Posted on 12/28/2003 8:14:49 AM PST by SwinneySwitch
Legal loopholes mean more drunken driving defendants get back on the road in the Coastal Bend, where more than 100 died in alcohol-related car accidents from 1998 to 2001.
In the state with the most alcohol-related traffic deaths and a reputation for letting drunken drivers off the hook, the Coastal Bend lags far behind the rest of Texas in drunk-driving convictions.
Texas led the nation last year in alcohol-related traffic deaths with more than 1,740. Critics blame lax prosecution efforts, high dismissal rates and weak laws. In Nueces County, the likelihood that a case will be dismissed is more than double the state average.
Coastal Bend counties trailed the state average for DWI misdemeanor and felony convictions last year, according to annual statewide court reports.
Consider that in 2002:
In Texas, 70 percent of misdemeanor DWI or DUI cases prosecuted resulted in convictions. The felony DWI conviction rate was 65 percent.
Nueces County had a 68 percent conviction rate for DWI and DUI misdemeanors and 58 percent for felony DWI cases.
Nueces County's dismissal rate for DWI misdemeanor cases was 25 percent, more than double the statewide average of 12 percent.
Most counties in the Coastal Bend had a conviction rate below 70 percent for DWI and DUI misdemeanors. Live Oak County had the lowest rate with 41 percent.
Nearly half of Texas drivers stopped on suspicion of DWI refuse breath tests, which often cripples a prosecutor's case.
California has 34 million people compared with Texas' nearly 22 million, yet 133 more died in Texas last year because of drunken drivers.
Nearly half of traffic fatalities in Texas last year were alcohol-related. In most states, 30 percent to 40 percent of traffic fatalities were alcohol-related.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that each person arrested the first time for drunken driving has driven drunk 200 to 2,000 times without being arrested.
A lack of DWI data
Gary Taylor, the safety administration's senior regional manager, said it is impossible to compare conviction rates for DWI at a national level because there are no uniform reporting standards.
"Some are reduced, some never go to court and some do not end up as a conviction," he said. "There are those actual cases that end up in court and they may be tracked, but most of the time we lack data In some states, people have been arrested five or six times; since the data are not readily available, it may be a first offense over and over."
Lessons from California
Critics of Texas' DWI enforcement and recording system complain that the alcohol-related traffic death toll barely elicits an angry murmur.
Advocates say Texas could learn a lot from California, considered the gold standard for DWI laws and enforcement by national safety analysts and advocates. That state, which has population trends similar to those of Texas, such as little public transportation, dense metropolitan areas and vast rural areas, does far better, said Bill Lewis, a public policy liaison for Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.
"Since the body count here is higher than anywhere else in the union for alcohol-related crashes, we think that makes it the worst in the nation," Lewis said. "We need to look at changing Texas laws to make them correspond with California's successes."
A major unused deterrent
Lewis said the sobriety checkpoints are what make the biggest difference in DWI enforcement, but those aren't used in Texas.
During the last legislative session, state Sen. Judith Zaffirini D-Laredo, authored a bill that would have set guidelines for sobriety checkpoints. She said checkpoints are legal but not used by police because they cannot be carried out without set guidelines from the Legislature. Her efforts did not garner enough support to get the measure out of committee, which infuriates her.
"Research shows they are a deterrent," Zaffirini said. "There have been studies, and what they found was crashes dropped by 20 percent after well publicized checkpoints. They are publicized, not a surprise."
The breath test loophole
In California, a DWI also comes with jail time and the offender cannot have his or her driver's license reinstated without undergoing alcohol treatment. The other striking difference between the two states is that almost half of people in Texas refuse breath tests. In California the number is 5 percent because drivers face harsher penalties for refusing, Lewis said.
The refusing driver's license, for instance, is suspended for a year in California, and less than half as long in Texas.
The breath test loophole in Texas is one that area prosecutors point to repeatedly as the reason cases are not taken to trial, or if they are, why many result in acquittals or dismissals.
Of the cases that make it to area courtrooms, Aransas County has the highest misdemeanor conviction rate at 76 percent. Kleberg and Live Oak counties have the lowest with rates between 40 percent and 50 percent.
"I tell friends and acquaintances if they are going to drink, put a $20 bill in their pocket and take a cab home," Aransas County attorney Jim Anderson said. "It is a whole lot cheaper than meeting me professionally."
Nueces trails similar counties
Nueces County, which has a higher conviction rate than most counties in the Coastal Bend, trails other Texas counties of comparable size and larger counties.
Hidalgo, Galveston, Denton and Collin counties, which have comparable populations, outscored Nueces County in both misdemeanor and felony DWI convictions in 2002. El Paso and Bexar counties, which have more than twice the population of Nueces, also had higher conviction percentages for DWI felony and misdemeanor cases.
Lance Kutnick, a Nueces County prosecutor, said the dismissal rate could reflect the DWI cases that prosecutors believe they cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors also may file a motion to dismiss and re-file under a different charge, he said.
The strongest cases have breath test results, he said. The state mandates breath tests or blood samples, but the consequences for not taking those tests are not enough of a deterrent for drivers, he said.
"Something needs to be done to make sure more people take these tests," Kutnick said.
Defendant controls evidence
San Patricio County Attorney David Aken said part of the problem with increasing prosecution numbers is that state law allows suspected offenders loopholes to get out of prosecution. Also, some jurors relate to the drinking and driving offense.
"DWI is unique," Aken said. "In no other crime is a defendant allowed to control so much of the evidence taken against him. He can deny the state breath evidence. He can deny videotape evidence. He can deny the officer testimony by refusing to talk to the officer. We just do not see that in other types of crime."
Jim Wells County Attorney Jesusa Sanchez Vera and Kleberg County Attorney Delma Rios-Salazar plead staff shortages, crowded dockets or weak cases as the reason drunken drivers are left to roam the highways.
Not enough videotaping
In Kleberg County, more than 30 percent of DWI and DUI cases were dismissed last year. Rios-Salazar said the problem is poor evidence stemming from lack of local police training, few videotaped arrests and few breath-test results.
Despite a state law requiring video cameras in patrol cars, few sheriff's deputies submit videotapes of DWI arrests, she said.
Though the Department of Public Safety provided funding to many counties for the installation of video and audio equipment last year, the Kleberg County Sheriff's office didn't get the funding until this year and installed the equipment last month. Deputies are undergoing training now to use the equipment.
'Has to be a consequence'
In San Patricio County, the number of cases not prosecuted has dropped significantly from 135 in 2000 to 33 this year, which officials attribute to a program in 2000 to educate law enforcement on issues such as probable cause for a stop. Between 2000 and 2003, San Patricio law enforcement filed 1,436 DWI cases. Of those, 298 were rejected because evidence did not support prosecution, Aken said.
In counties such as Jim Wells and San Patricio, there is a widely held perception that it is possible to drive drunk, get arrested and still get away with it, said Shirley Esparza, a MADD victims' advocate from Corpus Christi who serves the 12-county Coastal Bend area.
Aken said nothing could be further from the truth and he prosecutes any case that will hold up in court.
All the blame should not fall to prosecutors, but prosecution and punishments need to reflect the severity of the crime, anti-DWI advocates say. Changing the attitudes toward DWI in small South Texas towns also is an obstacle, advocates say.
"There has to be a consequence," Esparza said. "You're sending a message to your community that it is OK."
Contact Jaime Powell at 886-3716 or powellj@caller.com. Contact Quincy Collins at 886-3792 or collinsq@caller.com
That's what happens when you let a democrat state rep like Gabi Canales from Alice, refuse to take a breath test and walk away from a drunk driving/open container arrest!
You can't go comparing Texans to Metrosexuals in anything.
So9
"Your papers are not in order, Herr automobile operator."
I'm as sensitive as anyone to the tragedy of unchecked drunk drivers (college friend killed by a drunk driver), but do we really want routine roadside checkpoints (AKA a slippery slope to a police state), rather than having the cops observe drunk driving behavior (probable cause) before stopping citizens randomly?
If they can't get a conviction without a breath test, then they probably don't have that strong a case.
How do you think the new Dallas Police "No Chase" policy will affect drunk driving tickets and punishment now?
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