Drunk Drivers Get Eyeful of Death Viewing Autopsies

Even after her arrest for drunk driving earlier this year, admitted Lisa, a 19-year-old college student, she’d still go out and drive “a little bit buzzed” on beer now and then.

But after a court-ordered visit last week to the Orange County coroner’s office, during which she witnessed an autopsy of an alcoholic woman, viewed bodies mangled in traffic accidents and saw gory pictures of people whose deaths were drinking related, the San Juan Capistrano resident did two things.

She rushed to the restroom to throw up and she came away from the experience swearing she’d never drink and drive again. “It worked for me. I’ll never do it again,” Lisa said, praising the county program aimed at deterring young convicted drunk drivers from repeat offenses.

Court and coroner’s officials are hoping the same kind of sobering shock therapy will work if expanded in Los Angeles County. Last month, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution by Supervisor Mike Antonovich that supported bringing the program, now used in the Orange County and Long Beach municipal courts, to the Antelope Valley. Financing for the costs of the expansion, however, is to come from community donations.

Under the so-called Youthful Drunk Driver Visitation Program authorized by the Legislature in 1987, young people typically aged 18 to 25 who are convicted of drunk driving can be sentenced to visit the morgue and hospital emergency rooms. Usually, they are first-time offenders.

Officials say the two local programs have been effective in reducing repeat offenses. Of the nearly 700 participants thus far, officials say few have been rearrested for drunk driving.

“It’s a simple dose of reality, and it shows the consequences of what can happen if these kids drink and drive,” said Richard Rodriguez, the senior deputy investigator for the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner’s Department and the host of the monthly sessions at the county’s Santa Ana morgue.

In 1989 in Los Angeles County, 408 persons were killed and 13,516 injured in traffic accidents caused by drivers who had been drinking. In Orange County, 93 people died and 3,367 were injured in such accidents. Although no breakdown is available locally, officials say that drivers in their late teens and early 20s were disproportionately responsible for those accidents.

Statewide, California Highway Patrol figures show, 21-year-old drivers accounted for the largest group of drinking drivers involved in fatal and injury accidents. The second-largest number of those drivers, by age, was 23-year-olds, followed by 22-year-olds.

Officials acknowledged that no comprehensive tallies have been made to determine whether the programs reduce repeat offenses. And, since the Long Beach program has been operating only for a year and the Orange County program about three years, recidivism could increase over time, officials acknowledge.

Also, there are skeptics, surprisingly including the judge credited with starting the state’s first such program in Sacramento about four years ago. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Gunther said he still supports the visits, but now believes more long-term alcohol counseling also is needed.

“As with any diversion therapy, it’s only going to have a limited effect,” Gunther said. The judge said he believes the Sacramento program has done little to reduce repeat arrests for drunk driving by participants. But he said the shock of seeing dead bodies may spur alcohol-troubled young people to seek help.

In Orange County, Rodriguez said more judges are sentencing offenders to the program and he expects it to expand to two monthly sessions with about 30 participants at each by January. In Los Angeles County, the coroner now hosts several offenders from the Long Beach program every Saturday for about two hours.

The Orange County program is unique in the state because the participants typically watch most or all of an autopsy, generally of someone whose death was linked to alcohol. They see only a glimpse of that in Los Angeles, where coroner’s officials say they don’t have the time for more.

Rodriguez, a nine-year coroner’s office investigator with a large repertoire of stories of people whose deaths were caused by alcohol, says viewing autopsies shocks young people and shows them the body’s vulnerabilities.

“The smell of the blood, you’re almost able to taste it. It’s something that will be etched in their minds forever,” Rodriguez said. “I want the kids to understand the pain these people go through. If you make alcohol part of your life, it’s going to take you down.”

After a recent four-hour session with Rodriguez, a group of young drunk-driving offenders from Orange County emerged convinced that the program works. “It was pretty heavy duty. I learned how serious it is to drink and drive. People will die if you do it,” said Lisa, who declined to give her last name.

Others agreed. “It definitely works. It scares . . . you,” said Jerome Duncan, 20, of Bellflower, who acknowledged feeling nauseated during the tour. Asked what he learned, Reginald Parchman, 22, of El Toro said, “If you drink . . . walk.”

In addition to the autopsy, during which the chest and skull are cut open and organs are removed, participants in the Orange County program also see dozens of toe-tagged bodies stored in a cooler, and many graphic photos and slides.

For most young offenders, it is their first close-up encounter with death. Although some have become woozy at the sight and a few have vomited, Rodriguez said none of the 459 participants in the Orange County program since 1988 has ever complained or objected to viewing the autopsies.

The program run by the Long Beach Municipal Court has sent about 240 young drunk-driving offenders to either the Los Angeles County morgue downtown or to two Long Beach hospitals, or both, since its start in August, 1989, said Mary Armstead, the county health investigator who coordinates the program.

Most offenders in Orange County and Long Beach are given a choice of whether to participate. But in Long Beach, for instance, the judges make completing the program attractive by offering the first-time offenders who agree to attend restricted licenses that allow driving to school and work, instead of one-year license suspensions.

Offenders typically also are required to write an essay telling the court about their experiences. Bradford Andrews, the presiding judge in Long Beach, said the essays indicate that the program has had an impact. “They’re saying, ‘I don’t want to see myself in that position.’ ”

In both programs, first-time drunk-driving offenders typically still are required to pay fines of $1,200 or more and are placed on probation--as are other first-time offenders who don’t participate.

The move to expand the program to the Antelope Valley got started in late May when several businessmen saw a Geraldo Rivera television show that followed a group of offenders through the Orange County coroner’s office. The businessmen, in turn, contacted Antonovich, who represents the Antelope Valley area.

Roger Persons, a Palmdale mortuary owner, and Dale Ware, general manager of a Palmdale county-Western radio station, said they hope the area’s Antelope Municipal Court will begin sentencing young drunk-driving offenders to visit the Los Angeles County coroner’s office by the start of the year.

Howard Swart, the presiding judge of the area’s Municipal Court, said he believes judges will accept the program, if it can be arranged to have the county transport young people the nearly 60-mile distance from the high desert to downtown.

Persons and Ware are planning a radio auction of donated items and a softball tournament to raise the $12,000 to $15,000 needed to buy a van to be donated to the county for transporting offenders. Participating in the program, Swart said, however, probably won’t exempt first-time drunk-driving offenders from the stiff penalties for the offense that are typically handed out in the Antelope Valley court. Judges there often sentence such offenders to pay fines and spend three days in jail, whereas elsewhere jail sentences are uncommon in such circumstances.