...most lawyers who handle DUI cases plead their clients guilty due to the fact that they lack the specialized knowledge to actually defend them.
Paranoia
Two New Bills to Toughen Drunk Driving Laws
By Patrick T. Barone
Barone Defense Firm, Birmingham, MI
As has long since become commonplace, Michigan’s legislators continue annually to draft and submit new bills that address some aspect of drunk driving. These bills typically have one of two goals; decreasing the efficacy of a particular defense or increasing the penalties imposed after conviction. Two such bills are now pending.
Ignition Interlock for “Super Drunks”
Michigan Representative Rep. Dan Acciavatti recently submitted HB 492, a bill that if passed will subject drunk drivers having a BAC of .15 or greater to increased penalties. These include a more draconian driver license sanction. For a first offense the penalty is increased to a full one-year license suspension, with the first 45 days served as a "hard suspension." Currently a convicted first offender will serve a 30 day hard suspension followed by an additional 150 days of driving restrictions. The bill also provides that the restricted license would be coupled with the mandatory installation of an ignition interlock device programmed such that once the driver reaches the “minimum lower limit” of .025 the vehicle will not operate.
Representative Acciavatti, who submitted this bill on June 13, 2007, seeks to amend sections 303, 319, 322 & 625 of MCL § 257.303 et. seq. The bill also adds new section 20b. Together these sections also modify the driver license sanctions such that prior convictions will result in graduated lengths of suspended driving sanctions. There appears to be no “look-back” period. Thus, if the person has two prior convictions during his/her lifetime, then the new restricted license/ignition interlock sanction would be 3 years, and if the driver has three priors, then the mandatory sanction period would be 5 years. For this calculation and purpose, only priors with high qualifying BAC’s are considered. Restrictions imposed under these sections allow driving only to/from work, school and alcohol treatment. The bill also provides for mandatory treatment.
.10 for “Drunk Boating”
As readers are likely to understand, in 2003 Michigan’s so-called “legal limit” was lowered to .08. This change was driven by federal pressure that linked federal highway funding to this change. Because federal pressure did not require any changes to a state’s drunk boating laws, the drunk boating “legal limit” remained at .10. It is worth noting also that the laws covering drunk boating are not contained in the criminal code, but instead are contained within the Marine Safety portion of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act.
Earlier this year State Rep. Tonya Schuitmaker introduced House Bill 4794 which seeks (once again) to lower the so called “legal limit” for operating watercraft to 0.8. The bill also seeks to create stiffer penalties for those convicted of the offense. It is somewhat ironic that on June 13, 2007, the same day Rep. Acciavatti’s bill was submitted to the house, Rep. Schuitmaker’s bill passed the house and has now moved on to the senate. A substantially similar drunk boating law failed to pass the senate last year.
Representative Schuitmaker’s bill attempts to add additional parity to the drunk boating statutes by also adding a drugged boating provision, providing also for “zero tolerance” for certain enumerated controlled substances. Like the very recent drunk driving amendment, the new drunk boating bill also changes the “look-back” period to “lifetime” such that a drunk boater with two prior convictions during his/her lifetime could be charged with felony drunk boating. Previously, the look-back period for felony drunk boating was 10 years.
There are some other significant changes, including the removal of the presumptions that were part of the pre-1999 drunk driving law. According, this proposed amendment also removes the presumptions associated with a particular BAC.
Finally, the sanctions for refusing a breath test are increased so that they mimic the current drunk driving laws. In other words, a first refusal results in a 1 year suspension of the right to operate a boat and a second refusal would result in a 2 year suspension.
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