State's Roads Deadlier; '04 Fatalities Rise

New Mexico has slashed the highway death toll caused by drunken drivers. But if you think the state's roads were safer overall last year, think again. New data show that 522 people were killed in traffic crashes in New Mexico in 2004, making it the deadliest year on state roads since 1989. Spurred by an increase in fatalities that didn't involve DWI, the death toll rose by 83 over 2003's total of 439. It was the single biggest jump in traffic deaths in at least 20 years. In 2004, 303 traffic deaths were non-alcohol involved compared to 225 the previous year. Such fatalities have been on the increase since 1994. Some traffic safety advocates say it's time to study the trend and find ways to stop those deaths. "I feel for those 83 people (in 2004) that nobody's paying attention to," said Steven Flint, a former chief of the state Department of Transportation's Traffic Safety Bureau. "They are the silent fallen." Traffic safety experts say it's too early to say whether last year's spike was an aberration. Mike Pope, current Traffic Safety Bureau chief, said the "fabulous" news is that so far in 2005, traffic fatalities statewide appear to have dropped significantly. But that total is incomplete and is expected to change as law enforcement agencies submit reports for accidents from earlier this year. The 2004 data was just finalized this summer. Pope said it's difficult to pinpoint the reasons for the disturbing 2004 numbers. "We've got lots of analysis," he said. "I can tell you who did it. I can tell you where it happened. I can't tell you why."

Focus on DWI The state Traffic Safety Bureau spends millions of dollars annually trying to make the state's roads safer. For years, drunken driving has been at the top of the agenda. In 2004, Richardson named a DWI czar, while the state DOT spent more than $1 million for DWI checkpoints and saturation patrols. An anti-DWI media campaign— "You drink. You drive. You lose."— was initiated. This year the governor spearheaded new ignition-interlock legislation. The Traffic Safety Bureau's most recent annual report paints a picture of progress for the state. "Over the past four years, New Mexico's traffic fatality rate declined by 5 percent and the DWI fatality rate by almost 7 percent," states DOT Secretary Rhonda Faught in the report. The report examined data for the state fiscal year that ended in June 2004 and discussed overall traffic fatalities, fatal crashes involving alcohol and crashes involving speed. There was no specific mention of non-alcohol related traffic deaths. At the time, the jump in non-alcohol related traffic deaths was evident. There were 269 non-alcohol related deaths for the fiscal year that ended in June 2004, compared to 224 for the same period the previous fiscal year. According to the nonprofit DWI Resource Center and Traffic Safety Bureau data for 2004:

The increase was predominantly in non-alcohol related deaths on rural highways during the daytime hours— a significant number occurring between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.

Bernalillo, Doña Ana, McKinley and Rio Arriba counties had some of the highest increases in non-alcohol related fatalities.

Fatalities surprising Bruce Shults of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the increase in fatalities is surprising, "considering that New Mexico has one of the highest safety belt use rates in the nation— almost 90 percent last year." Nationwide, fatalities for 2003 went down just slightly across the nation, Shults said. Data for 2004 isn't yet available. Just because DWI deaths drop doesn't automatically mean non-DWI deaths will go up, Shults said. "It's not necessarily a given," he said. Asked what the state DOT is doing to address the rise in non-alcohol related traffic deaths, Pope responded: "The truth of the matter is it's a continuous effort on the part of the department to reduce those numbers," he said. He pointed to the governor's plan to spend more than $1 billion on roads and transportation projects over the next five years. "I anticipate we've got projects basically going on in every county as we speak that are safety-related," said Pope, a 20-year traffic engineer who began the traffic safety job about two weeks ago. "We try to attack it three ways: engineering, education and enforcement. We design our roads to be as forgiving as possible," Pope said.

U.S. comparison The latest data on New Mexico from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is for 2003. That year, the state fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled was 1.92, while the U.S. rate was 1.48. Consider the state's population, and the difference was more dramatic. The overall traffic fatality rate in New Mexico was 23.42, nearly twice the national rate of 14.66 per 100,000 people. McKinley County Under-sheriff John Yearley says he has responded to enough nonalcohol related fatal crashes to know why they occur. Speed. Congestion. Lack of a seat belt. Driver inattention. Driver fatigue. "We've also seen a lot of driver inattention concerning cell phones," Yearley said. Some traffic safety officials suggest the improved economy means more drivers are doing business on their cell phones and ending up in wrecks. State data show 372 people died in rural crashes last year in New Mexico, compared with 150 deaths on urban roads. Each year since 1986, the number of rural crash deaths has exceeded the number of people killed in urban crashes. Pope said New Mexico is a rural state, and people tend to speed on rural roads. Overall, the percent of fatal crashes in New Mexico that were speed related was 39 percent in 2003, according to federal data. The U.S. total was 31 percent.

The 83 Flint has for years been a vocal anti-DWI advocate. He recalled the year 1980 when about 400 people died in alcohol-related crashes. Now, with societal changes, tougher laws, beefed-up law enforcement and aggressive anti-drunken driving publicity, the annual DWI death toll in New Mexico is about half that number. "The flip side is that as the proportion of fatalities involving alcohol has gone down, the proportion not involving alcohol has soared way up," said Flint, a volunteer with the DWI Resource Center in Albuquerque. "But the traffic safety community hasn't moved on to thinking, 'let's think about those.' '' Adds Flint: "It's the same thing as if you had 83 people who died from food poisoning. Wouldn't we want to know why? Wouldn't we try to stop it from happening again?"

My apologies in advance for this lengthy post. I just got a new computer and haven't managed to transfer my list of links.

This was extracted from GETMADD.COM,and the reference seems to have disappeared. Those of you who don't want to trudge through it can bookmark it for later.

Just lamenting the loss of liberty for marginally-accepatable resons this afternoon.

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MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) has had one hell of a run. Their success rate is the envy of the activist community; their lobbying for tougher laws and public awareness is largely responsible (or so they will tell you) for reducing alcohol-related traffic deaths since 1982 by a whopping 37 percent. Okay, they give a little credit to the maturation of baby boomers, safer vehicles, airbags and mandatory seatbelt laws.

They have captured every flag they initially set out to capture. They got prison sentences for repeat DUI offenders. Flying in the face of the Constitution, they pressured the government into establishing sobriety checkpoints where you could be stopped by law enforcement officials with no probable cause whatsoever. They got the prosecutable definition of a DUI lowered to a BAC (blood alcohol content) of .12, then .1, and now, through a federal program that blackmails states by withholding highway funds, they are driving it down to .08. They fought hard and they won again and again.

So, are they ready to declare victory and pack it up, patting themselves on the back for a job well done? Uh, no. The thing about large and powerful organizations (much like those transitional military juntas that end up hanging around for decades), once they get comfortable with the wealth and power, they are very reluctant to fade away. It’s a natural instinct, among beasts and businesses alike, to try to survive as long as possible and, like a shark, MADD instinctively understands that once they stop moving forward, they will surely die.

So where are they moving now? I’ll tell you in a minute. First, let’s backtrack twenty years.

Their intentions were good—at least in the beginning. MADD was founded in 1980 by California realtor Candy Lightner. That year, Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver with four previous arrests for drunk driving, including one only two days earlier. She was angry, and rightfully so.

“Through MADD, I found a way to deal with my anger,” she wrote in her memoirs, “a way to address a serious social problem that had taken my daughter from me.”

Due considerably to Lightner’s aggressive campaigning and public appearances, MADD grew rapidly in its first five years, enjoying many successes, including raising the national drinking age from 18 to 21. By 1985, it had 364 chapters, 600,000 members, and a budget of $12.5 million. Then something happened. In October of 1985, MADD’s board of directors, largely salaried male executives at that point, fired Candy Lightner. They claimed she was making strange demands of the budget, she claimed it was a coup d’etat by radical prohibitionists who had infiltrated the organization. Disturbed by the shift from attacking drunk driving to attacking drinking in general, the founder of MADD has since joined the liquor lobby, declaring, “I worry that the movement I helped create has lost direction. (The .08 legislation) ignores the real core of the problem. If we really want to save lives, let’s go after the most dangerous drivers on the road.”

Having their creator turn on them (much like Dr. Frankenstein turning on his monster when he realized he’d put in a defective brain) sticks in MADD’s craw to this day, but they're working to fix it. When she was in power, Lightner was unequivocally hailed as the organization’s founder. Since she went over to the other side, however, MADD has, in a very Orwellian way, been slowly editing her out of existence. Presently MADD says she was just the mouthiest of a group of Californian women who created the organization.

Lightner’s successor, Norma Phillips, was not so concerned with the defective brain of MADD so much as its body. She rapidly transformed MADD into a massive multilayered bureaucracy, hiring legions of salaried state coordinators to watch over the volunteer-led chapters—and keep the money rolling in. The chapters were required to adopt standard bylaws and pay higher annual dues. Chapters that didn’t follow the rules had their charters revoked and their bank accounts taken over by their state headquarters. This new order was put in place, MADD chairman and CEO Robert L. Beck explained in 1988, because they needed to fix a “middle management problem.”

No longer a decentralized grassroots movement, the new MADD structured itself along the lines of a corporation. To keep the machine’s cogs spinning, they needed lots of grease, and they didn’t care how they got it, enlisting boiler rooms to raise money through aggressive telemarketing. The fact that only 28% of the donations they wrung out of the public was actually going to anti-drinking programs didn’t bother them in the least. They shrugged off criticism from watchdog organizations like the National Charities Information Bureau, who said “. . . organizations should be spending 60 percent on programs and no more than what’s reasonable on fund-raising,” and the Non Profit Times, who listed MADD as one of the highest spenders on fundraising and the lowest in funds spent on programs.

By 1998, MADD had an annual budget of $42 million. Pension plans were put in place. Salaries and benefits exceeded $9 million per year. The Frankenstein monster had kicked its creator out of the castle and had mutated into a powerful and ruthless giant, still somehow beloved by the local villagers. No longer led by volunteers, but rather salaried executives, it started approaching its goals in much the same way a corporation does. Where an idealist will go home after winning a war, a mercenary will prolong and seek out conflict, so long as he continues to get paid. But the money would only continue to roll in if the public perceived there was still a need for war, and a huge part of MADD’s budget and manpower is dedicated to keeping that perception in place.

MADD’s core statement, the one that gets the most attention, the one that is most repeated by the media, is this: Drunk drivers kill 16,000 Americans a year. It’s an impressive statement. It gives the impression that crazed drunks are swarming the roads, seeking out innocent victims to plow into, laughing maniacally all the while. With so many homicidal maniacs loose, an organization like MADD seems entirely necessary and even noble.

The only problem is that statement is a flat-out lie. And they know it’s a lie.

Let’s examine the statement. First off, they get that statistic from their longtime co-conspirator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who puts it like this: 16,000 Americans each year are killed in alcohol-related accidents. MADD consciously took the term alcohol-related and twisted it into alcohol-caused.

What does alcohol related mean? It means someone involved in the accident had a measurable (not necessarily illegal) amount of alcohol in their system, or there was evidence of alcohol near the scene (an old beer can under the seat will do). They are not saying the someone with alcohol in their system caused the accident or was even driving or even inside a motor vehicle. But somehow it is always the drinker’s fault. Sober drivers never get into accidents, so it’s gotta be the drinker’s fault, right? Here’s some of the methods they use to arrive at and further inflate the number:

1.) A measurable amount of alcohol means anything above .00 percent, up to and including a sip of beer or cough medicine. 2.) Drivers impaired by drugs, be it aspirin, cough syrup, crack or heroin, are often counted as drunk drivers. 3.) If a pedestrian is involved and has a measurable amount of alcohol it is considered alcohol-related. 4.) If the accident is a sober driver’s fault (i.e. a sober driver runs a red light and crashes into a driver who had a beer after work) it is alcohol-related. 5.) If the residual presence of alcohol is found (an empty beer can) it is considered alcohol related, even if tests prove no one has any alcohol in their systems. 6.) The NHTSA arbitrarily adds 9% to all the alcohol-related statistics it receives from the states. Why? Because they feel like it. 7.) If a passenger has alcohol in his system, it is considered alcohol related. 8.) To further inflate the numbers, The NHTSA just started using what they call the Multiple Imputation Method to inflate alcohol-related statistics even more. The method automatically assumes that anyone involved in an accident who was not tested for BAC (probably because they were obviously sober) could actually have been drunk, and the numbers are jacked up by a set percentage.

So, are drunk drivers responsible for 16 thousand deaths a year? No. Why doesn’t MADD tell the truth? Because if the truth got out people would start to wonder what the hell MADD is screaming so hysterically about. Then the money would stop rolling in. And they’re not about to let that happen.

According to the painstaking research of Stephen Beck of Drinkers Against Mad Mothers, only 500 innocent Americans are killed each year by drunk drivers. As many Americans are killed in railway accidents each year.

Of course, one is too many, but is that number suitable justification for the mass hysteria sweeping the nation? Does it justify the one and half million arrests for drinking and driving each year?

“According to the NHTSA website, for every one of those arrests there are from 772 to 2,000 incidents of impaired driving,” says Beck. “Using the low figure of 772 and a low number of arrests, simple math tells us that 1.5 million arrests times 772 incidents equals 1,158,000,000 arrestable, impaired driving incidents per year.

“The billion-plus number of arrestable, impaired driving incidents per year (if they were sugar cubes) would form a line longer than 9,000 miles. The number of fatalities caused by drunken drivers, if also represented by sugar cubes, could be held in your hands.”

How could a billion and half events of what MADD calls “America’s most frequently committed violent crime” happen each year?

Easy. It’s all about definitions and thresholds. Make putting your hands in your pockets a crime and the numbers will be very impressive indeed. With the BACs low and getting lower, it’s very easy to rack up those numbers. An irony Beck brings to light is “each year 3,000 people in jail on drinking and driving charges kill themselves while incarcerated. In other words, the number of suicides each year greatly outnumber the innocent deaths caused by drunken drivers.”

Another of the Mother’s most popular lies is: “At .08 BAC, a driver is 16 times more likely to be involved in a crash’’ than if he had consumed no alcohol at all. Former MADD President Karolyn Nunnallee goes on to say that “many people are dangerously impaired at even .05 BAC.’’ That’s the level most people will have after one beer on an empty stomach.

Where does MADD get those alleged facts? Only they seem to know. Neither is even remotely true. Dr. H. Laurence Ross, a professor at the University of New Mexico and author of Confronting Drunk Driving, says ‘’the potential of alcohol to impair drivers and cause accidents is directly proportionate to the amount consumed.’’ According to Dr. Ross, adoption of the .08 standard has the potential to increase by 60 per cent the number of motorists arrested for “drunk driving’’ —but without any concomitant decrease in either fatality or accident rates.

Accident statistics show that impairment of driving ability seldom takes place until BAC levels exceed .10. A BAC of .08 or less means there is little enough alcohol in his or her system that it is extremely unlikely to appreciably affect coordination, reaction times, vision, or judgment in a normal person. Fewer deaths occur in accidents involving drivers with BACs between .08 and .09 than involving those with BACs between .01 and .03, which is cough-syrup territory.

So does lowering the BAC and putting more people in jail going to make the roads safer? No. The NHTSA tried to twist the figures but the federal government’s in-built watchdog, the GAO (General Accounting Office) took them to task for their lies and they had to backtrack, finally admitting lowering the BAC in such states as North Carolina did not have any noticeable effect on alcohol-related crashes. It did succeed in putting a lot more Americans in jail for having a beer after work, however. Consider it: a 120-pound woman with an average metabolism will reach the .08% BAC threshold if she drinks two six-ounce glasses of wine over a two-hour period. Two glasses of wine. Two hours. This is the modus operandi of MADD’s “violent criminal.” In the states that have already passed .08 legislation, she will face arrest, fines, mandatory jail, loss of license and insurance rate increases of 200 to 300%.

MADD does confess it’s very difficult to detect a driver who is at .08, as they probably won’t be driving any differently than a sober driver, so they’ve put forth policy statements declaring it will be necessary to put more roadblocks into place to catch these dangerous criminals.

Which is wholly ridiculous. It’s the only legal circumstance I can think of where someone is arrested and imprisoned for presenting the mere possibility of committing a crime. It’s akin to the police randomly stopping and testing lower-income people for hunger. If they are hungry, they’re arrested for shoplifting, because there’s a possibility a poor hungry person will steal a loaf of bread from a nearby supermarket.

Another lie MADD likes to shill is they have no interest whatsoever in de facto prohibition of alcohol. Sift through the Official Position Statements page of their website, however, and you’ll think you’ve accidentally clicked into the Anti-Saloon League’s homepage. They have broadened the scope of their anti-alcohol crusade to include: higher taxes on alcohol, reducing access to alcohol for the community in general, prohibition of drinking while playing golf, banning alcoholic drinks from having fancy or fun labels, the ability to sue bars, liquor stores, breweries and distilleries for damages sustained from one of their customers, a ban of alco-pops, forcing bars to close earlier and uniformly, a ban on happy hours, the curtailing of beer ads on the air and banning them entirely from billboards, and etcetera.

None of which has anything to do with driving, unless you’re talking about golf carts. Making the roads safer is no longer their goal or function. Make no mistake; MADD is now marching toward one thing and one thing only: total prohibition of alcohol. Don’t believe me? Check out these quotes:

“Once you’ve consumed your first drink, you’ve lost that ability to make a sound judgment.” —Penny Wagner, MADD Chapter President

“Lowering the legal [arrest] standard will be a deterrent for light drinkers as well as heavy drinkers. There is no safe blood alcohol level, and for that reason, responsible drinking and driving means no drinking and driving.” —Catherine Prescott, former President, MADD

“After drugs and tobacco, I think the next frontier will be-it has to be-alcohol.” and “While a lot of attention is paid to the serious problems of repeat offenders, we don’t want to overlook the casual drinker. If you chose to drink, you should never drive. We will not tolerate drinking and driving-period.” —Karolyn Nunnallee, while President of MADD

“If .08% is good, .05% is better. That’s where we’re headed, it doesn’t mean that we should get there all at once. But ultimately it should be .02%.”

—Steve Simon, Chairman, Minnesota State DUI Task Force “We may wind up in this country going to zero tolerance, period.” —U.S. Senator and MADD lackey Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

MADD has never had a problem with the truth. Why would they when they’re able to ignore and twist it at will with no one willing to call them on it. At some point they decided the truth was no longer important, they believe their cause so grand, so righteous, so profitable, the facts can be distorted as much as they like. If the public is deceived, well it’s for their own damn ignorant good. They adopted the Marxist maxim that the end always justified by the means.

Imagine a vigilante group created in the Old West to hunt down and hang horse thieves. We’ll call it the Cowboys Against Horse Thieves. The group was widely supported and grew very large and rich, but then something terrible happened: they started running out of horse thieves to hang. So they decided they would change what the public perceived to be a horse thief. Someone who stole a bicycle, they declared, was actually a horse thief. Someone who looked at someone else’s horse funny was actually a thief and should be strung up. Hell, anyone who rode a horse was probably in some way a horse thief. And as long as all these evil horse thieves are running around, the CAHT has stay in business, protecting the public.

How are they getting away with this sinister nonsense? They’re powerful. They’re a sacred cow with an aura of untouchability. What politician is going to call what the public perceives to be a well-meaning group of tragedy-stricken widows a gang of frauds and liars? That’s why the president of MADD is always selected from members who’ve had a loved one killed by a drunk driver. The perception of MADD as an organization of victims must be maintained. Will MADD ever go away, even if they succeed in bringing on a dark new era of prohibition? Not if they can help it. The only thing we can hope for is, as their position becomes more and more radical, they will finally be revealed as not a well-meaning group of social advocates, but a fraudulent gang of liberty-squashing fascists.

When that happens we’ll have a victory drink. Providing, of course, we know a reliable bootlegger.

The milieu in which DUI's are prosecuted compose a dangerous cocktail, mixing as it does various ingredients of human mind-set and behavior that are antithetical to a fair adjudication. While most persons charged with DUI are guilty, an increasingly distressing number are not. One false accusation is too many.

If you are guilty, there is inherent danger of being denied a fair trial. If you are not guilty, but have nevertheless been swept up in the hysteria, may God have mercy on your soul, because the criminal justice system sure as Hell will not. Either way, my advice is simple and clear: either plead guilty and move on, or hire the best damned lawyer you can and roll up your sleeves... 'cause it ain't gonna be quick, cheap or easy.

Meanwhile, here's are the ingredients for the DUI cocktail Quasimodo

M.A.D.D

Legislators

Judges

Prosecutors

Police

Quasimodo and DUI

Nobody thinks they're going to be the victim of a rape or robbery or murder. But DUI hits a raw nerve, probably because everyone has to drive.

Therefore the fear of getting killed or injured by a drunk driver, or having loved ones killed or injured, is a crime that everyone can easily imagine as capable of occurring to them.

DUI is widely despised by the American people; a DUI is the Quasimodo of American society...and for very good reason: the statistics are full of fluff, but even after deduction for all the "H.B.D." (had been drinking) statistics that are thrown in with the DUI statistics, the numbers remain indisputable.

As you prepare to enter the judicial system --guilty or not guilty-- you should brace yourself for the adverse effect that high emotions will have on your obtaining a fair, impartial trial of your case.

M.A.D.D. and DUI

When the people of any society feel themselves threatened, they band together to protect themselves. In the case of DUI, M.A.D.D. and other anti-drunk driving groups give needed, powerful and effective voice to society's just fear and anger about the crime of drunk driving. Guilty or not guilty, you should understand the powerful effect such forces have in influencing public sentiment, including that of the jury who will try your case.

Legislators and DUI

When the people speak in a democracy, the government is supposed to listen. It does. Legislators are elected. They respond to the public will, as they perceive that will. There is no band wagon that comes before the legislature that is more easy to jump on, than anything labeled as being "anti-drunk driving". No matter how ill-conceived some aspects of the proposed legislation may be, God help the poor bastard legislator who foolishly dares to urge caution, reason or proportionality.

Guilty or not guilty, being charged with DUI, you will be experiencing the effects of this pressure.

Effects such as:

1. Statutes that punish as "guilty" even those never found guilty:

2. Deferred Prosecution: if one is facing a charge of DUI, and has previously sought treatment for alcoholism by means of a deferred prosecution, the DUI statute requires that person to be sentenced as though they had been found guilty previously, even though they had not!

3. Negligent Driving, First Degree: if one is charged with DUI, and previously was found guilty of Negligent Driving, First Degree, the DUI statute requires that person to be sentenced as though they had previously been found guilty of DUI even though they had not!

4. Statutes outlining a due process procedure that makes a mockery of the concepts of fair play and substantial justice; statutes that provide the equivalent of justice that a Jew would have expected to receive in a Nazi courtroom, or that an African American would have expected to obtain in Mississippi in 1943. I'm talking about the Department of Licensing hearings, in which one has:

1. No judge,

2. No jury,

3. No face-to-face confrontation of one's accuser since:

1. The hearing is held via telephone, and

2. The police officer doesn't even have to appear.

4. Evidence admissible by means of hearsay,

5. A presumption from the beginning of the hearing that the State's case has already been proved!

Evidentiary presumptions that bear no reasonable nexus to science or fact:

1. Your breath alcohol content is presumed by statute to be the same within 2 hours of driving as it was at the time of driving;

2. Your partition ratio (roughly your blood/alcohol ratio, which is critical to the accuracy of breath testing devices) is presumed by the DUI statute to be "average", even though if not average the breath test reading is inaccurate, and even though the samplings show dramatic variances from the norm;

3. Every man, woman and child is dangerously affected by alcohol at .10 B.A.C.

4. Whether or not you're found guilty of the offense, you can be required to have a specially marked driver's license identifying you as a drunk driver --a "branding" no different in purpose or kind-- than the "I am a witch" signs that predecessor (and similarly pressured) law makers in this country once required accused witches to wear around their necks.

5. Sentencing laws for DUI that have for the most part turned judges into potted plants so far as discretion in sentencing is concerned.

The sentencing statutes for DUI are so rigidly mandatory, that the legislature might just as well issue bank card-like DUI tickets. One could simply take such a ticket down to the courthouse, and insert it into a "guilty" slot in the wall. Out would come the sentence just as efficiently as using an all-night bank teller machine, or one of the new pay-at-the-pump gasoline stations.

The important thing to understand is that, guilty or not, the adjudication of your DUI will be governed by these laws, which are just the tip of the iceberg.

Judges and DUI Judges are also elected. Unlike the legislature, however, judges are not supposed to be swayed by the hue and cry; the riotous clamor for a lynching. The design is that the judiciary will act as a check and balance; that theirs will have a leavening effect on the truth-finding process.

In practice, however, it is a tad difficult for mere mortals (which some actually are) to be so "above the fray" when they are looking over their shoulder at the angry crowd, worried about keeping their job.

When it comes to DUI, judges too frequently perceive a public expectation that they exact a blood toll. From where you are, charged with DUI, it makes no practical difference that this is likely a misperception; that all the public really expects of a judge is that he or she be a judge and do what good judges do.

Good judges apply the established principles of law in a fair and impartial manner to the individual facts of the cases and controversies before them, and in that way come to a just, reasoned decision.

Bad judges, by contrast, are "outcome-oriented". They ferret out the safest, most popular outcome for the case, and then work hard to prevent the facts and/or the law from getting in the way.

There are, of course, good judges. At least when they handle DUI cases, however, there are, unfortunately, many bad judges, and this is true whether or not you are guilty of the offense.

Most DUI cases do not proceed to trial. If, however, yours was one that did, you are strongly advised to well consider whether your case should be tried to a judge or to a jury. In my opinion, due to the factors outlined above, and others (not to mention the fact that they probably truly do not like drunk driving), except in extremely rare circumstances, a lawyer who tries a DUI case to a judge is guilty of legal malpractice.

Prosecutors and DUI Prosecuting attorneys usually bring to their work a strong sense of righteousness and purpose. They generally are infused with the nobility and societal value of their role (or gain this attitude shortly after arrival), and for the most part, are in fact good people doing good and important work.

Under the separation of powers doctrine, prosecutors are part of the judicial branch, not the executive branch (which includes the police). The systemic design is that the office of the prosecuting attorney, exercising discretion as an officer of the judicial branch of government, will act as a check and balance against the potential abuses of the police officers of the executive branch. Interestingly, it is part of the constitutional role of the prosecuting attorney to ensure that you, as an accused, get a fair trial.

It is in the nature of their work, however, that DUI prosecutors work very closely with their witnesses, the police. Moreover, DUI prosecutors work under the pressures of incredible caseloads, usually with little supervision and relatively poor pay, and they're frequently the least experienced attorneys in the office.

It is therefore not surprising that rather than fulfilling their constitutional roles as attorneys for the public (that's why the name of the case is "The State of Washington vs. Joe DUI"), and as a check and balance against excesses of the police, too frequently DUI prosecutors come to identify their roles incorrectly as lawyers whose clients are the police.

From where you stand, charged with DUI, however, this is not an unimportant blurring of the roles. A prosecutor who believes his bread to be buttered by being a toadie to the police is a mere conveyor belt; not exactly the independent oversight and discretion that Thomas Jefferson and his buddies had in mind.

Moreover, the Prosecuting Attorney for each county is an elected position, with the same pressures that the judge and legislature encounter in DUI cases. Show me an elected prosecuting attorney who didn't have a "I'll be tough with drunk drivers" as part of his campaign, and I'll show you a live Tyrannosaurs Rex. The elected prosecutors also face the added pressure of feeling as though it is imperative they have the political support of the police at election time.

For all these reasons (not to mention the fact that they probably truly do not like drunk driving), there is an increasing and readily apparent tendency to set "DUI" prosecution standards for their respective offices, that are to varying degrees binding on the poor young deputy prosecutors who are actually in the trenches fighting the battles. These standards vary from county to county, and will directly affect the means and manner by which your case will be adjudicated, and this is so whether or not you are guilty of the charge, and irrespective of the specific facts or circumstances of your case.

Police and DUI There is nothing so dangerous than a well-meaning person in authority on a perceived mission from God... and there are very few missions in routine police work in Modern America more likely to be perceived as being from God Almighty Himself than the apprehension of drunk drivers.

There is an old saying, the author and exact terms of which left me years ago, but which I am reminded of in the context of police officers and DUI It goes roughly (probably very roughly) something like this: that in the course of the history of mankind, more harm has been done to individual liberty by well-meaning men, operating in complete good faith, in earnest pursuit of that which they hold to be righteous, than by all the evil deeds of all the world's despots combined.

Police officers in general see themselves as "the good guys", and in most instances they are indeed very good people, doing a very difficult job. Heroic in many ways. My experience is that the average police officer would no sooner intentionally deprive an American citizen of his or her rights than would Patrick Henry himself, and that they are generally very genuinely offended at the suggestion that they have done so.

Nevertheless, there are aspects of the job of a police officer in a DUI case that can unintentionally result in the same harm, however much it occurs without malice or ill-motive.

It's 2:00 in the morning. The officer has seen the "California stop" or the failure to signal --or whatever-- and now, having approached you as you sit in your car, he smells the alcohol. In nothing flat, you have subconsciously been transformed from American citizen to another God-Damned Drunk Driver.

Then there's the training. A good officer strives to do as he's been trained to do. But, in determining whether a person has had too much to drink to safely operate a motor vehicle, an officer's training in DUI enforcement has increasingly gravitated toward displacing individual judgment and rational discretion in favor of a slavish, mechanical, checklist-type approach to certain "canned" observations. Such an approach to training compartmentalizes the officer into a foregone conclusion. This has resulted in a "dragnet" or "profile" approach to DUI apprehension, rather than particularized probable cause. It catches some bad guys, sure. It also has resulted in an unacceptably high number of persons being accused of a very serious crime, who are not guilty and who should not be on the conveyor belt.

Another factor that can affect a police officer's accuracy and recollection is the mind-numbing routine of DUI enforcement: the same observations, the same forms, the same checklists in case after case, year after year. This sometimes leads to curious phenomena, such as a given officer habitually using the same words of description in each of his DUI cases. For example, "As I approached the driver I was overwhelmed by the odor of intoxicants". Case after case the poor guy is being overwhelmed. The point being that the humdrum of the routine can unintentionally, and in completely good faith, cause officers to record things as having been observed when in fact it was just the routine. Another night, another DUI

Unfortunately, if an officer's investigative techniques and/or frame of mind in pursuit of drunk driving bear the tell-tale signs of a Pavlovian-esque response to canned stimuli, or the over-enthusiasm of The Crusades, they nevertheless present the same danger of a false accusation, however well-intentioned and in good faith the motive. Finally, there's the Dirty Harry officer; the one for whom all wrong done in the name of right is okay. Anything goes. Great harm can be done and then rationalized into a completely clear conscience, when done in the name of right... and there is nothing in this world quite so righteous as serving at the Holy Grail of DUI law enforcement.

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