Chronic Drunk Drivers Risk Losing Cars : Laws: The district attorney’s office says it will aggressively seek to seize cars of motorists who are arrested for the third time in seven years on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Chronic drunk drivers in Ventura County, who already face prison terms for their third conviction in seven years, now risk the additional punishment of having their cars confiscated and sold at public auction.

The Ventura County district attorney’s office, viewed as one of the toughest in the state in dealing with drunk-driving offenses, plans to aggressively prosecute repeat offenders under the state’s new car forfeiture law, which took effect Monday.

“It’s another tool for us,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Colleen T. White. “I think it gets people’s attention when they know they might have their car taken away. It certainly ought to increase pressure within families to avoid driving when drinking.”

White added:

“If you’ve had two drunk-driving convictions in Ventura County and lightning strikes again, you’re going to be walking.”

The new law, which has not received as much public attention as another measure lowering the legal standard for intoxication from a blood-alcohol level of 0.1% to 0.08%, provides that the courts can order cars sold upon a third drunk-driving conviction over a seven-year period.

The law provides that lien holders would be paid from proceeds of the sale and bans courts from selling a repeat offender’s car if a spouse can prove that it is the only transportation available to the family. Proceeds would be used to support substance-abuse programs.

Special Assistant Dist. Atty. Donald D. Coleman said the number of chronic drunk drivers who probably will be affected by the new law in Ventura County could be about the same as those prosecuted as felons for repeat drunk driving--about 200 a year.

Statewide, according to a Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman, the law could apply to up to 25,000 repeat drunk-driving cases a year. In 1987, the last year for which statistics are available, more than 17,000 drivers were convicted of their third drunk-driving violation in seven years and about 8,000 were convicted of a fourth drunk-driving offense.

“Under the law, the court can move to have the car declared a nuisance and then sold, or the prosecutor can make the motion to the court,” Coleman said. “It’s one of those laws that can have a significant impact when used in selected cases, although there could be some prolonged hearings in cases where the car is the only family transportation and it is community property.”

Reviewing other new laws that took effect this week, officials of the district attorney’s office portrayed them generally as a refinement of existing state laws rather than any significant departure from the past.

Typical of that trend, White said, is the lowering of the legal blood alcohol standard for drunk drivers to 0.08%, which is expected to result in more drunk-driving convictions statewide while having less impact in Ventura County, where prosecutors already file drunk-driving charges on blood-alcohol levels as low as 0.06%.

“It’s going to assist us in prosecuting these cases, but we already prosecute so much in that area,” White said. “Basically, the 0.08% law will make it easier for us to get convictions and will facilitate guilty pleas.”

One new law that will create additional prosecutions in Ventura County is a ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons except to gun dealers and mandatory registration of such guns by January, 1991, White said.

“I would expect there will be some prosecutions for unlawful possession, with up to a year in prison as the penalty,” White said. “There are at least 55 different weapons that are prohibited under the new law. This is one of the areas where we will have some additional work to be doing.”