Posted on 02/24/2004 10:12:54 AM PST by mafree
Madison - State Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager said today that she was arrested for drunken driving in Dodge County while returning to her Fond du Lac home from the Capitol on Monday.
Lautenschlager, 48, said in a statement that she had made a "terrible mistake" and added: "While driving home, I fell asleep and drove off the road, and was subsequently cited for operating a vehicle while intoxicated."
In her statement, she promised to "accept the consequences of and will take responsibility for my actions."
According to the Dodge County sheriff's report on the arrest, Lautenschlager refused to take a test to determine her blood-alcohol level.
She was driving a state-owned car when she was arrested.
Lautenschlager, whose office works closely with local and state police agencies and operates state crime labs, thanked Dodge County officers in her statement "for their professionalism in handling this matter."
She has been released from custody.
A Democrat, she is a former state legislator and U.S. attorney appointed by former President Clinton. She was elected the state's first female attorney general in 2002.
An aide said Lautenschlager was not available for comment today.
Lautenschlager commutes to the Capitol from her Fond du Lac home and usually drives alone to state appearances. As a former federal prosecutor, whose spouse is a retired law enforcement officer, Lautenschlager has received considerable political backing from law officers.
More details of her arrest were not immediately available.
Complete coverage of this story will appear online later today and in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the morning.
The can take her in handcuffs to a hospital, strap her down and do a blood draw. (Well that's what I hope happened.)
She should be dismissed from her position immediately. But it won't happen. This DUI will remain a charge and not a conviction. It will disappear like an amorphous fart.
Driving a state vehicle while intoxicated! The effin nerve!
She took a mighty risk by getting into that automobile after drinking.
Irresponsible in the extreme, risking the lives of herself and others on the road.
I make it my personal Jihad to write down the tag number and time of day every time I see one at the mall, Packers games, stripper bar, golf course, and other abuses.
The use of those vehicles is personal income. Commuting to and from work is not a deductable expense. All personal use should be reported to the IRS as income. For some reason this seems to apply only to private industry. State and municipal employees just steal it.
I was going to start a pool to determine what her political affiliation actually was. If she were a Republican, all the mealy mouthed, officious, neocommunist would be howling like like wolves for her immediate resignation and condemning President Bush for even being associated with her. Any non-leftist decision she ever made, they would scream, must now be reversed.
As a democrat, these same people will yawn, urge that, since she has apologized for her actions, we put this behind us and move on.
She WILL NOT resign. Dems never resign when their crimes have been revealed.
Another example, look at Paige's very accurate description of the teachers' unions as terrorists (I remember in the late '70s, in Thousand Oaks, California a teacher's strike where the striking teachers smashed the windows of school buses full of little children as they were driven on to school grounds). The, look at the response to Hillie, making fun of Apu or Gahndi, the gas station guy. Damn, I could have made some bucks on this pool.
In Wisconsin you do not have the right to refuse to take any test. Legally, the officer could hold you down and forcibly draw a blood sample from your veins. In practice this rarely happens except where an accident is involved which caused death or serious bodily injury.
If you refuse to take a test, your driver's license is automatically suspended for one year. Also, in your trial, the jury will be told that you refused to take the test and the judge will instruct the jury that they can consider your refusal as evidence of your guilt.
Drunk driving penalties have become very severe in Wisconsin in the past few years. For a first offense, the maximum possible penalties the court could impose are 6 months in the county jail, $1,000 fine plus up to an additional $1,950 in penalty assessments, 6 months driver's license suspension, and your car impounded for 30 days.
Second, third and fourth offenses within 7 years are punished by increasingly more harsh penalties. For third and fourth convictions, your license must be revoked for 3 and 4 years respectively. A fourth offense can even be prosecuted against you as a felony carrying a maximum term of 3 years in state prison along with your car being ordered sold and the proceeds going to the state.
They don't say what road she was on, but the logical assumption is US151. Can anyone describe the road? Is it a divided highway or two lane and if it is divided, what is the median like?
We need to now follow the future of the poor SOB cop who found the bitch in a ditch. They have a toll free number to call to the director of the state's fleet of cars 24 hours a day. The cop is then instructed what to do. The director is a no nonsense hard as nails guy. He may have just loved getting that call at midnight!
Im not a lawyer but I do know that its "normal" for a first time offender with an otherwise clean record to get a 6 month drivers license suspension (occupational permit possible), a small fine, and a mandatory psych evalutation to determine whether it was "obviously" an isolated incident, if short term individual counciling is necessary to determine if there is a greater problem, or if group therapy is required.
Note that DUI is a traffic violation like speeding not a "crime" as in misdemeanor/felony, so this event could go through a hefty spin cycle here.
Probably not true. Most places you forfeit your driving privileges however, and that will happen I'm sure.
She should resign.
Probably.
If they have charged her with DUI, imagine what they really had on her at the time. The DUI was a result of a bargain agreement.
They had to have much more in order to charge her with a DUI. Kiddie porn in the back seat? Handgun? Weed?
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