Latest from MADD: Defence lawyers are the problem

Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the International Association of Chiefs of Police have discovered the source of the impaired driving problem, and it isn't what I thought.

In a recent publication, MADD and the Chiefs pointed to laws, judges and defence lawyers:

• Poorly written, loophole-ridden, or unenforceable laws.
• A judiciary that struggles to define itself and maintain its objectivity in the face of aggressive defense attorneys.
• An organized DUI defense bar more concerned with “winning a case” than with the carnage on our streets and highways.
• Appellate court decisions that hinder impaired driving enforcement.

MADD continues to misunderstand the causes and solutions for problem of impaired driving.

Excluding evidence of breath samples, when demand has been held to be illegal

From time to time, I read reports of cases where a prosecutor has argued in Provincial Court, sometimes successfully, that evidence of the analysis of a driver's breath samples should be admitted in evidence, in spite of a ruling by the trial judge that the demand for breath samples was made without reasonable grounds, or a ruling that the samples were taken in a manner that violated the driver's right to counsel.

There is carefully considered authority from the BC Supreme Court which establishes beyond much doubt that the breath samples should be excluded. When a demand is made without reasonable grounds, the evidence can be excluded without the necessity of further argument, according to the case of Regina v. Girard. When the right to counsel has been violated, the case of Regina v. Bloom emphasized that the violation is serious and the evidence should be excluded.

Zambonis and Horses

Last week, Totaldui.com reported two news stories that you don't read every day. In the first, a man in New Jersey was acquitted of DUI, after he was found driving a Zamboni around an ice rink. The judge ruled that, although his blood alcohol level was over the state's legal limit, he was not driving the vehicle on a public street or highway.

In the second, a woman in Alabama was charged with DUI after she crashed her horse (yes, her horse) into a police car. Police said the horse was not in the best of health, but it was still alive.

President Bush's Old DUI

Impaired driving is an offence that trips up people in all walks of life. George W. Bush was charged with driving under the influence in Maine when he was 30 - the conviction doesn't seem to have affected his rise to the Presidency of the United States. His running mate, Dick Cheney, has two convictions for the same offence. Canadian politicians run in to the same problems - just ask Gordon Campbell, the Premier of B.C. about his holiday in Hawaii.