Drunk
Driving and Double Jeopardy
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required proof of blood-alcohol concentration; although blood-alcohol evidence was used to prove the DUI crime as well (a person is presumed to be under the influence if his BAC is .08% or higher), the offense could be proved without it. So it's ok to prosecute and convict him for both crimes - so long as you don't punish him for both. Hmm... Well, what about punishing the driver by suspending his license when he’s arrested -- and then punishing him again in court? In fact, punishing him in court with a sentence that may include another suspension? This one caused the courts a bit more trouble. This wasn’t a case where the person was committing two different crimes: he was being punished by two different state agencies for the same crime: driving with .08% BAC. But there had to be some way to get around the Constitution.... The courts could not agree. Some said that there was no double jeopardy since the DMV license foreiture was not really a "punishment" but only a "civil sanction". Others took the position that this was, in fact, a violation of the Fifth Amendment, and they relied upon a U.S. Supreme Court decision (U.S. v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435; 1989) which involved civil forfeitures and criminal punishments for selling marijuana. In that case the Court held that a "civil sanction" was actually a punishment -- and thus double jeopardy -- if (1) the "clear focus of (the statute) is on the culpability of the individual", and (2) the legislature "understood these provisions as serving to deter and punish". The Court added that "the historical understanding of forfeiture as punishment" weighs heavily in favor of the conclusion that forfeiture continues to serve punitive purposes. Well, relying upon the Supreme Court’s ruling, an alarming number of courts around the country were throwing out criminal DUI charges on double jeopardy grounds. This, of course, infuriated MADD, legislators, prosecutors, law enforcement and pretty much everyone else who did not take the Constitution too seriously. But rescue arrived from a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court. In 1997, Chief Justice Rehnquist revisited the forfeiture-punishment problem and did something that is rarely ever done: he criticized and flatly rejected the earlier Supreme Court’s ruling: "We believe that Halper’s deviation from longstanding double jeopardy principles was ill-considered....Halper’s test for determining whether a particular sanction is "punitive", and thus subject to the strictures of the Double Jeopardy Clause, has proved unworkable". Hudson v. U.S., 592 U.S. 93 (1997). Since then, the courts have had little trouble finding that a police officer who confiscates and suspends the driver’s license of a drunk driving suspect is merely administering a "civil sanction", not punishment....and that when he is later convicted in court and is fined, jailed and has his license suspended again, well that’s not really double jeopardy. It just looks an awful lot like it. As the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland" said, "A word means exactly what I say it means". Law
Offices of Lawrence Taylor, Inc. |
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