Date: Fri 27-Mar-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

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(COMMENTARY) Drunken Driving Issue Goes Beyond Blood-Alcohol Limit

By Chris Powell

Bridgeport police say state Rep William J. Varese twice crashed into parked

cars as he drove away from a nudie bar in Bridgeport a few weeks ago. So

Varese, a Republican from Monroe, has become the poster child for legislation

that would reduce Connecticut's blood-alcohol limit for drunken driving,

especially since he had been loudly opposing the bill just days earlier.

But the Varese case is instead more evidence that the bill is only more of the

cynical demagoguery of politicians who love to exploit the drunken-driving

issue.

If the police account of the Varese incident is true -- and he has more or

less admitted it -- reducing the blood-alcohol limit, now 0.10, to 0.08 as

proposed would have had no application whatever. For Varese's blood-alcohol

tested at 0.167, far over the current limit. And while such a high level and

his smashing his car around the parking lot made him easy to arrest, Varese

will not be prosecuted or punished under the law as it stands and, more

important, would not be prosecuted or punished even under the law as it would

be amended.

For Varese is a first offender. This does not necessarily mean someone who has

driven drunk for the first time but, rather, someone who has been caught for

the first time. And while drunken drivers are rarely caught the first time

they drive drunk, first offenders are ensured admission to Connecticut's

"alcohol-education program," which prevents prosecution.

For a $450 fee and a 90-day driver's license suspension, the program politely

lectures people that they shouldn't drive drunk -- as if the criminal law

itself should not be enough of a lecture to begin with, and as if the criminal

law itself is not enough of a lecture for all other offenses. (For some reason

Connecticut has yet to establish an "education" program for murderers,

rapists, robbers, or any other sort of offenders.) Then the alcohol-education

program puts drunken drivers right back on the road, keeping them out of jail

and especially out of court.

Why is Connecticut so lenient with drunken drivers, and why would the state

remain so lenient regardless of any reduction of the blood-alcohol limit? Why

has even a group as sincere as Mothers Against Drunk Driving been distracted

by the blood-alcohol level reduction bill?

Because prosecuting drunken driving -- treating it not so much as a serious

criminal offense but as an ordinary criminal offense -- would require

appropriating money for thousands of trials and would require plea-bargaining

thousands of drunken driving charges, just as most other criminal charges are

plea-bargained.

How many more trials and plea bargains? The alcohol-education program diverts

about 15,000 drunken driving cases from Connecticut's courts each year. The

courts, which long have been on the verge of breakdown, now hold only about

250 criminal trials and 3,000 civil trials each year.

That is, the ordinary criminalization of drunken driving, rather than just

ranting about it, might destroy what remains of Connecticut's criminal-justice

system.

This is the reality of the drunken driving problem, but it never figures in

the discussion, for the reality raises difficult questions, questions not

answered by the simplistic thundering of legislators like state Sen Edith

Prague, the leading advocate of the bill reducing the blood-alcohol level, who

long has posed as the General Assembly's leading opponent of drunken driving.

Prague, a Democrat from Columbia, demanded that Varese, a member of the

General Assembly's Judiciary Committee, abstain from voting on the

blood-alcohol limit bill the other day because of his arrest. (He did abstain,

but gave a different reason.) Indeed, because of his disgraceful conduct

Varese probably should resign from the legislature. But Prague's indignation

about Varese was selective and opportunistic.

While Prague wanted Varese out of her way on the committee that had

jurisdiction over her bill, she has had no criticism of state Rep Kevin Ryan,

D-Montville, a member of her own party from her own district who just a few

weeks before Varese was arrested was convicted for his second drunken driving

offense. Unlike Varese, Ryan wasn't eligible for the alcohol-education

program, having used it already to avoid prosecution for driving drunk in

1988. In court in February Ryan was fined $1,000 and sentenced to 250 hours of

community service, and his driver's license was suspended for a year.

As a repeat offender, Ryan is more of disgrace to the legislature than Varese.

But as a fellow Democrat who has not been in the way of her bill on the

Judiciary Committee, Ryan gets a pass from Prague.

Because of the Varese case, opponents of reducing the blood-alcohol limit may

be intimidated into silent consent, and Prague's legislation may pass.

But the real issue with drunken driving isn't the blood-alcohol level but

whether and how much to increase prosecution and penalties for first

offenders. The law as it stands for first offenders -- a $450 fee for the

education program and a 90-day license suspension -- is a calculation that

more severe penalties would induce more drunken drivers to demand trials and

plea bargains than the state wants to appropriate for.

Should the education program be repealed and first offenders be prosecuted?

Should the program's fee be raised and its license suspension lengthened

beyond 90 days? How many more trials and how much more plea bargaining would

this produce? How much more should be appropriated for the courts so drunken

driving is treated seriously?

Reducing the blood-alcohol level has no bearing on these questions; it will

mean only a few more admissions to the education program, and it will leave

drunken drivers secure in the knowledge that they can drive drunk all they

want until they get caught the first time and never have to suffer more than a

$450 fee and a 90-day license suspension. But reducing the blood-alcohol level

will let Prague and a few other politicians keep avoiding the tough questions

of serious policy while remaining safely on both sides of the issue: tough on

drunken drivers in theory and lenient on them in practice.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)