Drunk Driving Articles: DUI News and Information

An Anoka County Sheriff's Department deputy is facing multiple charges following an arrest for DWI in Minnesota where he reached for an officer's gun and was tasered three times. Lawrence John Doheny was stopped in the southern part of the state for a traffic violation. A Jordan police officer detected alcohol on Doheny's breath and suspected intoxication. Doheny admitted to having consumed a few beers, and when asked to exit his vehicle he stumbled. He refused to perform field sobriety tests and was placed under arrest for suspicion of driving while intoxicated in Minnesota.

Doheny was taken to the Jordan Police Department and asked to have his urine or blood tested for blood-alcohol content. He offered to submit to a breath test, which is not an option in Scott County. Doheny then said, "you guys nailed me" and agreed to a blood draw at a local medical facility. While being escorted to the hospital, he reached for an officer's gun and threatened the officer by saying they shouldn't test him. As the officer secured his gun and called for back-up, Doheny pushed the officer in the chest and started to flee. When Doheny refused the officer's command to get on the ground, he was hit with a taser gun. He continued to try to escape and was tasered two more times.

Doheny was restrained and taken to the hospital where a blood sample was taken. The results will not be known until processed at a state lab. Doheny was reportedly belligerent to the hospital staff. He faces charges of DWI test refusal, drunk driving in Minnesota and obstructing an officer with force. If convicted of all charges, Doheny, 49, could be fined $7,000 and sentenced to jail for 27 months.

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Frank Simone, of Mountaindale, was scheduled to appear in court to face charges of aggravated drunk driving in New York, misdemeanor assault and child endangerment. When he showed up for a 1:00 pm court appearance, Simone was visibly intoxicated. The judge cautioned him several times for being belligerent before finding him in contempt of court.

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A Texas Tech campus police officer has been placed on administrative leave following an incident where she is thought to have let an intoxicated driver go free. Around 4:50 am on August 1, the unnamed female officer stopped Michael Aaron Garcia for a traffic infraction. Garcia claims the officer told him he would not be charged with Texas DWI if he found a safe ride home. Garcia was taken home by his relatives. A little over an hour later the Lubbock Police Department responded to a scene where Garcia was threatening his relatives because they thought he was too intoxicated to drive. That incident lead Garcia to be charged with arson and assault.

Now University officials want to know about the initial traffic stop. It is unclear if Garcia was actually impaired at 4:50 am, though he did tell Lubbock officers about the offer from the campus cop. The initial reason for the traffic stop is not documented in computer records, nor is there a reference to Garcia driving while intoxicated. As Garcia is under 21-years of age, he was subject to arrest for any detectable presence of alcohol. Texas DWI law says it is the discretion of a law enforcement officer to make an arrest for drunk driving, and while the university policy mandates that officers follow state law, it does not specify specific action for suspected DWI traffic stops.

In a related issue, the investigation will try to determine why three outstanding misdemeanor warrants for Garcia's arrest apparently did not appear in a routine check.

An administrative leave is not an indication of wrong-doing on the part of the Texas Tech officer. It is considered standard action at most law enforcement agencies while an investigation is being conducted.

As of August 10, Garcia remains jailed on $74,000 bond.

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Lonnie Michael Haney was stopped in Olive Springs, just outside the Oak Ridge city limit, in East Tennessee and charged with DUI. Haney was riding his John Deere lawnmower at the time. The arresting officer said that Haney was swerving down a major 4-lane boulevard. The suspect exhibited signs of intoxication, including slurred speech, a strong odor of alcohol and red glossy eyes. Haney, 46, failed a field sobriety test and refused to submit to additional tests. He said he was driving to Hilltop Market in Oak Ridge. The officer had to place a protective helmet on Haney because he continued to bash his head against the protective cage in the police cruiser. It was Haney's fifth arrest for driving under the influence in Tennessee, and charge was filed as a felony. He was also charged with refusal to submit to a breath or blood test – a violation of Tennessee's implied consent law – and for driving with a suspended license.

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A Northern Ohio woman has been charged with her second offense for driving under the influence in 12 days. Heather M. Leyda reportedly lost control of her 1998 Pontiac Grand Prix, drove off the left side of the road and struck a highway barrier. She was not injured though a test for blood alcohol content registered .194%. The legal limit for intoxication in Ohio is .08%.

Leyda, 25, was booked at the Ottawa County Detention Center and held Wednesday morning on $4,000 bail. She is scheduled to appear in court on August 18.

Leyda has another pending case from July 30 charges of DUI in Ohio and resisting arrest in Erie Township. A sheriff's deputy observed her erratic driving around 2:00 am and followed her to a rest area. According to the arrest report, Leyda appeared highly intoxicated with glassy eyes and an odor of alcohol. She refused to submit to field sobriety tests and at one point told the officers that she was leaving. When told she was under arrest, she resisted and began yelling at the officers. Her bond in that case was set at $9,025.

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Gerard Lawson, defensive back for the Cleveland Browns, was involved in a late night hit and run accident early Sunday morning that resulted in his arrest for driving under the influence in Ohio. Laswon reportedly skipped a team curfew to go party in Cleveland's Warehouse District. He struck a parked car and elected to drive away. He was stopped shortly after by Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputies, who handed him over to Cleveland police.

The Browns' organization said they are "continuing to gather information" on the Ohio DUI arrest and refused to make further comments.

Lawson played five games last season and has recently been utilized more on special teams than as defensive back. He was on the losing side of an inter-team Brown & White scrimmage Saturday and thus listed for 11pm curfew. Lawson, 25, is considered to be on the roster bubble and his arrest for DUI in Cleveland OH could impact his chances of joining the team.

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The Metro Police in Nashville use 12 special vehicles for targeted patrols that have a dashboard camera to record arrests. The video evidence is downloaded from hard drives in the vehicles to the police department server. In late May a software update by a third-party vendor caused the loss of about 1300 videos made during aggressive driving and Tennessee DWI traffic stops.

The system is maintained by ICOP Digital in Kansas, and the company can remote access the server for upgrades. Bad code changed certain settings on the server and led to the loss of 1600 videos, and their back-up, from arrests made between October and April. ICOP was able to recover 200 files and the police department salvaged 100 more. The loss of the videos has led to prosecutors to begin dropping charges of driving under the influence in Tennessee from court dockets. An Assistant District Attorney says that the lack of evidence definitely hurts the prosecution of cases. A Metro police spokesperson says the department is "pretty incensed".

Nashville DUI defense attorney Tommy Overton says that the situation could impact defendants too. Sometimes the video shows the driver does not appear to be impaired, and without the contrary evidence the jury may place more weight on the police officer's testimony.

Metro police have six specially equipped squad cars for TN DUI patrols, four for cracking down on aggressive driving and two used by a deadly accident team. The $100,000 system has been in place since late 2008. The department has begun looking into alternative systems where files cannot be deleted, including one that burns images to DVDs.

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Police in Prescott Arizona arrested a woman August 1 on charges of Super Extreme DUI. That level of offense is levied when the suspect has a blood alcohol content in excess of .20%.

Police were alerted to an erratic driver around 3:40 Sunday afternoon on State Route 89. Responding officers found that 54-year old Dana Lynn Anderson had driven about 50 feet off the highway and collided with a traffic sign. Her silver Mazda suffered extensive front end damage and three of the four support legs for the sign had been unearthed. Anderson failed a series of field sobriety and seemed dazed and confused. She was taken to the Prescott Police Department, where breath tests showed she had a BAC of .226% and .235%, about three times the legal limit for intoxication. Anderson was then processed for DUI in Arizona at the Yavapai County Jail.

Under Arizona DUI law, driving under the influence or DUI is charged when the motorist has BAC of .08% or higher, Extreme DUI with a BAC greater than .15% and Super Extreme DUI with a BAC above .20%. Anderson was charged with all three, as well as felony endangerment and felony criminal damage.

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A helicopter pilot for the THP has been grounded following an arrest for driving under the influence in Tennessee. Gregory Brown was stopped a few miles from his Crossville home on July 30 after a police officer saw him swerving down the road and briefly cross into oncoming traffic. Brown failed a series of field sobriety tests and refused to submit to a breath test. The arresting officer noted that a cup of beer was in the center console of Brown's pick-up truck.

Brown was charged with Tennessee DUI and a violation of the state's implied consent law. TN DUI law establishes that anyone refusing to have their blood alcohol content tested is subject to a one year suspension of driver's license.

Brown, 40, has been a THP trooper since 1997 and a helicopter pilot since 2007. He is one of four pilots working for the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Brown has been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation into the incident.

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The sentencing of a Maryland man involved in an unusual traffic accident last year has been postponed due to an interest in changing his plea. William Michael Watson was arrested September 23, 2009 after crashing his pick-up truck and badly injuring his female passenger, Rebecca Wilhelm. According to the police report, Watson was speeding in his Ford F-150 in heavy rain just before midnight when the truck hit an embankment and flipped over. A witness to the accident found Wilhelm under the truck bed, naked from the waist down. Watson was seen crawling through the broken rear window of the truck, with his pants down between his knees and ankles.

Watson, 26, had a blood alcohol content of 0.147%. He also admitted to smoking marijuana before the crash and to having sex with Wilhelm “for a while” before crashing. He was charged with driving under the influence in Maryland, aggravated assault by vehicle while DUI, speeding, driving without a license and not having valid insurance.

On June 4 of this year, Watson entered a guilty plea to the Maryland DUI and assault charges, and the other charges were dismissed. It was a 'straight plea' meaning there was no negotiated agreement for punishment. Under such a plea the defendant must be eligible for an intermediate, intensive form of probation while waiting for sentencing. The expected sentencing was to include some prison time, followed by house arrest. Watson changed his mind after entering the plea and twice refused to meet with probation officers attempting to do a pre-sentence investigation to establish whether he was eligible for intermediate punishment.

His refusal led to a meeting with a Commons Plea Judge on Monday, August 2. Watson's Maryland criminal defense attorney said his client simply wanted to put the case behind him as quickly as possible and was interested in taking a 6-23 month prison sentence initially offered by the prosecution. The judge was concerned that Watson was trying to 'snooker' the court and was upset that probation and parole officers had been kept from performing their duty. He offered Watson two choices; go forward with the straight plea or withdraw the plea and accept the sentencing the judge deemed appropriate. Watson elected to not withdraw the plea. A sentencing date has been scheduled for September 1, giving time for probation officers to conduct the required pre-sentencing analysis.

Wilhelm, who was 29 at the time of the accident, suffered a major neck injury and her right leg had to be amputated below the right knee.

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