New Drunk Driving Law Called Success : Safety: Automatic suspension of licenses has cut alcohol-related deaths and accidents, officials say. Civil libertarians and some lawyers denounce the program.

Deaths in alcohol-related traffic accidents have fallen 7.7% since the start last year of strict but controversial drunk-driving laws, including one that has stripped driver licenses from more than 250,000 motorists as soon as they were arrested, state figures show.

The state Office of Traffic Safety and California Highway Patrol reported 947 fewer alcohol-related crashes in the last half of 1990 compared to the same period a year earlier, before the legal blood-alcohol limit was reduced to 0.08% and police were authorized to seize driver licenses while making drunk-driving arrests.

Lower crash figures, which may be partly attributable to reduced alcohol consumption, please officials at the state Office of Traffic Safety. They hope publicity about the swift and certain seizure of licenses will further reduce the number of drunks on the road over the frequently bloody Memorial Day weekend.

CHP officers said that reducing the blood-alcohol limit to 0.08% from 0.10% has let them pull marginally impaired drivers off the road, while instant license suspensions have discouraged many people from driving while drunk.

“It’s a great law, a great deterrent,” said CHP Officer Anthony Bonilla after arresting a drunk driver on the Golden State Freeway one night recently. “People don’t want to lose their license; a lot of them really fight it. Once we take it, they always say they’ll never drink and drive again.”

Although their licenses are taken at the time of arrest, drivers are issued temporary licenses that let them continue to drive--after their blood-alcohol level falls below the legal limit--for up to six weeks until the state confirms that they were legally drunk. If that determination is made, the motorists lose their licenses for a period of months.

Some continue driving even without their licenses, Bonilla conceded while cruising the northern San Fernando Valley for weaving or speeding drivers. Statistics are not collected, but Bonilla recalled asking some drivers for their licenses and being handed the hearing documents they had received when their licenses were suspended.

Many lawyers and civil libertarians denounce the new law. They argue that the state, in its zeal to discourage drunk driving, has turned the legal system on its head by assuming that people are guilty and denying them a fair opportunity to prove their innocence.

“It’s straight out of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ where the queen says, ‘Sentence first--verdict afterwards,’ ” said Sacramento criminal defense lawyer David Dratman, who gave a seminar on the drunk-driving law Saturday at a California Attorneys for Criminal Justice symposium in San Diego.

“Police now can take your license after establishing probable cause for pulling you over in the first place--that’s a much lower threshold than establishing guilt,” said Santa Monica lawyer Madelynn Kopple, a member of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice board of governors. “He (the arresting officer) is basically empowered to be judge and jury over what is a very important freedom in California today. I find it very offensive.”

The constitutionality of the instant license-suspension process, pioneered by Minnesota in 1978, was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979. The court ruled that instant suspensions do not violate due process as long as there is a swift post-revocation hearing.

In the last nine months, since just before the Fourth of July weekend last year, more than 250,000 drivers who have been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving have had their licenses yanked on the spot by arresting officers.

Suspects who fail--or refuse to take--a breath, blood or urine test are issued 45-day temporary licenses; they have that long to challenge the test results in an administrative hearing before a Department of Motor Vehicles employee or lose the temporary license.

In those hearings, first-time offenders lose their driving privilege for four months; after that, suspension is for one year. If a driver refuses to take a breath, blood or urine test to determine blood-alcohol level at the time of arrest, the suspensions are doubled.

Only about one accused driver in 20 contests the license revocation in the administrative hearings, records show.

Dratman said few suspensions are contested because of the paperwork and cost--defendants are required to pay $175 to subpoena the officers who took their license--and because the hearings are “rubber-stamp” procedures run by minimally trained personnel who refuse to hear evidence challenging the accuracy of blood-alcohol tests or the qualifications of the officers who administer them.

This “administrative procedure,” aimed at swiftly pulling problem drinkers off the road, is in addition to standard criminal prosecution, which often takes months and can lead to heavy fines and jail time.

The administrative license suspensions came about because state officials believed that formal legal procedures did little to deter drunk drivers. When licenses were pulled under the old system, it was often many months after an arrest, weakening the cause-and-effect link that researchers say is important to deterrence.

Some drivers used legal procedures to delay a verdict even longer, prosecutors said. Many obtained reduced charges through plea-bargaining. Others were placed in pretrial or pre-conviction diversion programs that let them continue driving if they promised to seek counseling or medical care.

In the criminal hearings, about 25% of those arrested for drunk driving are not convicted of the crime because of the suspect’s innocence, the prosecutor’s lack of evidence, plea bargains or other reasons. In 1989, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, more than 83,000 of those arrested were not convicted. Over the last decade, the total is nearly 1 million people.

In the past, people who were not convicted were not denied driving privileges. Today, they probably would lose their licenses temporarily, even if found not guilty in court.

Supporters of the law say national studies have found that the summary revocation of licenses has led to reductions of between 6% and 9% in alcohol-related fatal crashes in 27 other states with similar laws.

In California, in the six months after the license-suspension law took effect last July 1, the number of alcohol-related fatal crashes dropped 8.5%, to 1,081 from 1,182. Alcohol-related crashes that resulted in injuries but not deaths dipped 4.6%, to 19,659 from 20,606.

The number of deaths attributed to alcohol-related crashes declined by 7.7%, to 1,211 from 1,312.

The nationwide studies, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, found immediate license suspensions to be the most effective single measure to deter drunk driving--more effective than mandatory jail sentences because every driver loses his or her license upon arrest, not after months of legal wrangling.

Defense lawyers laud the results but question the price. The DMV administrative hearings at which licenses are suspended offer little chance for people to defend themselves, they argue. Some people are punished unfairly because the process is handled administratively rather than criminally--a technicality that restricts the rights of the accused.

“These (administrative hearing officers) they’ve hired to hear these cases have been told to accept the (blood-alcohol breath analysis) results at face value,” said Dratman. “It’s a trial by assumption.”

“Some (hearing officers) are retired police officers,” Kopple said, “but generally they are just clerical people who are longtime employees of the DMV.”

Dratman said: “If someone cares enough to contest this loss of what is a very important privilege, you should at least give them what would pass for a fair hearing in this country. What they actually get is what would pass for a fair hearing only in the Soviet Union.”

War on Drunk Drivers

In the last six months of 1990, with strict new drunk-driving laws in effect, the number of alcohol-related accidents decreased compared to the same period a year earlier. Even greater decreases were seen in the number of fatal accidents and the number of people killed in them.

INJURY ACCIDENTS INJURIES 1989 1990 Change Month 1989 1990 Change 3,546 3,472 -2.1% JULY 5,946 5,670 -4.6% 3,303 3,444 +4.3% AUGUST 5,438 5,707 +4.9% 3,320 3,396 +2.3% SEPTEMBER 5,406 5,626 +4.1% 3,499 3,260 -6.8% OCTOBER 5,579 5,288 -5.2% 3,429 3,118 -9.1% NOVEMBER 5,355 5,040 -5.9% 3,509 2,969 -15.4% DECEMBER 5,583 4,673 -16.3% 20,606 19,659 -4.6% 6-MONTH TOTAL 33,307 32,004 -3.9%

FATAL ACCIDENTS DEATHS 1989 1990 Change Month 1989 1990 Change 239 202 -15.5% JULY 279 231 -17.2% 215 193 -10.2% AUGUST 232 210 -9.5% 212 221 +4.2% SEPTEMBER 238 251 +5.5% 190 179 -5.8% OCTOBER 207 209 +1.0% 167 153 -8.4% NOVEMBER 186 166 -10.8% 159 133 -16.4% DECEMBER 170 144 -15.3% 1,182 1,081 -8.5% 6-MONTH TOTAL 1,312 1,211 -7.7%

SOURCE: California Highway Patrol