Steve Emmons : Tips From a Tipsy Judge

In a courtroom, a judge is imposing. The courtroom is designed for that effect. So it was a little eerie last week watching a judge holding up one leg and counting backward, then closing his eyes and trying to touch his nose--in short, trying to pass a Highway Patrol field sobriety test. At best, he was doing only OK.

Santa Ana Superior Court Judge Robert J. Polis was in the Anaheim Stadium parking lot surrounded by Highway Patrol officers. Like myself, he had volunteered for last week’s “Driving Under the Influence Exposition” and was drinking to demonstrate just how dangerous drunk driving is.

Judge Polis lost his balance before he finished counting and missed his nose on the first try. He’d had six drinks. “I’d estimate from prior experience with the Breathalyzer (which measures alcohol in the blood) that I’m at between 0.06 and 0.07,” the judge said. That’s below the 0.10% at which the law presumes you are intoxicated.

“I may be able to pass a field sobriety test, as you saw,” Polis said. “Really, I only glitched twice. But I feel under the influence enough not to drive. I cannot make those split-second decisions.”

“Could you make an intelligent decision on a plea bargain?” I asked. (I was pretty looped myself.)

“No problem,” the judge said.

“The average drinker at a 0.06--well, you can’t even get people at a 0.10 to admit that their driving’s impaired,” said a Highway Patrol officer nearby.

I’ll admit it. I did miserably when I tried that day. What would have happened if I had been hauled before Judge Polis, I asked.

“You’d be a dead duck,” Polis said. “I don’t believe any story. If your blood alcohol level is a 0.15, it doesn’t matter what your background is. In fact, my personal opinion is, most of us are under the influence way down, like about on 0.08, 0.07 or 0.06.

“You’re gonna get a ‘deuce’ (drunk driving)--or a ‘wet reckless’ (reckless driving involving alcohol), which is still gonna be the same: a $500 fine, alcohol school for $300, driver’s license restriction for 90 days--you can drive only to and from the alcohol program and to and from work --and three- to five-year probation. If you get caught driving with any measurable amount of alcohol in your system while on probation, then you go to jail--two to five days.”

Drunk driving seems to be the one crime mainly involving ordinary people, and ordinary people are afraid of jail. Why not lay it on hard the first time, I suggested.

“I think that everyone who gets convicted on first offense ought to get 10 days--whether they’re doctors, whether they’re construction workers,” Polis said. “Ten straight days, not weekends, because they ought to give up their vacation for a whole year. If it’s a doctor, he ought to give up his $10,000 a week. If it’s a lawyer, if it’s a court reporter, if it’s you, you don’t show up for work.

“Serving weekends, you just disappear from your community and nobody knows you’ve been convicted of drunk driving. If you’re gone for two weeks, everyone says, ‘Did you hear? Guess who’s in jail.’ Everybody knows.”

“That’s a good idea,” said the cop nearby. “A doctor gets picked up, it’s a couple of grand out of his pocket, but that’s nothing to him. It doesn’t affect him.”

“Let me tell you what happens to some of the rich people,” the judge said. “Rich people go to the Costa Mesa Jail, to the Newport Jail. They don’t go to Orange County Jail.

“Believe me, the Newport Jail--and I’ve been there, not just as a walk-through--is cleaner than any Mexican hotel I’ve ever been in. I’d rather spend a weekend at the Newport Jail. I’m safer there than anywhere else. That place is squeaky clean. It’s nice. They have TV.

“I have a friend right now, a former client, serving six months in the Costa Mesa Jail for his No. 4 and No. 5 drunk driving. He’s in jail, all right; he’s in jail for six months. But you know what he does? He washes cars. Lunchtime comes, the officers collect money, they give him $45, he walks down to McDonald’s, buys lunch for everybody, walks back. I mean, he’s in heaven.”

What’s wrong with just taking their driver’s license away on the first offense, I asked.

“That’s too harsh. Here’s what you do when you take people’s licenses away on the first drunk driving: You haven’t stopped them from driving. What they now do is, they drive with no insurance and no driver’s license, and when they see the red light, they say to themselves: ‘I better get away.’

“So they take risks to get away from the coppers, because they know they’re really going to get 10 days in jail for driving on a suspended driver’s license. So in fact, you’ve increased public risk.”

“And officer’s risk,” said the cop. “They’ll fight you to get away.”

So what is the solution to drunk driving?

“Education is really the key,” the judge said. “Really, I believe everyone ought to have drinks and compare what they feel with what they can do. It’s not necessarily your ability; it’s what happens to your mind. You don’t care after a while.”

I didn’t think so before, but after my experience at that day’s demonstration, I think perhaps the judge is right. Yes, clamp down hard on drunk drivers in court. Make them pay with fines and real jail time before they kill someone.

But also make them see, through their own experience, what clumsy, addled fools they become long before they think they are drunk.

At least part of the time it works. It scared the hell out of me.