Missouri DWI Information & News Blog

Missouri DWI summit: Gov. Nixon, judges, prsecutors and activists call for MO DWI crackdown

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:28:00 +0000

Jefferson City, MO

Persistent drunken drivers would have their cars seized and it would be a crime to refuse to take a DWI breath test if panelists assembled by the governor have their way.

Those were two sanctions that gained traction Wednesday during a DWI summit of 34 police, prosecutors and government officials from across the state. The panel met at the request of Gov. Jay Nixon, who vowed changes to the state's DWI law in response to a Post-Dispatch investigation into ways area police, prosecutors and judges fail to punish drunken drivers.

Citing the newspaper's investigation, Nixon told the panel the status quo was "simply not acceptable" and that the system was letting too many chronic drunken drivers injure and kill innocent people.

"Thinking about the lives we can save should be our guiding principle," he said.

The governor instructed Cabinet members to write a new law based on panelists' suggestions, and find sponsors in the House and Senate. Todd Scott, chief of staff for Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee's Summit, said his boss hopes to prefile a bill before the legislative session begins early next year.

A few prosecutors, including St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, argued against changes that would carry unintended consequences or create loopholes that lawyers could exploit.

One issue most panel members agreed on was the need to establish an easier way for police and courts to track prior offenses, so that repeat offenders are not treated as first-timers and escape more serious penalties.

Missouri has a so-called three-strikes law, meaning any arrest after two prior convictions is supposed to be treated as a felony. But the newspaper found that about one-third of DWI offenders who qualified for felonies were charged with misdemeanors or not at all. The problem was especially severe in St. Louis County, where it happened about half the time.

Col. James Keathley, superintendent of the Missouri Highway Patrol, advocated expanding the patrol's voluntary DWI tracking system. That would make it easier for an officer to immediately tell when a DWI suspect is facing a felony charge.

If the law changed, the tracking system also would make it easier for police to seize the car and sell it, he said.

State law currently allows cities with 100,000 or more people to create ordinances that would allow taking a felony DWI suspect's car.

Andrea Spillars, deputy director of the Department of Public Safety, who is likely to have a major role in crafting a new law, liked the idea. Since license suspensions don't seem to keep hard-core drunks off the road, perhaps the threat of losing their car would, she said.

Many on the panel derided the lack of teeth to what is supposed to be one of the toughest sanctions against drunken driving in Missouri law — a one-year suspension of license for refusing the blood alcohol test. The Post-Dispatch found that since 2000, area prosecutors have let more than 10,000 drivers keep their licenses despite their refusal to take breath tests.

Drivers who refuse the test can appeal directly to civil court, where a judge automatically allows the person to continue driving until the appeal is heard.

The newspaper found that in about half the cases in a recent 12-month period, prosecutors in the St. Louis area gave up on those license appeals as part of a plea bargain.

Five states — Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska, Rhode Island and Vermont — eliminate the appeal process by making it a crime to refuse the breath test, according to the Century Council, an anti-DWI advocacy group.

Ken Askren, an attorney in Boone County, suggested ending the practice of allowing drunken drivers to avoid a DWI conviction on their record in return for admitting to the charge and getting probation. But McCulloch and other prosecutors said the maneuver, known as a suspended imposition of sentence, has merit.

"It's a mechanism for us to assess the extent of the drinking problem that the person has," McCulloch said.

He also defended the practice of having drunken driving cases go to municipal courts, where the Post-Dispatch investigation found that just one of seven area DWI cases ended in DWI convictions. McCulloch said those cases should count as priors.

He did note that the court systems in St. Louis County's 91 municipalities ranged in quality.

"If they can't put an effective court in place, or police department in place, then they shouldn't exist," he said.

Missouri Criminal Defense Lawyers: DWI Attorneys

DWI refusal to blow - prosecutor's deals

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:18:00 +0000

St. Louis, MO

Refuse a breath test in Missouri and lose your license for a year.

It's one of the toughest DWI sanctions in state law. And one of the most ignored.

A Post-Dispatch investigation found that since 2000, area prosecutors have let more than 10,000 drivers keep their licenses despite refusing to take breath tests.

Drivers such as William Downs.

With bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and a string of profanities, he told deputies two years ago that there was "no (expletive) way" he would take a breath test.

Downs admitted to driving drunk. But St. Charles County prosecutors let him keep driving.
RELATED
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Within weeks of the DWI plea deal, a weaving Downs — high on cocaine and marijuana, according to police — slammed into a pickup in mid-Missouri. The crash killed a noted University of Missouri professor of agricultural engineering, Charles Fulhage.

Fulhage's widow, Jane, can't believe prosecutors let Downs legally drive after the deal.

But it happens all the time in St. Louis-area courts. When drivers refuse to take the breath test, the law allows them to appeal the one-year suspensions in civil court. The process is supposed to be separate from any criminal DWI case that comes from the traffic stop.

But most area prosecutors bargain away the suspensions as part of plea deals in the criminal DWI cases. The end result: Defendants admit to driving drunk and don't miss one day of driving.

"It just doesn't make sense," Jane Fulhage said through tears.

REFUSING THE TEST

State data show that a third of people arrested annually for DWI refuse to take an alcohol test.

Authorities could get search warrants to draw blood, but most area prosecutors say that is too cumbersome for all but the most serious cases. So Missouri, like most states, uses another tactic: scaring drivers into thinking they'll lose their licenses for much longer if they don't cooperate.

Under Missouri law, those who cooperate and test above the limit automatically lose their licenses for 90 days. Those who refuse to be tested are supposed to lose their licenses for a year or more.

The suspensions are supposed to occur regardless of any additional punishment a judge may later impose for a DWI conviction.

But tucked into the law is an appeal provision — one that for years has benefited those who refuse the test.

Drivers who take a test and fail can appeal the result to the state Department of Revenue. These administrative hearings are hard to win, so the 90-day suspension usually takes effect.

Drivers who refuse to take the test can appeal directly to civil court, where a judge automatically allows the person to continue driving until the appeal is heard.

When the Department of Revenue sends its own lawyers to civil court to fight appeals, the state wins 90 percent of the cases, and judges reinstate the one-year suspensions.

The state, though, lacks the lawyers to handle most of the 5,000 or so appeals filed in civil court every year across Missouri. So county prosecutors must represent the state.

And that's when DWI arrestees' odds dramatically improve.

Often, if defendants plead guilty to the criminal cases, pay fines and promise to do basic penance, such as community service, prosecutors will let them win the appeals and keep driving.

In essence, prosecutors give up on the appeals, telling a judge that their client, the Department of Revenue, should lose the cases. Judges then order the Department of Revenue to let the defendants keep their licenses.

The practice — called prosecutor "confession" — has become ingrained in the playbooks of many St. Louis-area prosecutors.

The most recent data for metro St. Louis — from July 1, 2008, through June 30, 2009 — show 1,395 suspected drunken drivers were allowed to stay on the road despite refusing to let police test their blood-alcohol levels.

PRACTICE DEFENDED

Area prosecutors say the practice of giving up on suspension appeals has been used for decades to help prosecutors get guilty pleas in cases tough to win without test results proving the drivers were drunk.

Defendants get special plea deals that may require them to do community service and get alcohol addiction screening. They keep DWI convictions off their records and get to continue driving, which helps them keep jobs, pay the bills and stay clean — a key benefit to society, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors in two counties — Franklin and Lincoln — aren't as likely to bargain with people who refuse breath tests. They say it's their job to try to impose the law's one-year suspension. Another prosecutor's office, in St. Louis city, stopped giving up appeals in September after the Post-Dispatch began questioning the practice.

"We had done this for so long, and we've done this because we wanted to be similar" to other area prosecutors' policies, assistant prosecutor Pippa Barrett said. "We changed our mind. We think actually that there's some value to not (giving up) any of them. So we're not."

But other area prosecutors remain committed to the practice.

They stress that they offer the deals only to first-timers, the kind of driver who has avoided run-ins with police in the past and just made one mistake.

"I just want to emphasize," said St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, "this is first DWIs with no accidents, no injuries — nothing unusual."

But prosecutors at times stretch the definition of what's usual.

Downs, for example, had been arrested twice for drugs before he got the deal.

Hours after he was released from the St. Charles County jail on his second drug charge in 2007, he got into his pickup and drove back, he said, to complain about an abusive guard.

Deputies saw him weaving and caught up to him at the jail, where they said he slurred his speech and smelled like alcohol and marijuana. They said in their report that he refused to be tested.

Downs was charged with DWI. While his case was pending, he was arrested for assaulting his live-in-girlfriend. She told the court that Downs was also a drug addict who, over 10 days, had taken more than 90 of her prescription pain pills.

Four weeks later, prosecutors did everything they could so Downs could keep his license.

DEAL, THEN DEATH

Downs told a judge in criminal court that he had driven drunk. A DWI conviction would have forced Downs to give up his license for at least 30 days, but prosecutors agreed to give him a special no-conviction sentence. That eliminated one way the Department of Revenue could suspend his license.

The department still could suspend Downs' license for refusing the test during the arrest. But prosecutors took that option away the next day.

Prosecutors, representing the Department of Revenue, told another judge in another courtroom that Downs deserved to win his civil appeal.

Under the plea deal, prosecutors and the judge let Downs drive on his promise to get screened for addiction problems within six months.

There's no record Downs was screened before he rammed his full-size 4x4 pickup into the back of a Ford Ranger three weeks later.

In the hours before the crash, police reports show Downs used drugs before heading west on I-70 from St. Charles.

Witnesses recalled him weaving along I-70, running one car onto the shoulder and sideswiping another before he hit the back of Charles Fulhage's small pickup. It spun down an embankment and ricocheted off a tree before rolling down a deep ditch.

Fulhage died five days later. Downs was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

Interviewed in prison, Downs defended the special deal he got in St. Charles County and said that he had deserved to keep driving. But he also insisted that, had his license been pulled, he wouldn't have driven.

Fulhage's widow said she doubts Downs would have stayed off the road but said she can't believe prosecutors made it so easy for him to remain behind the wheel.

"He wasn't just your backyard barbecue guy who had a few more beers, a one-time offender," Jane Fulhage said. "This guy obviously had a drug problem.

"Three weeks later, he goes out and kills somebody."

DEALS DESPITE RECORDS

Jack Banas, the St. Charles County prosecutor, said police never told his office of the other arrests, so prosecutors made the deal without knowing Downs' complete history.

"Maybe we would have asked for shock (jail) time or a little more done with him," Banas said. "The sad thing about that is, I don't think it would have changed the outcome of what this idiot did."

Despite the tragedy, Banas said, he still supports offering that type of plea deal to nearly all first-time offenders. His county, in the most recent 12-month period studied, offered the deal to 53 percent of drivers who filed appeals.

Those not getting the deal, he said, often were repeat offenders.

"They've been out there. They've had their first break. And they repeated their mistake," Banas said.

It's a common refrain from area prosecutors.

Yet, a Post-Dispatch analysis of licensing and court records found that Jefferson, St. Charles and St. Louis counties gave up on license suspension appeals in nearly 70 cases of repeat offenders arrested in 2007. (The newspaper chose to analyze 2007 arrests because the civil cases can take a year or more to wind through the court system.)

Jefferson County had the highest number of prior offenders getting the deal: 34, or about 11 percent of all repeat offenders who filed an appeal there.

Six of the 34 had been arrested at least twice before for DWI.

Jefferson County's prosecutor, Forrest Wegge, got a no-suspension deal for his own 2003 DWI arrest near Kansas City. He said the county's practice was not based on his personal experience, but was an effort to keep the public safe.

He said that sometimes it was better to try to control a repeat offender's driving habits through a plea deal that imposes special conditions on driving, rather than simply suspending a license, knowing the person will probably drive anyway.

"If revoking someone's license actually prevented further drunk driving incidents, I would not even consider (giving up on) an appeal where the individual had a prior alcohol contact," he said. "Obviously, it is not that simple."

It is simple to the Department of Revenue. It sends a letter to prosecutors reminding them that they are supposed to represent the state, and the state wants the suspensions to stick.

But prosecutors can ignore the state's wishes and keep some repeat offenders legally on the road. And state lawmakers continue to let it happen.

REFORMS SIDETRACKED

The Post-Dispatch found that these deals are one more way the St. Louis area's criminal justice system is soft on drunken drivers.

Over the past two months, the newspaper has reported that authorities routinely fail to charge persistent drunken drivers with felony counts that could imprison them, and that courts commonly accept plea deals to keep drunken driving convictions off the records of most of those arrested, including half of repeat offenders.

After the earlier reports, Gov. Jay Nixon called for reforms.

But even before Nixon's calls, lawmakers had mulled changes in how suspension appeals were handled — then did nothing.

Critics and even some supporters of the no-suspension deal acknowledge the system is broken. Both prosecutors and the Department of Revenue would like the state to take over the legal work on the civil appeals.

Prosecutors are tired of the extra workload. Revenue officials want to ensure suspensions happen.

But on the last day of the most recent legislative session, lawmakers balked at a provision to spend $280,000 a year for more Department of Revenue lawyers to handle the extra caseload. The idea died.

So savvy DWI suspects still know how to play the odds.

In February, the Missouri Highway Patrol stopped a man weaving while exiting I-70 in north St. Louis County.

The trooper said Michael G. Corcoran failed a field sobriety test and refused the breath test.

Corcoran, of St. Ann, bonded out of jail, filed a civil appeal and eventually worked out a no-conviction, no-suspension deal in July with St. Louis County prosecutors. The deal kept a DWI off his record, and he didn't miss a day of driving.

He won't talk about the case, but the four-term state representative — valid license in hand — can drive to Jefferson City to vote on any reforms.

St Louis DWI Criminal Defense Lawyers

DWI summit called for by Gov. Nixon to include prosecutors, judges, police and MADD

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:12:00 +0000

Jefferson City, MO

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has summoned police, judges, prosecutors and anti-DWI advocates to Jefferson City on Wednesday to discuss ways to better enforce the state’s drunken driving laws.

Nixon spokesman Scott Holste said Nixon plans to have about two dozen people meet in the Truman Building to talk about ways to “close the gaps” in how the state handles DWIs.

Nixon called last month for revamping the state’s DWI laws “to improve a system that’s riddled with loopholes and dark corners.” He spoke in reaction to our stories that have exposed failures to punish drunken drivers.

The first installment found that authorities routinely fail to charge persistent drunken drivers with felonies, as the law allows. The second installment showed how metro St. Louis courts routinely plea-bargain away DWI convictions, even for many repeat offenders.

We published the third installment of our series on Sunday, reporting how prosecutors are ignoring a law that’s supposed to suspend the licenses of people who don’t cooperate with police during their arrest.

The law says those arrested have to provide blood-alcohol samples to police (commonly by breathing into a machine). Those that don’t are supposed to lose their licenses for a year, no matter what the criminal courts do. But they can also file appeals to try to keep their licenses. Prosecutors are supposed to try to win those appeals, but they routinely, purposely lose them as part of plea bargains.

Earlier this afternoon, we asked prosecutors in Jefferson, St. Charles and St. Louis counties if they are considering changes to their policies. A spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch said he’s checking. Prosecutors in the other two counties haven’t returned emails so far.

Missouri DWI Defense Lawyers

"DWI Summit

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:12:00 +0000

7th DWI arrest for Columbia man

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:22:00 +0000

Columbia, MO

A Columbia man was arrested this weekend for what the Boone County Sheriff’s Department said is his seventh driving while intoxicated infraction.

Jeremy R. Gibbs, 27, of 1659 Wagon Trail Road was arrested on suspicion of felony DWI at 2:46 a.m. Saturday on Grindstone Parkway near Rock Quarry Road, Boone County sheriff’s Detective Tom O’Sullivan said. Deputies noticed Gibbs driving erratically while eastbound on Grindstone Parkway and issued a field sobriety test, he said.

Gibbs failed the sobriety test, O’Sullivan said, and he refused to take a chemical test.

Saturday’s DWI arrest was Gibbs’ second of 2009. He also had two arrests in 2008, one in 2006 and a pair in 2001. He was sentenced to two jail terms totaling 150 days for DWI-related offenses, according to court records. O’Sullivan was unaware of other previous sentencings.

“At what point does this guy become a serious threat to the community?” O’Sullivan said. “Seven DWI arrests in eight years. What is it going to take to stop this guy?”

DWI Lawyers - Columbia, MO

State rep. denied being drunk during DWI arrest

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:18:00 +0000

St. Louis, MO

State Rep. Tim Meadows, D-Imperial, told Jefferson County deputies that he had been drinking but was not under the influence of alcohol shortly before he was arrested on suspicion of DWI early Saturday, according to police reports.

Meadows, 51, agreed to a breath test after deputies found him slumped over his steering wheel shortly after midnight Saturday near Imperial, Main Street and Interstate 55. The test showed he had a blood alcohol content of 0.13. The legal limit in Missouri is 0.08.

His eyes were bloodshot and glassy and his speech was slurred. During a walk-and-turn sobriety test, he staggered, stumbled, swayed and fell, according to the report.

Meadows also told deputies the last thing he ate was an egg sandwich at 9 a.m. Friday morning and that he had six beers between 7 and 9 p.m. while visiting friends in south St. Louis, according to the report.

He was arrested and booked at the Jefferson County Jail at 1:53 a.m. and released at 2:45 a.m.

Meadows issued a public apology Sunday: “Late Friday evening I was arrested in Imperial on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. I am deeply sorry this incident occurred and sincerely apologize to my family and to my constituents. This has never happened in the past, and it certainly won’t happen again in the future. As this case is now a matter for the judicial system, my attorney has advised me to make no further comment at this time.”

Meadows, who was elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2006, serves on several committees, including crime prevention and public safety. He also received the 2006-07 “Representative of the Year Award” from the Missouri Police Chiefs’ Association.

St. Louis DWI Criminal Defense Lawyers

Missouri lawmaker arrested on suspicion of DWI

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:24:00 +0000

St. Louis, MO

State Rep. Tim Meadows, D-Imperial, issued a public apology Sunday after being arrested Saturday on suspicion of DWI in Jefferson County.

“Late Friday evening I was arrested in Imperial on suspicion of driving while intoxicated,” Meadows, 51, wrote in an e-mailed statement. “I am deeply sorry this incident occurred and sincerely apologize to my family and to my constituents. This has never happened in the past, and it certainly won’t happen again in the future. As this case in now a matter for the judicial system, my attorney has advised me to make no further comment at this time.”

Sheriff’s Capt. Ralph Brown said a Jefferson County deputy stopped Meadows about 12:13 a.m. Saturday on Imperial Main Street near Interstate 55.

He was booked at the Jefferson County Jail at 1:53 a.m. and released at 2:45 a.m., Brown said.

Meadows agreed to a breath test, but the results were not available Sunday, Brown said.

Meadows’ vehicle was towed from the scene of the traffic stop.

Meadows, who was elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2006, serves on several committees, including crime prevention and public safety. He also received the 2006-07 “Representative of the Year Award” from the Missouri Police Chiefs’ Association.

St. Louis, MO DWI Criminal Defense Attorney

DWI checkpoint planned in St. Charles County, MO Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:51:00 +0000

St. Charles, MO

Fellow reporter Joel Currier tells me police are not releasing the time of day or specific location.

A “blood only, no-refusal” checkpoint means:

* A driver suspected of drinking will be asked to perform field sobriety tests.
* Drivers who fail the field sobriety tests will be asked to provide blood samples to test their blood-alcohol level. The legal limit in Missouri is 0.08 percent.
* Drivers who refuse to submit to the blood tests will have their licenses suspended immediately, and officers will seek warrants to draw blood.

Officers also will look for other violations during the checkpoint. Typically, the checkpoints are paid for through state grant money. A deputy estimated that a recent checkpoint cost $1,000 to $2,000.

Checkpoints and stepped up traffic enforcement have received a lot of attention lately, particularly when officers added the “no-refusal” tactic for the first time this year.

I spoke in May with Chris Luebbert of the Missouri Department of Transportation’s Highway Safety Division. He said MoDOT received about $6 million in federal funding this year from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That money can be spent on police and prosecutor training, equipment and enforcement efforts and public education campaigns.

Not every enforcement effort involves a checkpoint or road block. For example, the Missouri Highway Patrol had 14 troopers monitoring traffic on Oct. 13 near Highway 40 and Callahan Road in St. Charles County. They stopped 65 vehicles between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. and issued 63 summonses and 44 warnings.

Of the citations, 62 were for speeding and one was for failing to wear a seat belt.

The Highway Patrol stepped up enforcement in St. Charles County again during an overnight operation on Oct. 17 and 18. That operation resulted in 48 stopped vehicles, six DWI arrests, 11 tickets for speeding, eight tickets for driver’s license violations and five seat belt violations.

The most recent checkpoint in St. Charles County netted six arrests out of 2,020 vehicles stopped.

Both types of increased traffic enforcement have drawn critics and supporters. Some say extra patrols are more effective and don’t force drivers who are obeying traffic laws to stop. Some say the checkpoints deter drunken drivers from getting behind the wheel.

Fatalities on Missouri roads dropped below 1,000 last year, but state officials have said they want the number to drop even lower. As of Oct. 19, 679 people had died in crashes, a 10.3 percent drop compared to the same time last year. Nationally, fatalities have dropped, too, although some experts attribute the drop to sour economic times.

St. Charles, MO DWI Criminal Defense Attorneys

DWI editorial: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:52:00 +0000

St. Louis, MO

The more you learn about how drunk driving laws are enforced — or more often, not enforced — in the St. Louis area, the more obvious it becomes why drunk driving remains so prevalent.

Unless a drunk driver runs into someone or something, there’s very little chance he’ll be caught. Most cops don’t like to make arrests for driving while intoxicated — it takes too long, taking them away from other patrol duties. There’s too much paperwork and, at the end of the day, cops know there’s very little chance the court system will back them up.

As Joe Mahr and Jeremy Kohler reported in Sunday’s Post-Dispatch, “Plea agreements are the rule, not the exception, in the St. Louis area.”

Their investigation revealed “a culture of cutting deals for DWIs in the area’s court systems. Prosecutors and judges here are far more likely than in the rest of the state to let a drunk driver avoid a conviction.”

Last month, the Post-Dispatch reported that police and prosecutors routinely fail to charge persistent drunken drivers with felonies that could send them to prison. On Sunday, we learned that the majority of DWI cases are handled in 100 or so municipal courts by part-time judges and prosecutors who routinely go soft on drunk drivers. State courts usually, but not always, are tougher.

Offenders pay fines and plead to lesser offenses or get a suspended imposition of sentence if they complete probation. Conviction records stay clean. Often the case is sealed from public view. Offenders can, and often do, get arrested again and cut more deals.

“For every seven people who walk into a municipal court facing a DWI charge, six walk out without any alcohol conviction on their record,” Mssrs. Mahr and Kohler reported. Of 8,334 municipal court DWI cases recorded in FY 2008, only 1,212 resulted in an alcohol conviction.

Say this for the various courts on the Missouri side of the river: At least they supplied records for review. Officials in the Metro East wouldn’t even do that. We don’t wonder why.

Predictably, Missouri officials reached for comment about the Post-Dispatch findings of lax DWI enforcement were shocked — shocked! — that it was going on. Gov. Jay Nixon called for revamping the state’s DWI laws “to improve a system that’s riddled with loopholes and dark corners.”

Mr. Nixon said he had no specific remedies in mind. The issue apparently never crossed his desk between 1993 and last year, when he was state attorney general.

In the past, efforts in Missouri to crack down on drunk driving have run afoul of two powerful lobbies: lawyers who specialize in drunk driving cases and the beer and alcohol industries. Missouri was one of the last states to ban open containers of alcohol in automobiles and to reduce the allowable blood alcohol level to 0.08.

Whatever lawmakers do, it’s going to cost money that the state will have to scrape together — combining law enforcement and court databases and freeing up cops and prosecutors to work on drunk driving are just two critical needs.

On our Commentary Page last Wednesday, St. Charles County Sheriff’s Deputy Pat Riley proposed impounding the vehicles of drunken driving suspects (at their expense) until they go to trial. “We do not give guns back to drive-by shooters after 12 hours in jail,” he wrote.

It’s not foolproof. And it would cause hardship to the relatives and friends as well the suspect. But it has the beauty of being cheap. And it might get people’s attention.

Nothing else has.

St. Louis, MO DWI Attorneys

Gov. Nixon calls for statewide DWI reform for Missouri

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:47:00 +0000

Jefferson City, MO

Gov. Jay Nixon is working with lawmakers this week to form a plan that will tighten loopholes in the state's current DWI laws.

Nixon's decision to reform the law came after an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch brought light to people charged with DWI's and never convicted. In 2008 law enforcement arrested more than 9,000 people for alcohol and drug-related driving. Just under 40 percent of those people were actually convicted. Nixon's goal is to hold more accountability for those who are arrested for DWI's.

The issue is hitting home for one Mid-Missouri woman who was involved in an alcohol-related accident in 1996.

"My offender, who injured seven people, giving two of us permanent disabilities, he received 120 days in the Department of Corrections," said Phaedra Olsen. "I received a lifetime sentence in a wheelchair."

The accident paralyzed Olsen, and she says too many offenders get off without proper punishment.

"Enough is enough," she said. "It's time to be there for the families and to be there for those that we can do whatever it takes to geminate drunk driving."

Olsen said it appears that offenders often have more rights than the victims do, and that offenders are also sometimes treated with more respect than the victim's families.

Nixon spokesman Scott Holste said he is not certain of the details of the reform yet. He said he only knows that Nixon will meet with legislators sometime this week to get the plans started.

To see a breakdown of DWI's and Convictions by counties in the Mid-Missouri area, click on the web extra to the right.

Missouri DWI Criminal Defense Attorneys

Opinion: Greene Couty DWI court should be expanded

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:01:00 +0000

Springfield, MO

wo local stories in our paper Tuesday are connected in a fashion worth noting.
Advertisement

One cited difficulties faced by the officials running the crowded Greene County jail. They cannot provide safe, private space for attorneys to talk over cases with inmates.

The other told of the successes of the county's DWI court. It helps rehabilitate people accused of felony-level drunken driving so they don't have to spend years in jail.

See the tie-in?

Obviously, we cannot continue to incarcerate people at the rate we've been going in Greene County, or Missouri as a whole. With costs of jails spiraling and the rate of recidivism high, programs like the DWI court remain bright spots on a bleak horizon.

In Tuesday's story, proponents of the court relayed high hopes for more funding for expansion.

As it stands, the court only takes defendants accused of their third DWI, cases that rise to a felony. Greene County DWI court Judge Peggy Davis wants to reach down to second-time offenders, seeking earlier intervention in the at-times deadly cycle of drinking and driving.

She said Kansas statistics show recidivism as high as 80 percent for second-time DWI offenders. Meanwhile, the rate of recidivism for those who go through Greene's program is lower than 7 percent.

Started in late 2003, the Greene court has enrolled 401 defendants, with about 100 presently in the program. A total of 187 graduated successfully. Of those, the court has been able to track only 12 re-offenders.

The program lasts at least 18 months and involves counseling, strict monitoring, lab testing, community service and sometimes short "shock" prison sentences. Often, Davis says, graduates go on to help others fight for sobriety.

Those who don't complete the program must go back before a judge on a probation violation and often end up incarcerated, Davis said.

Offenders pay $2,000 each to enter the court. For other funding, the court taps into various streams of state monies, for instance funds earmarked for mental health counseling. Court officials say that on average taxpayers pay about $4.42 per day for each court participant. (As a comparison, the state Department of Corrections spends about 10 times that much daily per inmate.)

Still, an expansion of the DWI court will require more funds. We're glad to see officials make that push, and we support it.

As one of only four programs in the country named as a teaching court, Greene's effort has been recognized as a success. Finding money to expand it would help keep roadways safer, jails less crowded and would-be inmates functioning in society.

That sounds like a good investment -- especially when we cannot even deal with inmates already behind bars.

Springfield, MO DWI Criminal Defense Lawyers

No conviction plea deals on DWI charges defended by Judges

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:18:00 +0000

St. Louis, MO

DWI justice is doled out usually on weekday nights, often in tiny courtrooms, in city halls across the region. There's one common result: Come with a DWI charge. Leave without a DWI conviction.

From July 2007 through June 2008, the most recent data available, a newspaper analysis found most area courts convicted 15 percent or less. Six courts — Clayton, Crestwood, Valley Park, Moscow Mills, Moline Acres and Glendale — convicted nobody of DWI.

Several area judges and prosecutors said that was by design. Most said they had no problem giving a free pass to first-time offenders, and they believe only first-time offenders are prosecuted in their courts.

But the newspaper found case after case of prior offenders' being sent to a municipal court.

Regardless, the common plea deal is a suspended imposition of sentence (SIS). It means no conviction for the defendant if two years of probation is successfully completed.

Charles Billings, a judge in Fenton, Overland and Des Peres, said most courts believed they were administering real punishment and leaving enough of a paper trail that the SIS would count as a prior offense, as the law allows.

Even with an SIS, he said, the driver would have a record with the Department of Revenue. "Even if they got an SIS, you'd still have (a record with) DOR."

But although the department usually gets a notice of an SIS, it keeps track of only convictions — a problem for police checking someone's driving record to see past DWIs.

The other deal often offered by courts is convicting suspected drunken drivers of careless and imprudent driving or improper lane usage. The Department of Revenue records those charges in its conviction database, although it can take more digging to see if the convictions came from a DWI arrest, or just bad driving.

And those lesser charges are not serious enough for the state to suspend someone's license. Nor can nonalcohol charges count as a prior offense if the person is caught driving drunk again. So a repeat offender must be treated like a first-timer. Sometimes, courts do both deals, granting an SIS on a DWI while convicting someone of careless driving or improper lane usage. Judges defend the deals because they often come with a fine of up to $500 for each charge.

"They all take a careless and imprudent charge, and several points on their license, along with companion (charge) they're paying fines on," said O'Fallon, Mo., Judge Robert Wohler. "It's not like they're walking away without consequences."

Some courts are so enamored with the deals that they include them in their own calculations of conviction rates. The area's highest volume municipal court, run by St. Louis city, had DWI convictions on 12 percent of its DWI cases. But the court's administrative judge, Margaret Walsh, says an additional 60 percent of DWI defendants pleaded guilty and "got points on their licenses, substantial fines, and were required to attend the state-mandated evaluation and treatment program."

In her eyes, the city's conviction rate is more like 75 percent — even if most of the defendants aren't actually convicted of DWI.

Repeat DWI offenders often get probation, no conviction

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:04:00 +0000

Town & Country, MO

The judge gave John D. McGuire the standard plea deal for drunken drivers.

No DWI conviction. Just probation and a fine.

It didn't matter that McGuire had been caught weaving at 100 mph. Or that he had been three times as drunk as the law allows.

He got the deal, even though when he went to accept it — in Town and Country's courtroom — he was drunk again.

When McGuire got into his car to drive away, he got a second DWI in the parking lot.

This time, another judge handled it, and approved another no-conviction deal.

Plea agreements are the rule, not the exception, in the St. Louis area.

A Post-Dispatch investigation has found a culture of cutting deals for DWIs in the area's court systems. Prosecutors and judges here are far more likely than in the rest of the state to let a drunk driver avoid a conviction. Even prior offenders arrested again have an even chance of avoiding another DWI conviction.

Last month, the newspaper reported that police and prosecutors routinely fail to charge persistent drunken drivers with felonies that could send them to prison.

The new findings show another way the St. Louis system is soft on drunken drivers.

The newspaper could study only the Missouri side of the St. Louis area because Illinois officials refused to release meaningful data for analysis. In Missouri, the newspaper found a hodgepodge system that allows more than 100 courtrooms — most of them small, with part-time judges and prosecutors — to handle the majority of DWI cases.

Local judges and prosecutors regularly ignore federal recommendations and practices in other Missouri regions that aim to convict drunken drivers, even first-time offenders, of the crime they committed.

Instead, local courts routinely grant plea bargains that not only keep DWIs off conviction records but often ensure that any aspect of the case is forever sealed from public view.

The system struggles to keep tabs on who's cutting deals with whom as repeat offenders go from court to court. A state law prohibits repeat offenders from getting special deals. Although the law was briefly negated by a court ruling,it also appears to be regularly ignored.

And when drunken drivers on probation get arrested for DWI again, the courts rarely bring them back for more punishment, even though that threat is supposed to be society's insurance policy to keep probationers from driving under the influence.

Benefiting at nearly every turn are people such as McGuire.

MUNICIPAL MAZE

At 2:22 a.m. on Sept. 23, 2007, a Town and Country officer watched an SUV zip by him on Highway 40 (Interstate 64).

The radar gun showed 97 mph. It climbed to 100 mph before the officer could give chase.

The SUV weaved, cut in front of traffic and sped down an exit ramp before it stopped for the officer.

The driver was McGuire, 36, a sales manager from Chesterfield. He told police he'd had three glasses of wine at a business party.

But McGuire failed roadside tests to walk, talk, stand and stare, police said. When the officer tested McGuire's blood-alcohol level at the station, it came back at 0.246 percent — more than three times the legal limit of 0.08.

To be that drunk on wine, someone of McGuire's gender and weight would have had to have had 15 glasses over five hours, according to the University of Missouri's Wellness Resource Center.

McGuire was taken to the station, locked in a holding cell and released later that day on a promise to appear in court.

McGuire could not be reached for comment for this story.

In other states, such as Illinois, municipal courts are reserved for minor cases, such as parking tickets or noise complaints. Anything more serious goes to the state court system, staffed by full-time judges and prosecutors.

But that's not the case in Missouri.

Cities and towns have wide latitude to funnel all but felony crimes into their
own municipal courts, where they decide penalties and keep the fines collected.

So most of the area's DWIs are handled by more than 100 municipal courts across
the region, where most of the judges and prosecutors are part time and dole out
justice on weekday nights.

And that's where the DWI deals are the most lenient.

DEALS, DEALS, DEALS

For every seven people who walk into a municipal court facing a DWI charge, six
walk out without any alcohol conviction on their record.

The rate comes from a Post-Dispatch analysis of state court and driving record data, which showed alcohol convictions for only 1,212 of 8,334 area municipal DWI cases recorded from the 2008 fiscal year, the most recent data available.

While it's clear some charges get dismissed for lack of evidence, a review of cases across the region found that the vast majority of arrestees avoid a DWI conviction through one of two plea deals:

— A watered-down charge. A longtime tactic, in which prosecutors drop a DWI charge in favor of a traffic charge with less stigma, such as careless driving or improper lane usage. The lesser conviction is recorded, but not serious enough to cause a license to be revoked.

— The no-conviction conviction. Also known as a suspended imposition of sentence, or SIS, a person admits to driving drunk but is put on probation without technically being convicted. Once the probation is over, the DWI charge is dropped and the case vanishes from public view.

In either deal, the result is the same: The state Department of Revenue — the
keeper of driving records — is never told that the person was convicted of DWI
or any related alcohol charge. That conviction notice is a trigger for mandatory license suspensions and a warning sign of problem drivers for insurance companies and the public.

Such deals are common in other states, too. In Illinois, court supervision is similar to SIS except for the secrecy.

But advocates for more punishment, along with federal authorities, criticize the deals. In a recent audit of Missouri's DWI enforcement, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration called for the state to avoid either type of deal and to convict drunken drivers of drunken driving.

St. Louis-area officials defend the deals. More than a dozen municipal prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys say insisting on DWI convictions would lead to more trials and clog the courts. Besides, it's simply too harsh to convict a first-time offender of DWI.

A common scenario offered: Picture a family man who had one too many beers at a restaurant before driving home. Should he face the stigma of a DWI conviction for one mistake?

"It's a drastic remedy to give them a conviction if they have had no previous DWIs," said Darold Crotzer, the longtime Clayton municipal court prosecutor who routinely agrees to SIS deals.

"I feel like you could make a mistake once," Crotzer said, "and probably you and I have driven when we shouldn't drive."

But the newspaper found the plea bargains are extended to cases in which the driver caused accidents, fought with police or had prior arrests.

McGuire racked up two more arrests — for weapons and drugs — before his court date for the first DWI.

DRUNK AT COURT

Eleven months after his stop, McGuire showed up with his attorney, Ben Capshaw, for Town and Country's twice-a-month municipal court session.

The city's part-time judge is Dean Waldemer, who by day works as an assistant prosecutor for St. Louis County.

The city's part-time prosecutor is Keith Cheung, a lawyer who also prosecutes
municipal cases in four other area cities, is a judge in another, and does some
defense work.

The three lawyers agreed to a plea deal giving McGuire an SIS. If McGuire did what he was supposed to do, the case would be erased from public view after two years and his drivers record would stay clean. McGuire agreed to pay $690.50 in fine and court costs. He also agreed to get treatment and not drive drunk again.

But he broke the second promise within minutes.

Town and Country Lt. Stephen Nelke said McGuire smelled of booze, a police report said. In the courtroom, Nelke asked McGuire if he'd been drinking. McGuire admitted he had, but insisted he hadn't driven. McGuire said his girlfriend had dropped him off and would pick him up.

But a security camera caught McGuire walking to his Audi. A police dispatcher sent an officer to stop him.

The officer got there just after McGuire started his car. He was stopped again and tested. He again failed the field tests, police said. This time, he refused the blood-alcohol test.

McGuire was hauled back into the courtroom and brought before the judge again.

Cheung, the prosecutor, remembers he and the judge determining the deal couldn't be altered.

"You can't short-circuit the process at that point," Cheung said.

So McGuire was arrested again for DWI. He was taken to the police station,
processed and released.

ANOTHER DEAL

McGuire was now a repeat offender. Prosecutors insist those kinds of drunken drivers get no favors.

Waldemer has said that the special SIS deals are limited to those first-timers
who made one mistake.

"Repeat offenders, whether it be here in Town and Country or on the state level, are dealt with much harsher, of course," Waldemer said at a Town and Country aldermanic meeting last year.

Yet repeat offenders often avoid conviction.

An analysis of 2006 DWI arrest data showed that 50 percent of repeat offenders arrested that year avoided a conviction. Compare that with 38 percent in the Kansas City area, and 29 percent in the rest of the state.

The newspaper couldn't determine which local courts were providing the deals to repeat offenders. Both municipal courts and the state court system handle cases of prior offenders arrested again for drunken driving.

McGuire's second DWI charge was sent to the state court system, where Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch's office handled it.

It's the same place where Waldemer, the part-time judge, has his day job, although records show he didn't handle the second case. (Waldemer said ethics rules bar him from commenting on any aspect of McGuire's cases.)

Even though McGuire's second DWI came in a parking lot minutes after promising to stay sober, McCulloch's office agreed to give McGuire another SIS. This time, he was given three months in jail. There was no fine.

The deal today would violate state law, but at the time, the state Supreme Court had ruled that an SIS from a municipal court DWI case could not be used as a prior offense.

McCulloch said his office decided that the best way to handle McGuire was to ensure that he got treatment for alcohol abuse. "We take a calculated risk every time we recommend this sentence," McCulloch said, but in most cases defendants get the treatment and don't have further incidents.

Lawmakers have since reversed the court and now prior offenders are again ineligible for an SIS.

It's unclear how often that law is broken — the courts don't keep or share enough data with the public to compute it.

Tim Kelly, a judge in Florissant, said Missouri laws are contradictory, and he and other judges do not think the SIS law pertains to them. Judges, he said, have the right to use their discretion in disposing of cases.

The best available data, from a highway patrol database, show at least 44 people arrested in 2008 on repeat DWI charges who ended up getting the SIS deal.

But there could be many more.

That tally counts only people originally charged as repeat offenders. Many times, prosecutors will charge a repeat offender as a first-timer, making those cases impossible to track.

Peter Joy, a Washington University law professor, said he believes that when courts give someone a second SIS, it's usually by accident: One court doesn't know another court already gave a defendant an SIS for an earlier DWI.

But Joy suspects that, sometimes, prosecutors knowingly ignore the law to speed up plea deals.

To Joy, that's "much more problematic from a public safety perspective."

PROBATION VIOLATIONS IGNORED

Capshaw, McGuire's attorney, insisted that the courts were not lenient, because of one element of the deal unusual for a second-timer. McGuire had to attend a three-month treatment program in the county jail called Choices.

He was released on probation and — just as with his first case — required to avoid alcohol and arrest for two years.

McGuire made it six weeks.

A 911 caller on Feb. 13 saw McGuire stumble out of a steakhouse, fumble for minutes trying to start his car, and then drive to a gas station. McGuire told police he had had three glasses of wine. He failed the roadside tests, begged to be let go and refused to take a blood-alcohol test, according to a police report.

He was released — charges commonly take a month or more to be issued. But authorities could have done something immediately to punish McGuire.

Because he was on probation for the first two DWIs, he was beholden to the courts to avoid being arrested. The courts had the power to revoke his probation and impose a harsher sentence for the first two cases.

But it took three months for the county department overseeing his second probation to tell the court of the new arrest, and a month for the court to issue a warrant for his arrest.

By the time the court issued the warrant, McGuire had been arrested for two more DWIs. He skipped court on those charges, so more warrants were issued.

Secrecy rules and incomplete data make it impossible to say how often probationers such as McGuire avoid more punishment for new arrests. But in reviewing the criminal histories of 10 chronic offenders, the Post-Dispatch found 18 arrests that could have qualified for probation revocations, and only four resulted in revocations.

Municipal courts were the most lenient, where probation supervision was often limited to ensuring fines were paid and — maybe — checking for new arrests just before the two-year probation expired.

Still, some judges insist they are tough on probation violators. Among them is Waldemer.

When Town and Country aldermen were mulling whether to reappoint him as municipal judge last year, he stressed that the court's leniency toward first-time offenders didn't extend to people arrested again.

"If you do violate while you're on probation, you do get a conviction right away," he said

But that wasn't true in McGuire's case.

Just four months earlier, the judge had seen McGuire violate his probation deal
within minutes. It took less than a day for the county prosecutor to file a charge on that DWI.

Legal experts say that once the new charge was filed, the Town and Country prosecutor could have asked that McGuire's probation be revoked and he be convicted of DWI. Had he been convicted, McGuire's three more recent DWIs could have been charged as felonies.

Instead, nothing was done as McGuire continued to violate his probation with his third, fourth and fifth arrests.

Cheung said that wasn't a surprise, because municipal courts aren't automatically notified if someone on probation is arrested again. Clerks must check manually, and commonly have time to do so only toward the end of a defendant's probation.

Only last month did Town and Country's prosecutor formally ask for McGuire's
probation to be revoked for being rearrested.

The filing came 391 days after the DWI in the parking lot — and because, Cheung
said, the Post-Dispatch asked to see McGuire's file.

In hindsight, Cheung said, the court should have revoked the probation immediately after the parking lot arrest.

"That night, it was probably an oversight," he said. "If everyone was thinking, we should have violated his probation then and there."

Waldemer ordered McGuire to show up Oct. 1 at Town and Country's municipal court to explain himself.

He was a no-show. Now he could face a new arrest warrant this week.

In the meantime, his record remains free of DWI convictions.

St. Louis DWI Criminal Defense Attorney

DWI sobreity checkpont in St. Charles nets 8 arrets

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:21:00 +0000

St. Charles County

St. Charles
A no-refusal, blood-only DWI checkpoint in St. Charles County resulted in eight arrests Saturday, the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department reported.

Lt. Craig McGuire said officers from the Sheriff’s Department and the St. Peters Police Department stopped 982 vehicles at Highway 94 and Highway D between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. The results:

* Four arrests for Driving While Intoxicated
* Three driver’s license violations
* One arrest for failure to comply with law enforcement

Three people refused to give blood, McGuire said, so officers obtained warrants to draw blood. Sheriff’s Deputy Travis Jones said officers e-mailed the warrants to a prosecutor. The prosecutor then brought the warrant to a judge who was waiting at the Missouri Highway Patrol Headquarters to sign it.

The Eastern Missouri Police Academy, St. Charles County Department of Corrections, St. Charles County Ambulance District, and the St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office also participated.

Jones said traffic was stopped on Highway 94 for the first half of the check point and on both highways during the second half. He said officers chose that intersection because of a number of bad crashes nearby as well as its proximity to the wineries, a couple of bars and fishing spots where people have been known to drink all day.

Jones said the checkpoint cost between $1,000 and $2,000 for overtime pay. The money came from state grants.

St. Charles DWI Criminal Defense Attorney

DWI arrest for Mayor of Newburg

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:04:00 +0000

Newburg, MO

Andy J. Mattison, one of the most influential persons in Newburg, has been charged with driving while intoxicated and vows while it was his first time, it also will be his last.

Mattison, 49, is mayor of Newburg and minister of Newburg First Christian Church.

A Missouri State Highway Patrol Trooper made the arrest Thursday evening.

“I apologized to the people at City Hall on Friday and told my congregation Sunday,” said Mattison. “It was a most-difficult time. I’m glad this didn’t come out until I had a chance to tell people myself.”

The Rolla Daily News picked up on the arrest from the MSHP Web site on Sunday.

According to the MSHP arrest record, Mattison was seen by the trooper at 9:40 p.m. Thursday. He has been charged with DWI, failure to drive on the right half of the roadway and not wearing a seat belt.

On Monday, Mattison talked openly about the arrest, saying the road was wet from all the rain and his 1985 Dodge slid off the roadway and onto the grass on McArthur Street and was unable to drive the vehicle back onto the roadway.

“I drive this old ’85 Dodge,” Mattison began. “It hardly goes anywhere anyway, and when it went off the road, there was just no getting it back on. It was raining and there’s wet grass and the road slopes to the right. A car went by, and they must’ve called the Highway Patrol.”

Mattison said the trooper instituted field sobriety tests.
“Yes, they gave me tests, which I guess I didn’t pass to his satisfaction, so they took me in (to jail),” he said.

Mattison said he was released in his own recognizance providing he did not drive.

“I had a little money with me, and at that hour I didn’t want to call anyone, so I asked whether I could call a cab,” Mattison said. “I guess I was home by 11:45 (p.m. Thursday).”

Explaining the arrest, Mattison said the last few days have been extremely difficult.

“Explaining it (at church) yesterday was most difficult for me,” Mattison said. “I’ve been most open with it, and people have been very supportive. It was my first time, and I can say it won’t happen again.”

Missouri DWI Criminal Defense Attorney

DWI checkpoint in St. Charles County on Saturday night

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:14:00 +0000

St. Charles County, MO

Lt. Craig McGuire, of the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department, called this afternoon with the announcement that officers will man a blood-only, no-refusal DWI checkpoint Saturday.

McGuire said officers will stop vehicles to speak with drivers. If a driver is suspected of being intoxicated, he or she will have to perform field sobriety tests.

Those who fail the sobriety tests then must submit to having their blood drawn, he said. If a driver refuses to take the blood test voluntarily, officers will seek a warrant to draw blood.

The checkpoints typically run between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. Officers — and this case, probably a prosecutor and paramedics — are paid overtime through a grant from the state.

Similar checkpoints have drawn a great deal of commentary on StlToday.com. You can read more here, here and here.

McGuire did not know how many agencies would be participating this weekend. A quick round of phone calls to several larger departments showed that St. Peters also plans on sending officers.

St. Charles, MO DWI Criminal Defense Attorney

Columbia, MO approves special DWI enforcement unit, awaits approval of MODOT

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:27:00 +0000

Columbia, MO

The Columbia Police Department might be implementing a new unit with the sole purpose of fighting intoxicated driving.

City Manager Bill Watkins proposed funding for DWI enforcement in a Sept. 8 news release. Funding would go toward a unit of two officers handling only cases of driving while intoxicated. City Council and police department have approved of the unit, which now awaits the approval of the Missouri Department of Transportation to become effective.

"We're 100 percent supportive of the unit as a department," CPD spokeswoman Jessie Haden said.

MU students can expect to receive the same treatment as all Columbia citizens when it comes to the new unit.

"If they commit a traffic violation where CPD is patrolling, it ups the chances that someone's going to catch you," Haden said.

The new DWI unit will cover the entire city of Columbia. Although a concentration of CPD officers does cover the downtown bar district, the new unit would not stay in these areas specifically. CPD recognizes there are bars and night clubs throughout the Columbia area, as well as parties inside homes and apartments.

"That seems really harsh," senior Ryan Taylor said. "I know a lot of students who drink and drive, but it will definitely make Columbia safer."

The unit has the unanimous support of the City Council. Fourth Ward Councilman Jerry Wade said the unit would improve Columbia's safety.

"DWI is one of the major issues with traffic safety," Wade said. "The special units we've had in the past with special focuses usually work out very well."

Haden also said despite the number of DWI cases decreasing for the past five years, the CPD still feels this unit will be beneficial. Specified campaigns such as this one have demonstrated great success nationally. Also, Columbia's smaller efforts to reduce intoxicated driving, such as sober checkpoints, have been successful, she said.

The unit would receive a large amount of funding from the state, leaving little financial burden on Columbia's citizens, Haden said. A $260,000 grant from MoDOT would pay for almost everything needed by the unit, including salaries, patrol vehicles, equipment and means to pay for gasoline.

"Loopholes are often found in proposals such as these, but that is not the case this time," Haden said. "So far the only things not covered are handguns, shotguns and Tasers."

If approved, the unit would officially go into effect Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, though it would take some time after this date to get the program fully up and running. Haden said 75 percent of the program would be paid by the state the next fiscal year, and 50 percent every year thereafter.

"That's really a good deal," she said. "It's a tough budget year and this is really quite a gift that we'll be able to bring on two more officers."

The two officers in the DWI unit will not have the same duties as most officers. They would not be answering calls made through the CPD radio, allowing them to fully concentrate on handling DWI offenders.

"The hours when DWIs usually occur are our busiest hours," Haden said.

Two officers with a successful history of DWI arrests will be assigned to this position, Haden said.

Columbia, MO DWI Attorney

Indepencence, MO DWI sobriety checkpoint and saturation patrol results in traffic tickets, DWI arrests

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:20:00 +0000

Independence, MO

The Independence Police Traffic Safety Unit conducted a sobriety checkpoint along 23rd Street at Lee’s Summit Road while simultaneously conducting a DWI saturation patrol in that area. The saturation patrol began on Friday 9/18/09 at 10:00 PM and ended on Saturday 9/19/09 at 4:00 AM. The checkpoint was operated from 12:45 AM to 2:00 AM. The entire operation was staffed by (18) officers.

During the hours of operation, (101) cars were checked at the checkpoint and (35) cars were stopped during the saturation patrol with the following arrests and citations:

(2) DWI [(0) from checkpoint, (2) from saturation patrol]
(25) Hazardous Moving Violations
(10) No Valid Driver License
(20) Other Traffic Violations
(10) Warrant Arrest

Missouri Traffic Law Attorneys

Boone County DWI sobriety checkpoint stops 150 drivers, 6 DWI arrests

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:12:00 +0000

Columbia, MO

An overnight sobriety checkpoint on Old Plank Road resulted in six arrests on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

The Boone County Sheriff’s Department conducted the check in the 200 block of Old Plank Road between midnight and 3 a.m. About 150 vehicles were checked, and the arrests included five misdemeanor arrests on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, one felony drug arrest, one arrest on suspicion of driving with a suspended license, four arrests on suspicion of liquor law violations, one zero-tolerance violation, three citations for no insurance and one summons for failure to register a motor vehicle.

After the checkpoint closed, deputies returning to the sheriff’s department encountered another speeding motorist, whom they stopped and found to be intoxicated, increasing the total of DWI arrests to six.

DWI Attorney - Columbia, MO

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sunday Front Page DWI Investigation

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:14:00 +0000

St. Louis, MO

"Repeat drunken drivers avoid felony DWI charges"

Michael O'Fallon is the kind of guy Missouri lawmakers meant to target when they passed a get-tough law on DWI.

Under the decades-old law, any arrest after two DWIs is supposed to be a felony, carrying a potential prison term.

But the Eureka man escaped felony charges on his third arrest.

And his fourth.

His fifth arrest came Aug. 3, after police said he swerved head-on into an SUV carrying a family on the way home from getting snow cones.

The crash sent a mother and daughter to the hospital, gave two kids nightmares and enraged a husband and stepfather. He learned that the man who nearly wiped out his family had evaded serious punishment for years.

"He should have never been on the road," said Andy Colombini. "Something's gotta be done. And it's not just us this has happened to."

A Post-Dispatch investigation has found that chronic offenders such as O'Fallon routinely avoid felony charges because of arcane laws, poor record-keeping, confused police, complicated court rulings and a justice system that is slow even when all its players do their jobs.

A computer analysis of Missouri data found that last year alone, authorities in the St. Louis area failed to file felony charges on at least a third of all drunken drivers who qualified for them. (Illinois would not provide complete data for analysis.)

The problem is particularly severe in St. Louis County, where in 2008, nearly half of the arrests reviewed have not resulted in felony charges.

The result: The most dangerous drunken drivers are getting breaks before they even get to court. The failures ensure they'll never face the penalties lawmakers have authorized.

Some chronic offenders get charged with misdemeanors or municipal ordinance violations

That's what happened to O'Fallon after his third and fourth arrests.

At least O'Fallon was charged with something. Sometimes, because of bureaucratic bungling, chronic drunken drivers are not charged at all.

Newton Keene had already been to prison for a fifth DWI, but police forgot to seek charges for two later arrests. Afterward, he slammed head-on into a subcompact car, killing three people.

The failures infuriate the loved ones left behind, including Karen Jackson, grandmother of one of the victims of Keene's crash in February.

"The judicial system is letting all these people just slip through like that, as if it's not serious," Jackson said. "But it is serious. … People are dying."

FAILING TO CHARGE

In nearly all DWI arrests — even for people with long arrest records — drivers are released from jail in a matter of hours.

For the first or second arrest, they are handed a ticket, much like a speeding ticket.

Usually, they are ordered to report in several weeks to one of the more than 100 municipal courts dotting the area. There they face municipal ordinance violations, which almost always lead to fines but no jail time.

Some first- or second-timers are directed to face misdemeanor DWI charges at county courthouses. Although considered a bit harsher than municipal cases, misdemeanor DWIs also rarely lead to jail time.

The third DWI is supposed to be handled differently — with a felony charge and potential prison time.

That's what the law says, anyway.

The reality is far different.

The newspaper analysis of Missouri data found that in St. Louis and six area counties, authorities failed to issue felony charges on 105 of the 275 arrests that qualified.

MANY PROBLEMS

The newspaper reviewed the 105 arrests that did not result in felony charges, and it found the biggest problem came in the first step of the charging process.

In nearly two-thirds of the cases, county prosecutors say, police didn't ask them to file felony charges.

To seek a felony, arresting officers must first figure out if the suspect has two prior DWI offenses that would qualify a new offense as a felony.

That's no easy task. It could involve an entire shift — or longer — trying to decipher sometimes incomplete computer records. For example, the state drivers license data omit a DWI plea agreement used routinely by the courts.

Even when officers can get a true list of all past convictions, not every conviction counts, such as cases tried by a municipal judge who isn't a licensed attorney.

Sometimes, because of new laws and court rulings, a case will count, then it won't, and then it will.

The state Supreme Court ruled in March 2008 that the Legislature did such a poor job of writing the DWI law that some types of DWI convictions couldn't count toward a felony charge. It took a year for the Legislature to fix the law.

Police, prosecutors and defense lawyers have had trouble keeping straight which past DWIs count.

When police or prosecutors do find two qualifying prior offenses, they need to prove it to a judge. That means getting courts to send certified copies of past convictions.

Sometimes the courts provide the paperwork but not the specific kind needed for a prior DWI to be usable.

Other times, the requests for copies are ignored, lost or never received — with little accountability.

In one case, St. Louis County prosecutors complained that they had waited for months for records from the county's municipal court. But the municipal court said it never got the request.

Nobody has pushed the issue, even though the offices of the court clerk are just across the street from prosecutors'.

During such waits, prosecutors often file misdemeanor charges before cases get too old to prosecute in the hope they get the records they need to eventually charge felonies.

But with prosecutors juggling cases, they can lose track of who is owed what paperwork.

"I will be the first to tell you, in some of these (cases), we sent the letters requesting the priors," said St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch. "We didn't get any response, and we haven't followed up on them in a period of time we should have."

TWO CHANCES, ZERO FELONIES

So people such as O'Fallon slip through the cracks.

The 33-year-old college teacher pleaded guilty to two DWIs in 2003, one from Pacific Municipal Court and the other from St. Louis County Circuit Court.

Both times he was found to have double the legal limit of alcohol in his system. Both times he was given a special kind of probation to keep the DWI off his driving record.

Three years later, a drunken O'Fallon ran his car off the road in Jefferson County. He tested at 2 1/2 times the legal alcohol limit.

But his third DWI didn't result in a felony charge.

Prosecutors said state databases didn't list Pacific's DWI. Even if they had, Pacific's DWI couldn't have counted because its municipal judge wasn't a licensed attorney.

So O'Fallon's third DWI was a misdemeanor.

And so was his fourth — for a different reason.

In that arrest, O'Fallon nearly sideswiped a car in Eureka in November. He refused testing but admitted he had had "too much" to drink, according to a police report. He also said he had three past DWIs.

But the officer, in checking O'Fallon's driving record, found only O'Fallon's third DWI, the 2006 Jefferson County case. O'Fallon's other qualifying DWI — the 2003 St. Louis County case — was listed in another police database the officer did not check.

So, again, O'Fallon escaped a felony charge. He pleaded guilty in July to a municipal violation for driving with an elevated blood-alcohol level. He was fined, with no jail time.

On Aug. 3 — less than a week after his fourth guilty plea — a drunken O'Fallon rounded a curve too fast in northern Jefferson County, police said.

His right tires slid onto the shoulder. He jerked the wheel to the left, and sent his pickup skidding across the center line.

Coming in the opposite direction was the Colombini family.

Andy and wife Jamie still remember barely being able to utter "Oh, my God!"

They remember the screams. The impact. The whiplash. The smoke billowing from the hood.

She can't forget the look O'Fallon gave her after the crash.

"This guy jumped out of his truck and just looked around and started smiling," she recalled.

"I knew he was drunk just by how he got out."

A highway patrol trooper agreed, arresting O'Fallon that night for DWI No. 5. He was released a few hours later.

THE PAIN, THE WAIT

On the one-month anniversary of the crash, Jamie Colombini hobbled to her couch in Fenton. A brace stretched over most of her right leg. Another brace enveloped her ankle. She has a back brace too, but it hurts too much to wear while sitting down, she said.

Doctors can't say for sure how much damage her neck, back and leg sustained, she said. She's in constant pain and expects she'll need back surgery.

Beside her on the couch was Andy, a firefighter-paramedic by trade. He's sidelined with a wrist brace to cover a gash from the collision, which sent his arm into the dashboard console. His back hurts, too, and he also may need surgery.

They worry about their children. The 16-year-old, Amanda, had a softball-sized bruise on her shoulder. She just got her license but is now too afraid to drive.

Zachary, 12, and Tyler, 10, struggle to sleep at night. Tyler wakes up screaming, sobbing and shaking from nightmares of oncoming headlights and rolling cars.

They hear their parents talk about how O'Fallon had been caught again and again for DWI.

"You have your child ask you: 'What's it going to take?'" Jamie Colombini said. "Would they finally have done something if we would have died?"

O'Fallon, through an e-mail, declined to comment. His longtime attorney, Jim Wahl, said O'Fallon admitted himself into an inpatient addiction treatment program after the crash.

"He told me that he realizes he has a problem and that he needs to deal with it, and that's what he's doing," Wahl said.

While O'Fallon gets treatment, the highway patrol is continuing its investigation. It commonly takes five to six weeks for arrest reports to be sent to prosecutors. With a backlog of cases at the prosecutor's office, the average case takes four weeks to review before prosecutors make a decision on charges.

After that — if prosecutors agree with police — O'Fallon could face his first felony DWI charge.

St. Louis, MO DWI Criminal Defense Lawyers

Kansas City DWI sobriety checkoint nets 11 arrests

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:10:00 +0000

Kansas City, MO

The Kansas City Missouri Police Department conducted a Sobriety Checkpoint on September 11, 2009 from 2300 hours to 0400 hours at 4040 Main street. Southbound traffic was checked with total of 715 vehicles stopped. A total number of 11 DUI arrests were made, along with 1 Driving While Revoked, 1 Other Traffic Violation, 1 Felon in Possession of a Firearm, 2 Hindering and Interfering an Officer city violations, 1 Possession of Cocaine, and 1 Clay County Warrant for Failure to Appear.

Kansas City, MO DWI Criminal Defense Attorneys

Kansas City PD plan DUI sobriety checkpoint for September 11 weekend

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 04:13:00 +0000

Kansas City, MO

Kansas City police will conduct a sobriety checkpoint next weekend.

The checkpoint will be held sometime the weekend of Sept. 11 at a location known for drunken-driving-related crashes or arrests. No further details were released regarding when or where the checkpoint will be conducted.

Signs will be placed in advance of the checkpoint and officers will direct motorists to an area where an officer can conduct a brief check to determine if the driver should be delayed longer.

Kansas City Drunk Driving Defense Attorneys

Repeat DWI offenders hesitant to get ignition interlock devices

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 04:08:00 +0000

Columbia, MO

Repeat DUI offenders in Missouri are required to have an alcohol ignition lock on their cars. In July when the law took effect, the department of revenue sent out letters to 70,000 repeat offenders to let them know about the new requirement. So far, only around 4,000 alcohol ignition locks have been installed. 70,000 repeat DUI offenders are now required to have in-car breathalyzers in order to get behind the wheel legally. Since the law went into effect on July 1st, only about 4,000 of these devices have been purchased. However, department of revenue representative, Ted Farnen thinks this low figure is misleading because not everyone who will be affected by the law is allowed to apply to get their license back.

"Lets say your license was suspended in 2008 for 2 years, you wouldn't be allowed to apply to get your license back until 2010."
So people who aren't allowed to have their licenses back, aren't buying the devices, because they won't need it until they have regained their driving privileges. Securior Ignition Interlock makes and installs these devices, and employee Charles Lee says that business has more than tripled since July. However, Lee expects an even greater increase in business in the future, and attributes people not buying their devices to procrastination.

"I think people are waiting until the very last minute, until they have everything done until they get the devices."
Farnen and the department of revenue know not everyone follows the letter of the law, and they expect that some repeat offenders will illegally drive without the new devices. The penalty for a repeat DUI offender who goes out driving without the alcohol ignition device is twelve points on their license, and having their driving privileges revoked for a year.

Columbia, MO DWI Criminal Defense Lawyers

Columbia, MO DWI sobriety checkpoint: 7 drivers arrested as "You Drink, You Drive, You Lose" campaign hits the road

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:43:00 +0000

Columbia, MO

The "You Drink, You Drive, You Lose" campaign hit the road and snagged 7 drunk drivers.

Columbia Police setup a sobriety checkpoint from 11 p.m. Saturday night to 3 a.m. Sunday morning along Grindstone Parkway. The checkpoint lead to seven DWI arrests, one was a drug impaired driver, thirteen arrests for MIP (Minor in Possession of Alcohol), four arrests for misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance, and other driving-related offenses.

Sergeant Shelley Jones is with the Columbia Police Department. She worked the checkpoint on August 29th.

"It's a long process actually, a lot of paperwork involved. Got to make sure you're compiling with all the court rulings and regulations of the checkpoint," Sgt. Jones said.

This weekend's checkpoint is a part of a nationwide campaign to crack down on drunk driving; it's called the, "You Drink, You Drive, You Lose," campaign. Columbia police weren't the only local department working. Major Tom Reddin with the Boone County Sheriff's Department says Columbia police spearheaded the checkpoint event, but volunteers from the Sheriff's Department, Hallsville Police, and MUPD helped Saturday evening.

Law enforcement weren't the only ones at the checkpoint. Betty Kidwell is the Coordinator of the Boone County Chapter of MADD, which is "Mothers Aganst Drunk Driving." Kidwell and her husband, Tom Kidwell, volunteered their time Saturday night serving donated food to the officers. Kidwell says Hy-Vee and Pizza Hut donated food for her to serve officers at the checkpoint.

Dani Martinson is a server at Sky Hi Bar and Grill in Columbia. She says the sobriety checkpoints will change the clientele in Columbia bars.

Martinson said, "Cutting back on the underage drinking in the bars is going to be a change of business for some of the bars, but I think it's good and it's the law."

Sgt. Jones said the checkpoint required a great deal of manpower - officers checked 698 cars Saturday night - but she says it's worth the effort because the checkpoint makes drivers think twice about driving under the influence.

"It is a deterrent. And it wakes people up to say, gee, maybe I just need to stay here tonight and not drive home," said Sgt. Jones.

Sgt. Jones would not disclose where and when the next sobriety checkpoint will be.

Columbia, MO DWI Defense Lawyers

DWI crackdown in Columbia and Jefferson Cty part of national campagin, "you drink, you drive, you lose"

noreply@blogger.com (iLitigate) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:27:00 +0000

Columbia, MO

The national "You drink, you drive, you lose" enforcement effort nabbed dozens of impaired drivers over the weekend.

In Columbia, the check was on Grindstone Parkway Saturday night between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. Out of 700 vehicles, seven DWI arrests were made.

Police issued 13 arrests or citations to minors in possession of alcohol. 70 drivers failed to show proof of insurance.

Jefferson city police and the Maries County Sheriff's Department also conducted their own separate overnight sobriety checkpoints, both were also part of the "You drink, you drive, you lose" campaign.

Jefferson City Police stopped about 320 vehicles on Missouri Boulevard between 10 p.m. and 2:30 a.m.

Only one DWI arrest was made. Officers also arrested one person for drugs and one person with a warrant for their arrest.

Jefferson City Police say they noticed a high number of designated drivers during the checkpoint.

Maries County deputies checked over 100 vehicles on Highway 28 in Vichy. Three alcohol related arrests and two drug arrests were made.

Missouri DWI Criminal Defense Attorneys