One new DUI law that has gone into effect will call for those DUI offenders who register a blood alcohol content higher than .15 percent to install and pay for an ignition interlock device if they want to drive at all.

Another DUI law will require state judges to determine if a DUI suspect is a danger to the community, and therefore be able to deny them bond. This caveat would typically impact repeat DUI offenders.

The Chattanooga Free Press reports that the new laws are part of a stronger package of drunk driving legislation which lawmakers hope will scare some DUI offenders out of breaking the law again. The trend towards stronger DUI law is certainly a national one, and this latest package only strengthens this trend.

Assistant District Attorney in Hamilton County Kate Lavery is one strong supporter of the new legislation. She said in statements that her hope is that the new laws will decrease the number of DUI offenses.

“We currently have people out on bond that commit vehicular homicide or other DUIs,” she said, referring to the bill that would make it easier to prevent DUI suspects deemed especially dangerous from getting out on bail.

“This will strike right at the heart of our issue,” she said of the new laws.

The ignition interlock devices, which force a driver to take a blood alcohol breath test before they can start a car, will cost offenders about $60 per month. This cost will be mandatory upon conviction.

Under the new legislation, such in-car breath testers will even be possible for first-time DUI offenders. Such a device could be the requirement for some in order to get their license back after a license suspension period or a restricted driving period.

If someone who is convicted of driving with a blood alcohol content over .08 while also having a passenger under the age of 18 will have to have an ignition interlock device installed, even if it is their first offense.

Ignition interlock devices will also be required for cases including an accident resulting in injury, property damage over $400, or if they refuse to take a breath or blood test following a DUI arrest. Again, the in-car breath test could be installed in these cases even if it is a first DUI offense.

Tennessee joins several other states in terms of the strictness of DUI penalties. Eleven other states require an ignition interlock device with a BAC over .15, and 13 state require it it for first-time DUI offenders, according to the Free Press. Other states require the device upon multiple drunk driving convictions.

Samantha Wilson, a 22-year-old woman, was put in custody after she crashed her car at 4 p.m. on a Sunday. She was arrested when police suspected her of drunk driving, and that is when the real excitement began.
According to the NWF Daily News, notes from drunk driving police say that Wilson, whose hands were handcuffed in front of her, quickly slipped out of them the first time. Police re-handcuffed her, and put her in the front seat of a police cruiser.

But while highway patrol trooper Ken McNabb was putting her seatbelt on, Wilson, having once again freed herself from the handcuffs, punched him in the head.

McNabb was able to get the door of the cruiser closed, but Wilson escaped from her handcuffs again, and let herself out of the car. It was about then that she dropped her trousers and began to relieve herself next to the police vehicle. Her husband arrived soon after, pleading with her to stop urinating and pull her pants back up.

Wilson was restrained again and put back into a patrol car. On the way to the police station, according to McNabb, Wilson yelled and screamed, asking to see her husband while kicking at the windows behind the officer’s driver’s seat.

She then proceeded to remove her shoes and pants so that she was naked from the waist down. “She stated that she was going to urinate on my seats before launching into a shouting tirade,” said Deputy Randolph Grob.

Then Wilson, already on her way to jail on suspicion of DUI in Florida, began to slam the plexiglass divider with her handcuffs. She had taken them off again and put them on her fist as though they were a pair of brass knuckles.

The officer stopped the car because he thought Wilson would break through the glass, and when he opened the door to the back seat, she punched him in the nose again. He didn’t remove her from the car because he thought he might hurt her, so instead he was able to force the door closed and radio ahead to the police station to have a female officer ready for her arrival.

Once at the jail, officers had to forcibly remove her from the car amidst her continued punching.

Now, the state’s Attorney General, Steve Bullock, has proposed the expansion of a pilot program that calls for repeat drunk driving offenders to submit to regular breath tests during their sentence. The program is known as the 24/7 Sobriety Project.

The 24/7 Sobriety Project essentially requires that repeat DUI offenders stay sober all day and all night long, for the duration of their sentence. Whoever fails a breath test would be jailed and have their bond revoked. The idea originated in South Dakota.

Under the program, anyone who is arrested for DUI more than once must take a breath test that measures blood alcohol content twice a day, according to the Great Falls Tribune.

Expanded DUI prevention efforts would also include harsher penalties for those convicted of driving with a blood alcohol content that is higher than .15. Such measures are already in place in most states in the U.S. Such a charge, as proposed, would be an aggravated DUI charge.

In addition to the strengthened DUI laws above, Attorney General Bullock would like to make penalties for refusing a breath test more harsh than they currently are.

The proposals will need approval from the state legislature, which is controlled by the Republican party at the moment. Republican Representative Steve Lavin already plans to sponsor the bill.

Lavin is a sergeant in the state’s highway patrol. He argued that the bill wouldn’t cost anything because those who are required to take the tests would pay for the process themselves. “I just don’t see any opposition to it,” he told the Tribune. “I’ve talked to quite a few of my comrades, and they seem to like it.”

Attorney General Bullock hopes for the necessary political support. “I’m hopeful that all three of them end up with broad bi-partisan support,” he said of the three parts of his proposal for expanded DUI penalties and requirements. “This problem is not a Democrat or a Republican issue. I think these three (proposals) are great parts of what can be done.”

One is a Grammy winning songwriter, producer and actress best known for her soul-pop music, and the other is a one-time teen heartthrob slated to appear in a film about Liberace.

Singer and Grammy-winner Faith Evans pleaded no contest to DUI charges in a Los Angeles courtroom recently, following a DUI arrest back in August. The Grammy Award-winner was stopped at a DUI checkpoint in Marina del Rey on August 21 at around 10:40 p.m.

Evans was subsequently arrested for suspicion of misdemeanor drunk driving. As a part of the no contest plea, Evans will serve three years of probation, pay $300 in fines, agree not to drive with any alcohol in her system and undergo a 3-month alcohol treatment program, according to the Baltimore Sun.

She pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor count of reckless driving.

Evans, well-known after she arrived on the pop music scene in the mid-90s, tweeted to her fans following the DUI arrest, telling them that “After completing a full day of wardrobe prep I was stopped at a random checkpoint. I’m fine and well, and thank you for your prayers, kind words and concerns.” She signed the tweet “- Fizzy.”

Evans and her husband were arrested for drug possession charges in 2004, for which she entered a drug abuse treatment program.

Teen idol David Cassidy also faced DUI trouble recently, when he was arrested for drunk driving in Florida, according to the LA Times.

Cassidy has a court date in mid January for charges that he failed a field sobriety test at around 6 in the evening. Police reportedly witnessed Cassidy weaving on the road and making an erratic lane change.

A Breathalyzer test came back having registered a .141 and a .139 blood alcohol content for the singer and actor.

Cassidy pleaded not-guilty to the charge. He admitted that he was tired, and that he had a glass of wine with lunch and took a hydrocodine pill for back pain.

According to police, there was a bottle of bourbon in the back seat that was half empty.

Cassidy faces a misdemeanor charge of DUI, failure to maintain a single lane and driving with an open container.

The arrest garnered headlines because Williams has become one of the best players on the Tampa Bay team after being drafted only last year. He has started every game this NFL season.

According to police, the vehicle that Williams was driving, a Cadillac Escalade, was swerving in and out of traffic and exceeding the speed limit when they pulled it over at around 2:30 A.M. The sheriff’s report said that Williams had a glassy look in his eyes, and police smelled alcohol in the car.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, he failed a field sobriety test.

Williams took a Breathalyzer test, the results of which showed that he had a .065 blood-alcohol content. This number is below the Florida legal driving limit of .08 percent. Williams was still arrested, however, and taken in, then release on $500 bond.

According to Florida police, they can make a DUI arrest even if the breath test shows a blood-alcohol content below the legal limit if there is evidence that a driver was impaired. Such evidence can include the way the person was driving.

According to officials, Williams also submitted to a urine test. The results of that test are expected within a month to six weeks.

In a peculiar turn, the Buccaneers team also had Williams submit a urine sample to them, to allow them to test for several substances, some of which are banned in the NFL, according to the St. Petersburg Times. They did this, apparently, in order to more quickly obtain results of the tests. Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris was happy with the results of this private test, and told the press that he was satisfied that Williams was “clean.”

He also added that the team will be fining Williams “a lot of money” following the late-night incident. The coaching staff had already expressed their disappointment to Williams himself.

“He was very remorseful, which is a good sign,” said offensive coordinator Greg Olson. “He wasn’t full of excuses, and that’s a good sign. I think it’s obviously unfortunate that it happened. We’re certainly disappointed that he would be out that late knowing that we had a big game and practice.”

Officials in Huntington Beach are considering posting the names of suspected drunk drivers on the city’s Facebook page.

This potential tactic of publicly putting those arrested for DUI to shame by spreading their names online would be one part of a broader campaign to discourage drunk driving in the community, according to Lt. Russell Reinhart of the Huntington Police Department.

The idea came up in a City Council meeting, when Councilman Devin Dwyer put the idea on the table for police officials to consider. He posed the idea as a response to the local newspaper’s lapsed practice of publishing the names of those facing DUI charges.

“I didn’t think public shaming for driving under the influence was such a bad idea,” Dwyer told the LA Times. “I would use any tool necessary to bring down the numbers of drunk drivers.”

This isn’t the first time that a police force has had the idea, and it’s part of an aggressively anti-DUI campaign.

Other parts of the campaign include committing more police officers to focusing their attention on drunk driving arrests, and sending written notices to drinking holes and bars when someone is arrested who was patronizing the establishment.

Huntington Beach is known for its alcohol-related incidents, and what the LA Times calls “a sudsy reputation.” There were almost 1,700 DUI arrests in 2009, and 274 collisions that were attributed to alcohol impairment. These figures put it in the top tier for cities around the same size in California in terms of drunk driving and alcohol-related crashes.

A report from the city referred to the situation as “a significant DUI problem in Huntington Beach.”

Understandable, then, that officials would be willing to toss around the idea of a more direct way to get drunk driving suspects into the public eye, in hopes of deterring others from deciding to drink and drive.

Publicizing the information isn’t necessarily scandalous, as it is already public information. “Anybody could go to the counter, get it and put it on their own web page,” said Lt. Reinhart.

These won’t be the first efforts made. In similar attempts to curb the combination of booze and driving, police banned beer pong and other alcohol-related games at bars in the city’s downtown area.

The City’s attorney will review the Facebook proposal, to make sure there are no legal problems with it.

Mike Tilt’s disabilities would make it difficult for him to complete a field sobriety test under any circumstances, and he warned the officer who stopped him of that fact.

Nevertheless, he was asked to take the field sobriety test, including walking with one foot in front of the other. As he had predicted, he failed the test.

And when Tilt told the trooper, Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Lisa Steed, that he takes medication for his ailments, he was arrested for DUI.

The Utah Highway Patrol later called CBS News to say that the arrest of Tilt for DUI was not consistent with the goals of patrol and their DUI prevention efforts, and Tilt was not charged with DUI.

The trooper who made the stop, however, has faced increased scrutiny from the media. According to those investigations, Steed has been chastised in court over several DUI cases. A judge in one case scolded her for ignoring standard Utah Highway Patrol procedures, and he called her actions “especially troubling,” and another judge said that she “lacks credibility,” according to KUTV.

Examples of her disregarding Utah Highway Patrol procedure includes cases in which Steed has conducted field sobriety tests out of view of the cameras installed on patrol cars. This was not the case in Tilt’s arrest, however.

According to a DUI defense attorney who has defended clients whom Steed has pulled over in the past, Steed is a goal-oriented trooper who wants to pull over as many people as possible to make DUI arrests.

Many came to Steed’s support, as well, including the Utah Highway Patrol, which clarified that many people are guilty of DUI when driving with prescription medication in their systems, and that Steed has a long record of success in making DUI stops and arrests.

Steed was also Trooper of the Year in 2007. She has made around 800 DUI arrests in the last eight years.

The Utah Highway Patrol is currently inquiring into Steed’s actions, though they stand behind her arrest record.

The Florida DUI trial has most recently featured the testimony of a witness who testified that Leyritz ran his Ford Expedition through a red light and hit the SUV driven by Fredia Ann Veitch, killing her.

The witness, a bouncer at a bar in Ft. Lauderdale, claimed that Leyritz appeared to be trying to make it through the intersection before a yellow light turned red. He didn’t make it, said the accident witness, as reported by the New York Daily News.

The accident took place in December of 2007, at just after 3 in the morning. Henry also said that Veitch had the green light as she entered the intersection. “She didn’t have to stop because it was green,” he testified.

Henry was cross-examined regarding the timing of his witnessing of the accident, and he did offer that he looked up to see the incident only after he heard brakes screeching nearby.

Some evidence in the case, namely that there were no skid marks before the intersection, could shed some doubt on the timing claimed by Henry. There were screech marks on the road after the traffic lights, which may suggest that Henry did not see what the state of the traffic lights was at the time that he started viewing the incident.

According to the prosecution, Jim Leyritz had been out on the town, taking shots of vodka and tequila to celebrate his birthday when he took the wheel. His blood alcohol content was measured at .14 percent, which is almost double the legal BAC limit of .08.

Leyritz has pleaded not guilty to the DUI charge and to vehicular homicide. If he is convicted of the crime, he could face 15 years in prison.

In addition to Henry’s testimony, the prosecution has said that another witness, a passenger in Leyritz’s vehicle, would also testify that Leyritz ran the red light.

Other evidence in the trial includes testimony from witnesses who say that Leyritz did not appear intoxicated following the accident. One of those witnesses is a police detective.

Prosecutors will counter those accounts by asking jurors to look at police video of Leyritz’s field sobriety test.

“What you will see is a man who is being given instructions and can’t follow those instructions, even though he is not falling-down drunk,” prosecutor Stefanie Newman told the jury.

Leyritz had previously settled a civil suit with the family of the victim, though he did not admit any liability.

Blackmon announced an apology following the announcement of his DUI arrest. He apologized to his family and friends, and to the school, according to NewsOK.

“I made a mistake, and I take full responsibility for it. I look forward to redeeming myself. This isn’t who I am.”

Blackmon has been suspended for a game by head football Mike Gundy, the match-up between Oklahoma State and Kansas State.

“In our opinion, what he did deserves a suspension for this game,” said Gundy. “It was very easy for us. That’s a decision he made, and he has to suffer the consequences.”

Blackmon was stopped after being clocked driving 92 miles per hour in a 60 mile per hour zone on Interstate 35. He was subsequently arrested for suspicion of DUI.

Blackmon didn’t have to speak to the press so soon after his arrest. However, he appeared at a press conference less than 48 hours. When asked why, he told the press, “to prove I’m not that guy and own up to my mistakes. I did it, and I should be punished for it.”

“6:51,” replied Coach Gundy about when he heard about the DUI arrest, referring to how early in the morning he got the call. “Usually when I get a call that early in the morning it’s not good.” Gundy also said that Blackmon was “a caring person who made a mistake.”

Several other OSU football players were in the car with Blackmon, though no other students have been punished by the football program for anything that occurred that night.

Blackmon has been tagged for speeding in the past, once for driving 20 to 25 miles per hour over the limit, and another time for driving 93 in a 70 mile per hour zone.

The legal investigation is still under way, so Blackmon didn’t answer any specific questions about the case.

According to Texas DUI law, a police officer doesn’t have to place a minor into custody for the Class C misdemeanor DUI.

According to an article from 10 News, Marc William Durham was killed in the crash of August 20, 2010. He was a father of five who was driving his family to the movies when they were rear-ended by Guarino’s BMW as they pulled up to a red light. Afterward, Guarino was charged with drunk driving in California.

Durham, a former security chief for General Dynamics, had retired just one week before he was killed in the accident. Other members of his family were in the car at the time of the DUI crash, though they escaped with injuries, saying that their father got the worst of it.

Guarino was allegedly drunk at the wheel of his BMW, and he will stand trial on the felony DUI charges after admitting to police that he had been drinking whiskey at a bar before he took to the roads that night.

The accident happened at about 9 p.m. The accident investigator in the case told the court that Guarino was traveling between 50 and 60 miles per hour in the BMW when it hit the Toyota Corolla owned by Durham.

When Guarino rear-ended the car, it started a chain reaction of collisions, and ultimately four other vehicles were involved, with additional injuries to passengers in those vehicles, including an 8-year-old boy.

Guarino told police that he had consumed around five Jack Daniels before he headed home from the bar. He admitted to police also that his driving was affected by how much alcohol he drank, but, according to the article, “he didn’t know how.”

Officers at the scene determined based on their judgment and observation that Guarino was intoxicated. When his blood alcohol content was measured several hours later, he registered a BAC of .15 percent, which is well over the .08 legal limit for driving while intoxicated. And it is likely, according to the claim of Deputy District Attorney Chandelle Konstanzer in court, that it was much higher at the time of the accident.

The defense for Guarino made the argument that his client was not guilty of gross negligence, and that a sleep apnea condition may have contributed to Guarino passing out while at the wheel.

The trial is set for early December, and Guarino is free on $100,000 bail, but he is not allowed to drink alcohol or drive.