judge being paid by the prosecutor). And he isn’t a judge. Actually, he isn’t even a lawyer; he’s only required to be a high school graduate. So who is the prosecutor? He’s, well, the same guy.

That’s right: this DMV employee with no legal education is both judge and prosecutor. Put another way, this government beaurocrat, without ever having read the Evidence Code, can object to the driver’s evidence — and then sustain his own objection! Not too surprisingly, the DMV wins about 95% of these DUI hearings.

That’s called "due process" in a drunk driving case.