Drunks weave around rules: Multiple offenders realize it pays not to take Breathalyzer test
Drunks, it turns out, are pretty good learners.
Sure, they might keep getting DUI after DUI, but with each arrest they also get better and better at beating the system.
“That’s how it works,” said Becky Sturdevant. “There’s no doubt about it.”
Sturdevant lost her son, a Montana Highway Patrol trooper, to a drunken driver back in 2008, and since then she’s made it her business to track DUI trends in Flathead County.
Most troubling, she said, is the number of drunken drivers who successfully limit the evidence against them by refusing to blow into a Breathalyzer.
In 2009, Sturdevant followed 132 DUI cases. Of those arrested, about 55 percent agreed to blow into a Breathalyzer, but 45 percent did not.
Interestingly, among those arrested on their first DUI, only 39 percent refused; but of those arrested for felony DUI – their fourth, or more – nearly 75 percent refused.
“And it seems that people who refuse the blood-alcohol content test, and the field sobriety test, then there’s much less evidence to take to a jury, and the cases are much more likely to be plea bargained down,” Sturdevant said.
“It’s the biggest loophole out there, and it’s the No. 1 thing we can change if we want to get serious about drinking and driving,” said Jim Smith, who represents the Montana County Attorneys Association.
Which is why his group and many others are advocating for a new state law that would criminalize refusal. (Currently, Montana law holds that people who refuse to take a Breathalyzer lose their driver’s license for a year. But plenty of repeat DUI offenders have no qualms about driving without a license.)
“The position is, the penalty for refusing the test ought to be the same as the penalty for a DUI offense,” Smith said.
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