The DUI Exception to the Constitution

The DUI Exception to the Constitution” Posted by Lawrence Taylor on May 9th, 2005

In the course of various postings concerning MADD, I have received emails suggesting that they are a civic-minded organization which does not deserve my criticisms. As I have said on many occasions, I believe them to be a well-intentioned group of "true believers" — who, like most zealots, have a rigid and narrow focus and are ignorant of the harm they cause to others. And in other posts I have tried to explain the nature of that harm.

Many years ago, I was invited to give a lecture to a "think tank" of government, corporate and academic types. In the years since then that I have given versions of it to other groups, the legal and political situation has only grown worse.

Perhaps the lecture itself might better explain why I consider MADD to be a continuing threat to our institutions and constitutional safeguards…..

I hope to convince you in the next hour, some of you, that the greatest single threat to our freedoms, the freedoms set forth in the Bill of Rights, is not from Iraq or Iran. I don’t think it’s from North Korea. I don’t think it’s from the extremists of the Muslim world. The threat, as it has always been throughout history, is internal: It is from within. But I do not think it is from the American Communist party or extremists on the right. I hope to convince a few of you that the greatest single threat to our freedoms today comes from a group consisting largely of American housewives. They call themselves the Mothers Against Drunk Driving. MADD.

I am fully aware that some of you belong to MADD. And I am certainly not here to make fun of them. Others of you here do not belong to MADD, but you have contributed to MADD and many more of you here, perhaps most of you here, are in complete sympathy with their goals and their activities. Many of you have had tragic losses at the hands of drunk drivers. But I hope to convince you in the next hour that you might want to reassess your view of that particular organization.

And I do not take them lightly in terms of their intentions. But we know that throughout history it is the well-intentioned zealots — those who believe strongly in the rightness of their cause –that are most willing to impose those ideas upon others. I do not, by the way, for a moment suggest that we should legalize drunk driving. I’m going to make that clear at the outset. But it is the true believer who is the greatest threat. And I should at the outset acknowledge my tremendous debt to Mr. Eric Hoffer who wrote the book, The True Believer. He was a longshoreman when I was going to school at Berkeley in the 60’s. He did not have a high school education, but was teaching philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley and wrote this little jewel of a book that has been terribly influential in my own thinking.

I would like you to imagine for a moment that you’ve gone to a friend’s house for dinner. In the course of a very good dinner you’ve had a couple of glasses of a good Merlot and it is now time to drive home. I would like you to imagine that you are on your way home–and, I will tell you, by the way, that two glasses of wine will not, in any state, put you under the influence of alcohol or over the legal limit of .08. As you are driving along the highway, you see ahead of you some flashing lights and barricades and police cars accordioned across the highway, with flashing lights directing you into an increasingly small channel. And, as you go in, you are stopped and two police officers approach you and stick a flashlight in your face and say, "Breath on me. Have you been drinking tonight? Please step out of the car."

Some of you say, "Well, that can’t happen in the United States. We have the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which says police officers have to have probable cause to stop you. They have to have a reason to believe you’ve done something criminal before they can stop and detain you.’" And so said the Michigan Supreme Court in 1990 in the case of Sitz v. Michigan. The Court said, "The Fourth Amendment does not permit these types of roadblocks" — and reversed the DUI conviction. The case went up to the United States Supreme Court, unfortunately, and that august body decided that somewhere in the Constitution there is something called a "DUI Exception". And in a 5 to 4 vote sent it back to Michigan saying there is no violation here. What’s interesting is that the Michigan Supreme Court — bless them, for there are fewer and fewer of them — said, "Well, if you will not protect our citizens in the state of Michigan from this kind of police conduct, we will. And we again reverse the conviction and this time we rely upon our own state constitution."

The state of Washington and three other states have followed suit. In 44 states today, however, it is legal to stop you for absolutely no reason other than the fact that you are driving a car. The only purpose is to check you out for drunk driving.

You have been stopped, you have been taken out of the car and you have been handcuffed. You are placed in a police vehicle and you are on your way back to the police station. About this time you’re probably wondering: I’ve seen this TV show somewhere — they’re supposed to read me something aren’t they? Something called Miranda? Aren’t I supposed to have a right to an attorney? Don’t I have the right to remain silent? That becomes an issue because, as you’re being driven to jail, the officer’s asking you all kinds of questions. Like, "Where have you been?" "Where are you coming from?" "How much have you had to drink?" "How long ago was it?" "When was the last drink?" "Do you feel the effects?" "Where are you now?" "What time of day is it?"

Well, again, a state Supreme Court said, "Hey, this person’s handcuffed and under arrest, you’ve got to advise him of his constitutional rights under Miranda." And again, it went to the United States Supreme Court. In 1984 in Berkemer v. McCarty, the United States Supreme Court fooled around for about 20 or 30 pages of opinion and finally concluded that there was apparently a DUI exception to the constitution. And that, "Well, we really can’t tell you when you’re supposed to give Miranda in a DUI case. We do know that it is later than in other types of criminal investigations." So, the U.S. Supreme Court has told us we don’t know when Miranda is supposed to be given in DUI cases, but it is clearly some time later than in other cases.

About this time you arrive at the police station and the officer takes you into a room and there is this little metal box about the size of a desktop computer. And he says breathe in here. And you say, "Wait a minute, I have a right to an attorney. Can I make a phone call?" "No", says the officer. And, he’s right. However, this denial of access to an attorney is only applicable in DUI cases. He’s right. You’re about to give the most incriminating evidence possible to give in a DUI case and you have no right to seek the advice of an attorney as to whether to breathe into that machine or, in the alternative, to agree to submit to a urine or a blood test.

And I’m only touching on a few of the problems. In California, for example, and in many other states, the law says you have a right to choose between breath and blood. It is your choice. We have discovered in California, however, through our own Supreme Court that when the officer doesn’t give you that choice — just makes you breathe into that little black box–that’s okay. They’re not supposed to do it, but there’s no remedy. There’s nothing that can be done about it, so says the California Supreme Court. You can’t suppress the evidence. Well, police are not stupid, so now about half of them simply don’t give you that choice, since nothing’s going to happen if they don’t.

Your next thought is, "I don’t know if I trust that little machine. Maybe I should refuse to breathe into it. I think I’m okay because, because as I remember, there’s a Fifth Amendment right in the United States Constitution that I don’t have to incriminate myself, and, not only that, but if it goes to trial, the prosecutor can’t even refer to the fact that I’ve exercised my Fifth Amendment right."

The South Dakota Supreme Court agreed a few years ago and they said, "This gentleman refused to incriminate himself by breathing into that machine and it was reversible error for the prosecutor to comment upon that to the jury and tell them that he refused because he knew he was guilty." Now you’re probably ahead of me, guessing the outcome here. It went to the United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court, in South Dakota v. Neville in 1983 said, "There’s a DUI exception to the Fifth Amendment. There is no right to refuse and the prosecution can comment freely in trial upon that refusal." And they sent it back to South Dakota. And. like Michigan, South Dakota said, "If you folks in Washington, DC will not protect our citizens, we will rely upon our own state constitution," and they reversed it again based upon the South Dakota constitution’s provisions against self-incrimination. Unfortunately, that’s the last story I have of a state supreme court protecting of its own citizens.

So, you decide you’re going to breathe into that machine. And you do. You breathe into one end and out comes a piece of paper at the other end that says your blood alcohol concentration is .13%. Now, at this point, in most states, the police are supposed to give you a choice as to whether you want a blood sample taken and saved as well, so that you have something for your defense attorney to have examined for an independent analysis.

This is called the Trombetta advisement. They don’t give it usually. They’re supposed to, but if they don’t, "no harm, no foul" and so it is rarely done. It’s called the "Trombetta advisement" because a few years ago, in 1984, a defendant in California said, "Wait a minute, that machine captured my breath and minutes after analyzing it, just purged it into the room air. It could have saved the breath. [Very easy to do: costs about $4.50 per sample utilizing a special kit to preserve it.] It could have saved the breath and then my attorney could have had it analyzed by a separate laboratory by a more exact and reliable testing method. You have destroyed evidence that I could have analyzed and may have been proven my innocence."

This went to the United States Supreme Court too, and in 1984 in the landmark case of Trombetta v. California, the Supreme Court found yet another DUI exception to the Constitution and said "Well, it would be nice if they saved the breath, but there’s no obligation to do so. And, destruction of that evidence, unless you can prove that it would have been exculpatory, has no impact." But how do you prove it would have been exculpatory if it has already been destroyed? So, today it is all right to destroy the evidence and make sure the defense doesn’t get access to it.

Finally, you’re rather outraged because you know you’re not under the influence. You know you’re not over .08% — which is the standard in California. And in 5 years will be the standard in all of your states because the federal government is telling you that’s what it’s going to be. Because the Mothers Against Drunk Driving are ensuring that happens.

You decide to go find one of these criminal defense lawyers you’ve always resented and ask them to represent you in trial. You want to tell a jury of 12 of your peers what happened. You want to give your version. So you tell your attorney, "I want a jury trial." Your attorney says, "I’m really sorry, but you can’t have one. You see we don’t have jury trials for DUI cases in this state, because in 1989 the United States Supreme Court in Blanton v. North Las Vegas, a DUI case, said, "There is no Constitutional right to a jury trial in a DUI case, so long as it’s not punishable by more than six months in jail."

So, in several states today, including Nevada, Louisiana, New Jersey and Hawaii you have no right to a jury trial. And the Mothers Against Drunk Driving and a few other organizations are doing everything they can to make sure there are no jury trials in other states as well.

All right, we’ve taken a look at what happens to you as you go through the process in terms of any Constitutional rights you thought you had. And if you’d been charged with burglary, murder, rape, you would have had those rights. At least for now, until those rights are taken away as well, utilizing the same ‘necessity’ argument used for DUI prosecutions.

Now, let’s take a look at what the crime of DUI really is. What is the offense you just committed? I will tell you that when I have clients come in the door, almost none of them know what the crime is, and probably half of them don’t know if they’re guilty or not.

In the beginning there was a law. That law said "Thou shalt not drive under the influence of alcohol". Period. It was a good law. We needed it. It addressed the problem. It was fair. Unfortunately, there were some defendants being acquitted. And so an inventor came along and said, "Well, I’ve got this great little gizmo here. I call it the Breathomatic. It’s a box and if you breathe in this end, out the other end comes this piece of paper and it’ll tell you exactly how much alcohol is in the person’s blood."

Well, that sounded pretty neat. And so legislators and prosecutors approached the American Medical Association and said, "We’ve got this wonderful machine. Can you tell us at what level of blood alcohol concentration a person is impaired in their ability to drive a vehicle?" And the AMA said, "After extensive research, it is 0.15 grams percent." This was about 60 years ago… 0.15 percent.

Well, that was okay for a while, but a whole lot of people still were not getting convicted. Part of the problem was there was only a presumption that you were under the influence. In other words, if you were over .15% the jury could accept that you were under the influence, or they could reject it and say other evidence shows that you weren’t. The second problem was that a lot of people were coming in at .13, .14, .12. And a third problem is, you wwa that you may have been .15 at the time of the test in the station, but what were you an hour earlier when you were driving?

So, they went back to the American Medical Association a few years later and said, "Are you sure about that .15? Couldn’t it really be a little lower?" And the AMA said, "You know, you’re right. It’s .10." Now, the human body, to my knowledge, had not changed in those 20 years, but certainly the AMA’s research did. And responded to considerable political pressure. So, now jurors were told that they could presume guilt if there was a .10%. A dramatic change in ‘the number’.

Unfortunately, there were still criminal defense lawyers out there and there were still acquittals, and the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a very effective, very well financed organization, as some of you here know, was very successful by working through a federal agency called National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in putting pressure on states to further drop it to .08%. And as I indicated earlier, about a third of the states have done exactly that, the others are rapidly following suit.

Well, there’s no question, there were fewer acquittals now and the prosecutors were increasing their conviction rate. But, there were still some acquittals. And so MADD and the federal agencies decided to change the law further. More accurately, MADD came up with another law. This is called the per se law: If we can’t convince jurors that a person is under the influence over .08, we can make it a crime to merely drive while having a BAC over .08. The crime is being over .08 per se. We don’t care if they’re intoxicated or impaired. If the person has a BAC level over .08%, or .10% blood-alcohol perhaps, in your state, that is a crime all by itself. Not only that, let’s keep the original law. So, now we give the prosecutors two shots to obtain a conviction whenever a test is taken by a suspect: If they can’t convince the jury he’s under the influence, well then maybe they can convince them he was over .08, even though he was not under the influence — and vice versa.

This once again certainly increased the conviction rate, and the number of acquittals continued to drop. But there was a problem. Acquittals were still happening. New, creative and detailed attacks began challenging the technology involved in breath alcohol analysis. The gist of the attacks by defense lawyers was based on the fact that the machine, to put it simplistically, assumed that you are an average person.

The machine is measuring the breath. It is measuring the alcohol in the vapor of the alveolar air in the deep lungs that you expel. But the machine is telling you how much alcohol is in the blood — not in the breath. So it uses what we call a partition ratio. To put it simplistically, the machine has an old, very primitive computer inside it. There are different machines, but the computers in them will all report, "Well, if you’ve got this result from the breath, there must be 2100 times as much in the blood!’ Using a multiplier inside the little computer, that’s what it prints out.

But the computer is assuming that your partition ratio is 2100. Problem? Very few people have a partition ratio of 2100-to-1. It ranges anywhere from about 1100-to-1 up to 3500-to-1 and higher. And there is no way of knowing at the time of testing what your partition ratio was because medical studies have shown that the partition ratio changes within an individual all the time. One person is going to be very different than the person sitting next to him. Your partition ratio tomorrow is going to be different than what it is right now. Well, what does that mean? It means if you blow, let’s say, a .11 and you have a 1300-to-1 partition ratio, that .11 is really 0.07. You’re innocent. Your crime, unfortunately, was not being average.

Well, attorneys usually go to law school because they failed physics, chemistry and so on in college, but a few defense attorneys were able to master the technology involved — were actually learning how this machine worked. And they thought, "Whoa! There’s an assumption here, 2100-to-1", and they cross-examined the expert from the law enforcement’s crime lab and said, "Isn’t it a fact that…?" And the guy would hem and haw, and finally say, "Well, yeah." Acquittal. The 2100-to-1 ratio issue is still a viable defense in a lot of states.

Not in California anymore. And not in a growing number of states. In California, our Supreme Court, which is slightly to the right of the U.S. Supreme Court, said, "No, not really, because what you’re doing is you’re measuring the alcohol on the breath. You’re not measuring the blood directly, you’re measuring on the breath, and therefore we don’t have to have a partition ratio." Now, you probably don’t appreciate the complete idiocy of that statement, because the California Supreme Court did not understand the technology involved. And it was an 8-1 decision. A dissenting justice in the decision said, "Do you realize that we just created a new crime called driving with ‘alcohol on your breath’? And she was absolutely right. That’s what the Supreme Court of California did.

Result? If I now ask a law enforcement crime lab expert on the stand in front of a jury, "Isn’t it a fact that the partition ratio you used assumes an average of 2100-to-1?" I can be held in contempt of court by the judge. If I try to bring out the truth, I can be jailed. I’m not exaggerating. And I’m telling you that this is true in a growing number of other states. I have lectured in 36 states to lawyers’ groups, bar associations, and so on, so I’m familiar with the different states and their different approaches. All of which are becoming much more standardized as the Federal Government continues to step in.

Well, that made things a lot easier for prosecutors to convict in California. Once again, the conviction rate went up. It became more and more difficult to defend people accused of drunk driving. I did not say "guilty" of drunk driving: Accused of drunk driving. Well, but there are still many defenses left, because, as I hope I will have time to get into, this machine is, to say the least, unreliable.

One of the problems is called retrograde extrapolation. It’s all well and good the the suspect was a .11 at the time that he breathed into the machine at the police station. But it’s not against the law to be over a .08 in a police station. It’s against the law to drive a car over .08. What was the blood alcohol level at the time he was driving?

That caused prosecutors a lot of problems. And so most states, almost all states, passed a new law — at the urgin of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And that law said, "If any test within three hours of driving results in a blood alcohol reading of .08, it shall be presumed that it was the same at the time of driving." Even though we know absolutely, as a matter of scientific fact, that it was not.

Well, that again raised the conviction rate, except that it was a rebuttable presumption. In other words, you could introduce evidence that that simply wasn’t true. And so now, to make a depressingly long story short, some states are beginning to pass laws saying that the crime is having over .08 at the time you breath into the machine. And they don’t care what you were when you were driving the car.

Notice how we’ve gotten further and further away from the evil we were trying to cure in the beginning: "Were you impaired by alcohol when you were driving your car?"

Okay. Let’s take a look at this machine. And in most cases, because it’s cheaper, easer and faster than blood analysis, the police are going to have you breathing into one of these machines. Let me just give you a real quick rundown on breath test device ‘theory’. Incidentally, the book I wrote, Drunk Driving Defense, is about 1200 pages in length, of which nearly 400 pages are just on the technology of breath machines, so this is going to be very cursory. But, I think, for purposes of illustrating some of the problems, it will help.

Basically, these machines capture breath from your lungs into a sample chamber. In the common Intoxilyzer 5000, for example, it’s a little 81 cc nicle-plated tube. And, by the way, there are a lot of different manufacturers of these different machines, different types, but we’ll get into that in a moment. These machines rust and corrode inside. The sample chamber gets pitted, and it absorbs or retains in these pits alcohol from previous subjects. But let’s just say for purposes of theory it captures a sample, a given volume of alveolar air from the lungs. At one end it has a projector that sends a beam of infrared energy, infrared light, through the chamber. The light passes through the breath sample that is passing through that little chamber. Now, at the other end of the chamber is a detector that ‘receives’ the light from the other side. It then measures how much of this infrared energy gets through — that is, is not absorbed by the breath and does not reach the other side of the chamber. It ‘measures’ this dimunition of light energy by comparing the original intensity of the light to the diminished intensity of the light, multiples it by 2100, and spits out the blood alcohol concnetration.

Now the theory of infrared spectroscopy, as applied to DUI cases, is based upon the fact that any compound containing the methyl group of molecules will absorb the energy from this 3,61 micorn light wave. One of those compounds is ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol. Molecules of ethyl alcohol contain the methyl group as part of its structure. It is resonant with this particular frequency of light wave. So, the more ethyl alcohol in the sample chamber, the more energy is going to be absorbed, the less will get through to the receptor, the higher the blood-alcohol reading will go. Actually, the concept is fairly simple. Except, again, the light waves are absorbed not only by ethyl alcohol, but also by any methyl group in any compound. In other words, it is a stupid machine. It does not differentiate between ethyl alcohol and any other compound containing the molecular group. It is what we call non-specific for ethanol. Any compound on your breath that contains the methyl group will be detected as alcohol — and reported as alcohol. If you happen to have 32 different compounds containing the methyl group on your breath, it not only will report them all as alcohol, it is cumulative: the machine will add all of those compounds, including any ethyl alcohol, and then report it as alcohol in the blood.

So, do any of these methyl groups exist in the human breath? There are a number of scientific studies — one of which indicates that there are 102 different compounds found in the human breath that can contain the methyl group. So what you are getting is not necessarily alcohol. What you are getting is some unknown cumulative reading of any of these compounds on your breath. If you had been painting a house yesterday, today you would be registering alcohol on our breath machine. If you had been using solvents, or thinners or glue or anything like this, same result. If you had pumped gasoline into your car and inhaled any of the fumes, hours, even days later, you could be breathing out vapors containing compounds with the methyl group in it. If you are a diabetic, or have been on a low-carbohydrate diet, youo would be getting high blood alcohol readings.

Now, I can go on for quite awhile, but the last example I will give you is called the mouth alcohol problem. The machine assumes that the alcohol, or whatever it is measuring, comes from the air in your lungs, and that’s why it’s multiplying by 2100. Obviously, if it is getting alcohol directly from your stomach or your throat or your mouth, it’s going to fool the machine and the results are going to be extremely high. It would take a minuscule amount of alcohol in your mouth, throat or stomach to fool the machine and create a pretty high BAC reading, since it would be incorrectly multiplied 2100 times. This is called the trapped alcohol or mouth alcohol problem.

So, for example, if you burp or belch, and any gases from your stomach come up, or you have an acid reflux condition, or a hiatal hernia, and any of those gases or liquids ‘come up’ to your esophagus or mouth, remnants of the saturated gas will stay there for about 15 to 20 minutes before saliva dissipates it. It will be breathed into the machine, if you are being tested. The machine will report a reading, which will be falsely high. It does not mean you’re under the influence. It does not mean you’re really an .08. It’s simply that you had alcohol in your mouth or your throat. The police officers are supposed to guard against this by observing you for 15 minutes and making sure you don’t burp. They are supposed to sit down and watch you for a quarter of an hour before giving the test. In all the years that I have been defending DUIs, or for that matter prosecuting them, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an officer who actually did that. They are far too busy to fool around with things like that. They will check the box, and say they did, but it rarely happens; I’m not sure they could even tell if a belch did happen. The 15-minute observation period is a safeguard, but one that the police ignore.

So, these are just a couple of examples. There are hundreds of things wrong with these machines, not just theoretically as they apply to the human body, but applied to the machines themselves. So how accurate are they? They’re close enough for government work. In California, for example, the legal standards of accuracy are that you must have duplicate analysis (two sequential tests) and each result must be within .02% of the other. That means you’d have to take two tests. If the first one (just to use a number to make it mathematically easy) is .10%, the next one has to be .08, .09, .10, .11 or .12. Think about it: a 40% range of error is scientifically accurate in a case where the state must prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In most states, a 40% range of error is considered to be ‘acceptable accuracy’. Close enough for government work.

The people that make these machines keep coming out with new models. They’ll come out with a model and call it ’state-of-the-art’, ‘foolproof’, ‘fail-safe’, and then two years later they come out with a new model that takes care of all of the problems found to have existed with the earlier model. Meanwhile 100,000 people have been tested on the old device (which is quietly retired from service), yet none of those convicted can re-open their guilty pleas, or undo the damage done to their lives and careers by the machine. Then a competing breath manufacturing company comes out with a new and improved model that takes care of the problems with their competitor’s new model. And this has become a fairly regular battle of the manufacturers, year after year.

If you look at the warranties on these devices, few of the manufacturers warrant these things to actually test blood alcohol. If you read the warranties, they specifically say that there is no warranty of ‘fitness for a particular purpose’. That’s a legal phrase. Basically it means they don’t want to get sued by somebody if there is a false reading. So they will not even warrant these things to do what they’re selling them to do. The standard warranty, for a total breakdown of the device, is about one year — about what your toaster is warranted for. The difference between the two machines? Your toaster is warranted to toast bread.

Okay. Let’s talk about science and the law. Right off the bat we’ve got a problem. Science, if you can define it, would be, I would say, the systematic pursuit of truth. The objectives of law are very different. It is a governmental mechanism for imposing order, structure, predictability, security, and confidence of the public in its institutions. The law is not concerned with truth. That distinction is important in understandking what is happening in the DUI legal arena.

To understand it you must understand the difference. Hundreds of years ago a guy named Galileo said, ‘the universe is really not flat, the way Rome says it is’. You saw what happened to Galileo. Have we progressed? Not if a lawyer tries to tell the truth to a jury about the limitations of a breath machine, and, in doing so, is held in contempt for properly and zealously representing his/her client. I would say we have not come all that far since Galileo’s days.

Again, the legal system is not concerned with truth. And it may come as a shock, but it is not. It is concerned with order, stability. If the legal system were seeking truth, the government would not falsely assume that there’s a 2100-to-1 partition ratio. If the legal system cared about truth, they would not presume that your blood-alcohol was the same ‘number’ three hours earlier, when the government knows it is not. If they sought truth, they would recognize that these machines are non-specific, among other problems. The legal system is not concerned with justice, either. It is concerned with expediency, not justice. If they were concerned with justice, they would not permit roadblocks. They would not presume guilt. They would not pass laws refuting scientific truth.

I just said, "They would not presume guilt." That was another DUI exception to the constitution that I didn’t tell you about. One other thing the police officer does after he has you breathe into that machine, if you’re over .08, is that he immediately grabs your license and confiscates it. This is another contribution from MADD. Immediate seizure of the license in 48 of the states today. On the spot. Justice administered by the police officer. No judge. No jury. You are presumed guilty. Your license is confiscated and you are given a notice of suspension. What happened to the presumption of innocence?

After you have been given this suspension, you will be facing further punishment in criminal court — possibly including another suspension. Does this sound like double jeopardy? Of course it does, but after some initial disagreement, the courts decided that the first suspension was not a "punishment": it was only an "administrative sanction".

How far can things go? Some of you may have heard about a case recently in North Carolina. Now, we have never executed people, we’ve never, until recently, given the death penalty for a crime unless there was pre-meditation of the offender. Intention to kill and time to reflect upon that and then to carry out the plan and cold-bloodedly murder. Some exceptions have been added: Killing a police officer; multiple murders; murder by torture; murder for ransom. In North Carolina this year there was a DUI case involving an accident and a fatality It would, in any other case, in another state, likely be a vehicular manslaughter case. It was not an intentional act. It was negligent; it may have been reckless. And the prosecutor sought the death penalty. The death penalty. The law permitted it and the judge let him go for it. Fortunately, they didn’t get it.

So, in the DUI arena, you have unfair procedures. You have false evidence. You have wholesale erosion of rights. But, some may rationalize, ‘at least the DUI-caused fatalities are falling, correct?’ If you believe the statistics from the Mothers Against Drunk Driving and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that would be correct. If you look at it more closely, however, you’ll find they start using terms like "alcohol-involved", "alcohol-related", and those statistics start changing to justify what they have been doing for the last few years. The numbers have been manipulated so that if any person involved in any way in the ‘accident’ had any alcohol in his/her system — even .01 per cent — MADD and our federal government counts that as an ‘alcohol-related’ death. If a pedestrian or the deceased driver had been the only one drinking, it would have been an "alcohol-related" fatality.

So, what is happening in the DUI field? Same thing that’s always been happening. The real danger to your lives, to my children’s and your children’s lives, are from recidivists. Statistically, the risk lies with recidivists — people that have driven drunk repeatedly. Which is, despite what MADD says, a relatively small percentage of those who are arrested. Problem? How do you reach those people? Can you affect the incidence of death caused by DUIs by increasing the punishment? As to those recidivists, I tell you: no.

We are trying to use the legal system to address what may be partially a medical, perhaps psychological, but in my opinion certainly a genetic problem. Now that sounds like an easy cop-out. I wrote a book about 15 years ago called Born to Crime: The Genetic Causes of Criminal Behavior, so I suppose that I am a bit biased, but I’m basing what I say upon defending and prosecuting thousands of DUIs and I’m absolutely convinced that alcoholism is largely genetic in origin, at least a strong genetic predisposition. And I think the studies, and one of the chapters of Born to Crime was devoted to alcoholism — the studies are overwhelming. And so long as you have a system that is geared to behavioral modification — that is, ‘we’re going to change his drinking habits by putting him in jail for six months’ — or deterrence – ’we’re going to stop other recidivists from driving drunk because of their fear of jail’ — then you’re fooling yourselves.

Do I have an answer? No, I don’t. But I know that system isn’t working, and in the meantime we are slowly dismantling the Constitutional rights that are our birthright. Is this just about drunk drivers? The simple fact is that our legal system is based upon precedent: rights that are lost in a DUI case today can be lost in any other case tommorrow.

To paraphrase a famous quote from pre-war Germany, "First they came for the drunks, but I was not a drunk, so I did not speak up…."

"Spoken as a true ruler/elitist. Remember Comrades; All animals are created equal, but some animals (like politicians) are more equal than others."

Yes, I shudder to think that if this guy's claims are true, that he was ever allowed within 200 miles of anywhere where legislation was being drafted and received renumeration for anything. And if so I would wish that there would be a way to revoke any retirement benefits that this pair of clown shoe's is receiving.

You are correct. I will re-phrase. If it isn't in the Constitution then it is a state and local issue. DUI and the Constitution should not be near each other.

The only argument I have.... The story is, Pa and Ma Kettle go to dinner. They both have a couple drinks. Pa Kettle has a DUI checkpoint going home and admits to a couple of drinks. Pa fails the one foot stand for 30 seconds and reciting his ABC's backward. Pa goes to jail. Unfortunatly for Pa his is an OTR driver and is now without work. Pa and Ma Kettle just had their pursuit of happiness wiped out on top of a 5000 hit on their budget.

It's all BS.

However, the author did himself no favor when he said “Hundreds of years ago a guy named Galileo said, ‘the universe is really not flat, the way Rome says it is’.”

Heh, this line jumped out at me too, but I didn't take it quite as far as you did. To me, I was just thinking that nobody ever thought the universe was flat; they just thought the Earth was flat. They still believed that the Sun and the moon and all the stars rotated around the Earth, which wouldn't be possible if the universe was flat.

Driving a car is a PRIVILEGE, not a RIGHT. The Constitution guarantees NO ONE the right to get behind the wheel. With that understanding, this entiren long-winded argument collapses to the ground.

I read the article, and got the impresssion that pressure groups such as MADD were encouraging government agencies to enact tighter controls/enforcement over the activities of their interest. Licensure, in itself wasn't the theme. There's an awful lot of stuff that the Constitution doesn't guarantee. To give any kind of interest group too much influence over the granting of permission to engage in any of these 'non-guaranteed' activities may tend to restrict the enjoyment of them, wouldnt you agree? Who elected MADD anyway, or does it matter? Most of the details of our lives are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, should the police then be allowed Carte Blanche in arranging their control?

Public right of way is usually secured from private individuals who'd like to be able to travel to and from an existing system of public roads without having to deal with their neighbors.

There are systems of private roads in this country however. St. Louis used to have mostly private roads. They still do. The locals agree together to use their own roads, and outsiders don't get in.

Even Virginia allows for the reversion of public right of way to private control. You can just imagine the rules private owner/operators place on their own roads.

At the moment the people's own assemblies have evaluated the situation and established laws for the safe operation of the roads on public right of way. You are free to campaign for different laws. In this state you could win everything you wanted and we'd all have the right to withdraw our property from the public right of way and revert it to private ownership and operation.

Outsiders commiting DUI on our property would be dragged through the courts and stripped of all income and possessions. There'd be no end to the punishment.

You should get on your knees and thank God that you aren't in charge because it could be much worse.

From what I understand, DWI/license checks are constitutional. Remember - driving has been ruled a privilege and not a right. Not the same as “home as castle” doctrine.

How come you can't turn around at a check point? When NYC posted policemen to conduct random searches of bags prior to entering the subway system, you had the right to refuse a search and go on your way, just not onto the subway. Turn around before a police road block, and they go after you.

If you weren’t under the influence, then you shouldn’t have had an issue with the tests.

That is usually true enough.........but from personal experience this part of your comment is not always true:

You could have walked the line and passed the Breathalyzer.

I blew .05, without having consumed any alcohol at all. Granted that is not over the limit, but it is high enough to be detained or even arrested. IOW, those breathalyzers are not exactly stellarly accurate.

I agree with almost the entire speech, especially this part:

So, what is happening in the DUI field? Same thing that’s always been happening. The real danger to your lives, to my children’s and your children’s lives, are from recidivists. Statistically, the risk lies with recidivists — people that have driven drunk repeatedly. Which is, despite what MADD says, a relatively small percentage of those who are arrested. Problem? How do you reach those people? Can you affect the incidence of death caused by DUIs by increasing the punishment? As to those recidivists, I tell you: no.

100% truth. A whole swath of criminals need to be permanently eliminated - out of society, out of the gene pool. Three-strikes laws are an excellent first step in that process, but far from being enough.

The sole point in the speech I disagree with is:

It was not an intentional act. It was negligent; it may have been reckless. And the prosecutor sought the death penalty. The death penalty. The law permitted it and the judge let him go for it. Fortunately, they didn’t get it.

And I only disagree tepidly (my hesitance hinging only on the severe problems - pointed out in the speech - with the conviction mechanism). Any action performed while under the influence of voluntarily administered mind-altering narcotics (booze, cocaine, heroine, marijuana, etc) should be legally considered an INTENTIONAL act. If "the drug made you do it" and you willingly, consciously, voluntarily, took the drug, then you are the ultimate menace to society. If you can't handle that, keep a clear mind.

Whether you like it or not, that is the law. And it's not gonna change.

Kelo is the law of the land, too. Doesn't mean it's right or that we should not resist it.

I was called to federal jury duty right after US v. Watts was handed down in 1997, and the case had similarities to Watts, which, IMO, legalized double jeopardy. During voir dire, I told the judge that, if there was a vote to accquit on the more serious charge, I would be compelled to accquit on the less serious charge despite the evidence. The judge tried but could not fault my reasoning. Five years later, SCOTUS basically reversed Watts.

You have to stand up to this stuff wherever you can. I respect your opinion about the current realities of the court. But I cannot accept that reality.

The answer is "yes" ~ Washington was required to have permission, either from the owner, or from the county, to travel from Point A to Point B.

We have what were called "Rolling Roads" around here. Those were roads set aside for the purpose of moving tobacco from plantations to ports to be loaded for shipment to Europe.

Since no one had any money back in colonial times, the planters would "donate" right of way for construction of the "rolling road". Others would donate hogsheads of tobacco to the county to improve and clear the roadway.

Years back the Commonwealth of Virginia proposed cutting off the historic residual (which made up my housing development) from its rights to access a "rolling road". They intended to build a brand new super highway between my house and the "rolling road".

We went to a public hearing where I claimed my right of access. The State and county figured it was easier to buy me off than challenge my right of access ~ which is how we got a stoplight system at the entrance to our development on a different main thoroughfare.

The colonial owner of this site at the time the "rolling road" was built was a Mr. Fitzhugh, a notorious Tory who never even visited America. His property was seized by the Commonwealth during the Revolution, but at the conclusion of the War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the "rights" pertaining to his land and his usages (albeit under new owners) were re-estblished.

George Washington would have needed the explicit permission of Mr. Fitzhugh (in London) to travel from Cherry Valley in the North to Mount Vernon in the South but for the "rolling road" I mentioned. That he, he would have needed "license". Fortunately for me Fitzhugh managed to get the "rolling road" built on his land rather than his neighbors, so he didn't need to pay for maintenance ~ at the same time, every part of the area retained a right of access to the "rolling road" for time ever after!

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