Single Glass of Wine Immerses D.C. Driver in Legal
Battle

By Brigid Schulte Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 12,
2005

Washington Post

Debra Bolton had a glass of red wine with dinner. That’s what she told
the police officer who pulled her over. That’s what the Intoxilyzer 5000
breath test indicated — .03, comfortably below the legal limit.

She had been pulled over in Georgetown about 12:30 a.m. for driving
without headlights. She apologized and explained that the parking
attendant must have turned off her vehicle’s automatic-light feature.

Bolton thought she might get a ticket. Instead, she was handcuffed,
searched, arrested, put in a jail cell until 4:30 a.m. and charged with
driving under the influence of alcohol Bolton, 45, an energy lawyer and
single mother of two who lives in Alexandria, had just run into a
little-known piece of D.C. law: In the District, a driver can be arrested
with as little as .01 blood-alcohol content.

As D.C. police officer Dennis Fair, who arrested Bolton on May 15, put
it in an interview recently: “If you get behind the wheel of a car with
any measurable amount of alcohol, you will be dealt with in D.C. We have
zero tolerance. . . . Anything above .01, we can arrest.”

Neither the police department nor the attorney general’s office keeps
detailed records of how many people with low blood alcohol levels are
arrested. But last year, according to police records, 321 people were
arrested for driving under the influence with blood alcohol levels below
the legal limit of .08. In 2003, 409 people were arrested.

Although low blood alcohol arrests have been made in other states in
conjunction with dangerous driving, lawyers, prosecutors and advocates of
drunken driving prevention said they knew of no place besides the
District that had such a low threshold for routine DUI arrests. In
Maryland and Virginia, as in other states, drivers generally are presumed
not to be intoxicated if they test below .05. Nationwide, .08 is the
legal limit — meaning a driver is automatically presumed to be
intoxicated.

Fair acknowledged that many people aren’t aware of the District’s
policy. “But it is our law,” he said. “If you don’t know about it, then
you’re a victim of your own ignorance.”

Bolton said she didn’t know. But defense lawyers who practice in the
District do.

“Even one drink can get you in trouble in D.C.,” said Thomas Key, a
lawyer who successfully defended a client who had a blood alcohol level
of .03. “They might not win a lot of these cases or prosecute them, but
they’re still arresting people.”

Not many people fight the charge, said Richard Lebowitz, another
defense lawyer, because the District offers a “diversion program” of
counseling for first-time offenders.

“If diversion is offered and accepted, there’s a guarantee that the
charges will be dropped,” Lebowitz said. “If you go to court and try to
prove your innocence, it’s a coin-flip. So most people choose
diversion.”

Bolton didn’t. She balked at the $400 fee and the 24 hours of class
time required to attend the “social drinker” program.

“I think it would have been fine if I’d done something wrong, but I
didn’t,” she said. “I had a glass of wine with dinner.”

Instead, she hired a lawyer. In August, after Bolton made several
fruitless appearances in D.C. Superior Court, prosecutors dropped the DUI
charge. But then she had to battle the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles,
which warned that it would suspend her driving privileges at the end of
this month unless she went through an alcohol prevention program.

As Bolton remembers it, it was
early morning May 15 and she had barely gone a few hundred yards before
she was pulled over on K Street NW. The officer, Fair, asked her whether
she realized the headlights on her Acura MDX sport-utility vehicle were
off.

“Oh, man, am I going to get a ticket for this?” she remembers saying
to him jokingly.

Then he asked her whether she’d had anything to drink.

“Not really,” she said. And when he asked her again, more firmly, she
answered that she’d had a glass of wine with dinner at Cafe Milano.

He asked her to recite the alphabet. In his report, Fair wrote that he
had asked her to start at the letter D and stop at X. Bolton said she
thought he had asked her to stop at S and tossed off the alphabet quickly
and accurately to S.

As a result, Fair noted in his report that she had “jumbled” it.

Then he asked her to get out of the car.

Fair asked her to walk a straight line and then stand on one foot to
the count of 30. He looked into her eyes to check for jerkiness. Bolton,
dressed in black silk pants and a pink shirt, took off her pink high
heels to be more sure-footed. She said she thought she had aced the
tests. “All that yoga really paid off,” she thought.

But in the police report, Fair wrote that she swayed as she walked and
lost her balance — which Bolton disputes. He told her she was under
arrest

“Why?” Bolton remembers saying. “I passed all your little tests.”

On his report, Fair wrote that Bolton failed 10 indicators of
sobriety. But James E. Klaunig, a toxicology expert at Indiana
University’s medical school who for 12 years oversaw the state’s drunken
driving testing, said that such a determination was scientifically
improbable.

“There’s no way possible she failed a test from impairment with a .03”
blood alcohol level, Klaunig said. “And reciting the alphabet is not an
acceptable way of measuring impairment, according to the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration.”

Fair, who said he does not comment on individual arrests, noted in his
report that Bolton’s attitude was “excited,” “carefree” and “cocky.”

“I was sort of laughing,” Bolton said. “I look back and wonder, was I
cocky? Did I have an attitude? Well, yeah, because I was sober, so I
thought it was all so ridiculous.”

Fair handcuffed her. Bolton said she was terrified. Until then, her
only brush with the law had been a ticket for speeding in a 15-mph zone
in 2002.

At 1:08 a.m., at the 2nd Police District station, Fair asked Bolton to
blow into the Intoxilyzer 5000. It read .03.

“See?” she remembers saying.

He had her breathe into the machine one minute later. Again, .03.

“See?”

But Fair told her D.C. law was on his side.

On the department’s Web site, D.C. police explain it this way:
“Technically, according to the D.C. Code, the District of Columbia has a
zero tolerance for driving under the influence. If a person 21 years of
age or older has a blood alcohol concentration of .02 percent [to] .04
percent and extremely bad driving, this person can be placed under arrest
for Driving Under the Influence of an alcoholic beverage.”

At low levels of alcohol, an arrest comes down to an officer’s
discretion, said D.C. police Inspector Patrick Burke, former head of the
traffic division.

Fair, he said, has 15 years of experience and averages more than 100
drunken driving arrests a year and is well qualified to make the call. In
1998, Fair arrested Marlene Cooke, wife of the late Washington Redskins
owner Jack Kent Cooke, for drunken driving after she piloted her Land
Rover through Dupont Circle without the headlights on. She refused a
breath test but was later convicted.

“I always say the safe bet, if you drive, is not to drink at all,”
Burke said. “But even looking from a D.C. tourism standpoint, we’d be
killing ourselves if we were saying you can’t go out and have a glass of
wine with dinner. That’d be ridiculous. So we tell people, you have to
know your limits.”

Bolton sat in a jail cell until 4:30 a.m. As she left, Fair told her
he had given her a warning, not a ticket, for driving without headlights.
She walked the few blocks to Wisconsin Avenue NW, caught a cab to her car
on K Street and drove across the bridge to Virginia. There, she said, she
pulled over and cried for 45 minutes.

Since what she refers to as her “unfortunate incarceration,” Bolton
has spent hours in D.C. Superior Court and at the DMV and $2,000 so far
fighting the DUI charge. Her refusal to submit to the 12-week alcohol
counseling diversion program has sent her on a “surreal” odyssey.

Twice, after hours of waiting, prosecutors told her that they had lost
her file and that she would have to come back.

On Aug. 22, after four court appearances, prosecutors dropped the
charge. But she spent all of September battling the DMV to keep her
driving privileges from being suspended for three months.

Corey Buffo, the DMV’s general counsel, explained that the agency
drops its procedures only after a case goes to trial and is dismissed on
its merits. “Our burden of proof is lower” than the Superior Court’s, he
said. “Not enough evidence for them may be enough evidence for us.”
Yesterday, the DMV decided not to suspend her privileges and issued her a
warning instead.

After so many months, Debra Bolton is just glad it’s over. “It’s
lunacy,” she said. “I’m all for limits on drinking and driving. Whatever
the rules are, I will abide by them. I just didn’t know these were the
rules.”

These days, Bolton goes out to eat in Virginia. And she keeps a yellow
sticky note on her steering wheel to remind her to make sure her
headlights are on.

Proposed Law to Keep Pressure on Drunken Drivers

As alcohol-related deaths stop decline, new tools sought

Saturday, Dec. 27, 1997 · Page A 8
©1997 San Francisco Examiner

By Judy Holland

EXAMINER WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON – Anti-drunken driving campaigns have helped reduce the
number of alcohol-related fatalities 30 percent in the past 14 years,
according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But in the past four years, the rate of alcohol-related fatalities has
stopped declining, prompting lawmakers and safety groups to look for new
ways to stop drinking-related crashes.

One approach is pending in Congress where Sens. Frank Lautenberg,
D-N.J., and Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., have
introduced legislation to encourage states to lower the drunken-driving
threshold.

The legislation would require states that already haven’t to change
their drunken-driving laws to lower the blood alcohol content level from
0.1 percent to 0.08 percent within three years. States that fail to
follow the federal rule would get docked 5 percent of their federal
highway funds in the first year and 10 percent in the second year.

The legislation is expected to be attached early next year to a bill
reauthorizing funding for the Intermodal Surface Transportation Act,
which funds highway projects. The Clinton administration, the National
Transportation Safety Board and many groups that campaign against drunken
driving back the bill.

Even before Congress takes up the proposal, California and 14 other
states already have lowered the legally acceptable blood alcohol level to
0.08 percent. The others are Utah, Oregon, Maine, Vermont, North
Carolina, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Florida, Massachusetts, Virginia,
Hawaii, Alabama, Idaho and Illinois.

The campaign against drunken driving is credited with reducing
alcohol-related traffic fatalities from 25,165 in 1982 to 17,126 in 1996.
However, the rate has stayed essentially the same since 1992.

Brandy Anderson, assistant director of public policy for Mothers
Against Drunk Driving, said the problem of driving drunk was far from
solved.

“It will take a comprehensive effort, both legislation and better
enforcement,” Anderson said, adding that she expected a tough battle over
the legislation.

“We expect the alcohol industry to fight this bill tooth and nail,”
she said. “They have a lot of power and money.”

Toughening drunken-driving standards could save hundreds of lives each
year, she contended.

Time for DUI Crackdown

When the 2007 Legislature convenes in Olympia next January, lawmakers
will be focused on the task of adopting a two-year balanced budget.
Lawmakers will be remiss if they don’t strengthen drunk driving laws.

Two high-profile cases, both of them in Seattle, should provide
proponents of change with the ammunition they will need to crack down on
drunk drivers.

Susan West and Mary Jane Rivas should be the poster women for new DUI
laws.

West, 48, who was sentenced to prison for six years after she killed a
pedestrian in a drunk driving accident, was barely out of jail when she
was arrested on another drunk driving charge. She was sentenced to a year
in the county jail for her fifth DUI offense.

Rivas, 31, had cocaine in her blood and an outstanding warrant for
DUI, when she allegedly ran a red light at 80 miles per hour before
slamming her vehicle into a patrol car operated by a Seattle police
officer. The rookie officer, Joselito “Lito” Alvarez Barber, was just 26
when he died.

Following the high-profile cases, the Seattle Times analyzed court
records and found that since 2000 nearly 5,000 drivers have had three or
more drunk driving charges filed against them, and 159 drivers have had
at least five DUIs.

It’s time for the Legislature to crack down on those repeat drunk
drivers.

The 2006 Legislature took a step in the right direction when lawmakers
passed a bill that makes a fifth driving under the influence conviction
in 10 years a felony. Next year, lawmakers should give serious
consideration to lowering the threshold to three DUI convictions in 10 or
fewer years.

Legislators must understand that a majority of the people arrested for
DUIs are never convicted of that crime. Charges are routinely
plea-bargained to a lesser crime.

According to the Times’ study, of the 220,640 people accused of DUI
offenses in Washington state since 2000, only 43 percent ended up with
DUI convictions – fewer than half. The Times said “27 percent were
convicted of reduced charges such as reckless driving.” The report said
12 percent of those arrested on suspicion of DUI had their prosecution
deferred with 17 percent resulting in dismissal.

Lawmakers have done a decent job of strengthening DUI laws over the
last decade – lowering the blood-alcohol threshold from 0.10 to 0.08,
requiring jail time and ignition interlock devices and automatic license
revocations. Those convicted on a first offense say it’s not uncommon to
spend $5,000 to cover all the costs associated with a DUI arrest. Then
there’s the personal shame of using the interlock devise that prevents a
driver with alcohol on his/her breath from starting the vehicle.
First-time offenders should quickly understand that drinking and driving
is a costly and dehumanizing proposition.

But some people never get the message. They drive on a suspended
license, ignore court-ordered sanctions and basically thumb their nose at
the law.

Those repeat offenders deserve harsher treatment.

The ugly truth is a person dies in an alcohol-related traffic accident
somewhere in this country on average of every 31 minutes. This carnage on
our highways must stop. Getting repeat offenders behind bars for
prolonged periods is just one of the solutions.

It’s time for legislators to up the ante.

Source: http://www.theolympian.com

Fairfax, VA – The constitutionality of the state’s drunk driving laws have been questioned by two Fairfax county
prosecutors and a judge who argue that the current law does not allow
drivers any possibility of disproving drunkenness.

General District Court Judge Ian M. O’Flaherty challenges the Virginia
state law that states that drivers with a blood alcohol level (BAC) of
0.08 or more are drunk. He also ruled that a defendant’s option to the
presumption of innocence is not established in the law.

According to a 1985 Supreme Court ruling, it is a violation of the
Fifth Amendment to require a defendant to provide defense. O’Flaherty
states that prosecutors must prove the cases, and the defendant must not
be duty-bound to act in any way.

Flaherty’s argument, which is not officially the first to make such a ruling, is being discussed among DUI attorneys and prosecutors nationwide. Defense lawyers across the country are expected to use the argument as leverage in their cases.

O’Flaherty does not approve of using blood alcohol content (BAC)
levels that are measured 90 minutes or more after arrest. Sometimes
officials determine BAC after the suspected drunk driver has been taken
to the police station, and O’Flaherty argues that this BAC is not
accurate. Since this measurement lacks precision, the evidence would thus
lack validity.

The law states that defendants can in fact use their own evidence to
defend their innocence.

County prosecutors often request that the judge dismiss DWI cases so
that they can then file an appeal. Recently O’Flaherty found some
defendants to be not guilty of DWI because he could not conclude that
they were drunk. His ruling resulted from insubstantial BAC
evidence.

The inherent reliability of blood alcohol tests is questioned by the
cases, and could affect cases nationwide.

Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) finds O’Flaherty’s
ruling to be a threat to the enforcement of drunk driving laws. The group
fears that evidence will be too easily deemed as “unconstitutional.”

Attorney Kathryn S. Swart believes that defense attorneys may
cross-examine police in order to delegitimize evidence. She believes that
the Constitution does not state that a defendant must bear the burden of
providing evidence from the presumption of a blood alcohol level
measurement.

October 28, 2005

Related Links:

• Virginia DUI Laws
• Virginia DUI Attorneys
• Virginia Auto Insuranc (SR-22)

By Jamie Stockwell and Tommy Nguyen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 13, 2005

“…denies a defendant’s right to the presumption of innocence” rules Judge

It was a creative legal argument — perhaps brilliant, some said —
and after a brief reflection, a Fairfax County judge bought it, declaring
that key components of the state’s drunken driving laws are
unconstitutional.

In a decision that could prompt similar challenges nationwide, Judge
Ian M. O’Flaherty cited a decades-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling when in
the past month he dismissed charges against three alleged drunk
drivers.

O’Flaherty, one of 10 judges who preside over traffic cases in Fairfax
County District Court, ruled that Virginia’s law is unconstitutional
because it presumes an individual with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 or
higher is intoxicated and denies a defendant’s right to the presumption
of innocence.

As a district judge, O’Flaherty does not establish formal precedent
with his rulings. But reports of the constitutional argument have quickly
found their way onto Web logs and into the offices of defense attorneys
and prosecutors across the country, prompting some to explore tactics to
exploit or attack the Fairfax decisions.

“There will be similar motions everywhere, no doubt about that,” said
Steven Oberman, chairman of the DUI defense committee at the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “There are lawyers everywhere
who are looking at this issue again in a different light.”

A lot will depend on each state’s interpretation of its drunken
driving laws, Oberman added, and whether a person with a 0.08 blood
alcohol level is presumed, by law, to be intoxicated. If so, as is the
case in Virginia, other elements must still be proven, including whether
the defendant also failed a roadside sobriety test.

Corinne Magee, the attorney whose challenge of the state’s drunken
driving law led to O’Flaherty’s ruling, said the decision was based on
the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court case Francis v. Franklin , which dealt with a
prosecutor’s obligation to prove all elements of a crime beyond a
reasonable doubt.

After closely reading the decision, Magee said she realized that it
could apply to the state’s drunken driving laws.

“I expected him to convict on other evidence in the case,” Magee said
of O’Flaherty, who presided over the case in which her client was accused
of driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.21, more than twice the
legal limit.

“I was surprised when he dismissed the case . . . but I think it was
based on a very careful reading of the Francis case.”

Magee said she was troubled by the law because it presumes
intoxication at 0.08 and that the driver was at that level while driving,
even if the test was administered hours after the driver was stopped. She
said a person’s blood alcohol level can fluctuate depending on when the
last drink was consumed and how that person’s body metabolizes
alcohol.

But prosecutors, and even some defense attorneys, disagree, and said
yesterday that laws in the 50 states that have established a presumption
of intoxication at 0.08 have been upheld even when similar arguments were
raised.

“If this ruling became the law of the land, it would be devastating
for all DUI cases,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert F.
Horan Jr. said. “For all these years, it has passed muster, and now one
judge has decided it doesn’t. “Our hope is to get it through to circuit
court and let it play out and go from there.”

Moreover, Horan said, O’Flaherty misinterpreted the obscure and rarely
cited 20-year-old case. Because of carefully phrased statutes, defendants
in drunken driving cases have to prove they were not intoxicated, he
said.

Because prosecutors can appeal only cases dismissed by a circuit court
judge, Horan said his office plans to prosecute three other DUI cases in
circuit court.

O’Flaherty did not return a call seeking comment.

A. E. Dick Howard, a constitutional law professor at University of
Virginia, said O’Flaherty’s ruling appears misguided, an “idiosyncratic
ruling” that if followed could “create massive upheaval and seismic shock
in courtrooms across the country.”

“I think the Francis case simply does not apply, not like this,”
Howard said.

Patrick O’Connor, president of the Northern Virginia chapter of
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said he was not aware of any other state
judges who have made similar decisions. O’Flaherty’s ruling, he said,
undermines the work of law enforcement and prosecutors to keep drunk
drivers off the roads.

O’Connor, whose son was killed three years ago in a crash caused by a
driver who had a blood alcohol content of 0.15, said he would have been
devastated if that driver had not been prosecuted.

“In that case, if they had thrown out that evidence as
unconstitutional, then there would have been no consequence for that
driver’s action,” he said.

“I’d be angry . . . at the thought that someone could drink and drive,
take a life away and possibly walk free, when all the health and medical
evidence support that a driver with .08 is impaired to drive.”

Source:
Washington Post

If you have been arrested for a drunk driving in Virginia you will need to hire a DUI attorney in Virginia.

Tracy M. Decker told the Virginia Police Officer he had not been drinking just before recording a .28 on a breath machine, prompting what will be at
least his 23rd prosecution for drunk driving, according to court
records.

Court records show Decker, whose license was revoked for an earlier
DUI, is also facing abuse charges because his four-year-old twins were
riding unbuckled in the back of his car. Police stopped the 33-year-old
man on Jan. 22 as he was trying to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge
Tunnel.

Decker’s most recent address is listed as an Oceanfront motel.

Decker’s lengthy drunk-driving record spans decades, according to bond
paperwork filed in Virginia Beach courts. That same paperwork declares
that Decker has “22 DUI convictions.”

However, according to court documents, Decker’s extensive history was
not revealed in two previous criminal cases, prompting Virginia Beach
judges to grant breaks in an earlier drunk-driving case and for an
unrelated conviction for disturbing the peace. Had the judges known, he
would’ve likely been in jail, DUI experts say.

It was not until his arrest last month that Decker’s full background
was noted in a court file.

“To get over 20 DUIs really blows my mind,” said Michael Goodove,
president of the Southside Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Goodove, an attorney, said he has never seen such a case. “The system’s
not perfect, but in this case, there are too many imperfections going
on.” Records show the bulk of the drunk driving convictions happened in
Alabama and Georgia.

According to court records, Decker moved to Virginia Beach sometime in
2002. By December of that year, he was facing a drunk-driving charge. But
the charge is listed in Virginia Beach court records as a “second offense” even though the real number was closer to 20.

Sgt. Scott Wichtendahl, a Virginia Beach DUI expert with close to
2,000 drunk-driving arrests to his credit, said DMV records in 2002 were
not as complete as they are today. He said it was possible then to gain a
clear Virginia drivers license by not revealing prosecutions in other
states.

The officer who stopped Decker likely did not know about Decker’s
history because it was not available through a DMV check, Wichtendahl
said. Decker’s past would’ve come up in a comprehensive criminal
background check, Wichtendahl said. But, the sergeant added, not all
officers pursue such time-consuming checks in what appear to be routine
cases.

As a result, General District Court Judge Virginia Cochran found
Decker guilty of the second offense, but let him go free because he had
already served about six weeks in jail, according to court records. That
release was granted upon several factors, including good behavior and
alcohol education, records show.

However, Decker failed to attend the alcohol class. Judge Cochran
reinstated the 12-month sentence, but Decker appealed.

In Circuit Court, Judge Thomas Shadrick waived most of that sentence.
Records show Decker had to serve about three months. There is no
indication in the court file that anyone involved knew of the dozens of
drunk-driving arrests.

About a year later, Decker was again arrested, this time for
disturbing the peace. Decker was sentenced to a year in jail, but only
had to serve 30 days on the promise he would attend an alcohol education
class. Records show he rarely attended and frequently tested positive for
drugs and alcohol. The judge ordered him back to jail and again Decker
appealed.

Circuit Court records show Circuit Court Judge Frederick B. Lowe had
more information on Decker’s background than previous judges, but still
not the full picture. Judge Lowe waived most of the punishment, sending
Decker to jail for three months instead of the 11 ordered in lower court,
the records show.

“I am surprised he is still alive,” Wichtendahl said, adding that most
hard-core drunk drivers end up dead, or in prison for fatal accidents.
“The system let him down, and more importantly, let us down as the people
who are on the road.”

Wichtendahl said officers now have access to the critical DMV
information that was apparently lacking in Decker’s first arrest.

“I would be really surprised if, in 2006, that a gentleman would get
away with the multiple offenses he is getting away with,” Wichtendahl
said.

Decker is in jail without bail. DUI experts say he faces a minimum of
one year in jail for the drunk-driving charge.

Source:

If you have been arrested for a DUI in Virginia Beach you will need to hire a Virginia Beach DUI attorney.

Houston Police senior officer William Lindsey Jr., 50, made $172,576
last year, almost $120,000 more than the base salary for the position and
more than the mayor. Lindsey earned the extra cash primarily from
overtime payments on a driving while intoxicated task force. A Houston
Chronicle investigation has revealed this week that Lindsey is not only
the highest paid officer, he’s also among the most reprimanded on the
force.

Only 13 out of 4,760 officers have had more than 23 complaints
sustained after an internal affairs investigation. Lindsey has had 32
sustained. The force will not reveal whether there have been other, less
serious disciplinary problems that did not enter the formal reprimand
process. Lindsey does have a number of supportive comments from members
of the public he has helped in his 27-year career.

“Lindsey could be one of the better witnesses,” Assistant U.S.
Attorney Jeff Vaden told the Chronicle about Lindsey’s status as a
“reliable” witness in drunk driving cases. “I knew he had some
disciplinary issues in the past, but it never to my knowledge posed any
problems with him testifying.”

In September 2002, for example, a man accused of jaywalking says
Lindsey threatened to kill him during an argument over the ticket.
Another officer broke up the altercation. In 1990 Lindsey was caught
submitting fraudulent overtime payment requests, a third-degree felony
for which he received a 15-day suspension.

Article Excerpt: OFFICER’S SUSPENSIONS

October 1983: One day for shopping while on duty and not following
department policy in disposing of narcotics evidence.

September 1987: One day for failing to respond to the dispatcher for
over an hour.

April 1990: Fifteen days for filing false overtime records.

November 1991: Ten days. While he was chasing suspects who were
fleeing, Lindsey discharged his firearm, striking one of the suspects in
the leg.

June 1995: Five days. Failed to fill out an incident report for a
vehicular accident.

April 1999: One day for dragging a handcuffed DWI suspect into a
videotaping room.

January 2001: Two days for refusing to appear in court after being
ordered to do so over the phone by a judge.

January 2002: One day. Failed to be available for duty.

February 2002: Two days. Failed to complete an incident report while
working an extra security job.

Source: Highest-paid HPD officer also racks up reprimands (Houston
Chronicle, 4/30/2006)

Source: http://www.thenewspaper.com/

Dallas, K.C. Rank Highest in DUI Deaths

From: Join Together 1/16/2002

A new study shows that Dallas, Texas and Kansas City, Mo., had the
highest rates of drunk-driving fatalities in the United States between
1995 and 1997, the Kansas City Star reported Jan. 14.

The survey by researcher Deborah A. Cohen of Rand Corp. examined
federal crash statistics in 97 cities that submit data each year to the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. According to Cohen, over
the three years studied, Dallas had 10.23 alcohol-related traffic
fatalities per 100,000 residents; Kansas City had a DUI death rate of
10.1 per 100,000 residents. Both cities ranked more than twice as high as
the national mean of 4.75.

Cohen said that strict penalties and random sobriety checkpoints were
among the most effective ways that cities and states could reduce
alcohol-related traffic deaths.

“I’m shocked,” said Lela McDuffy, president of the Heartland Chapter
of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. “I realize that we were probably the
worst in Missouri, but I had no clue that we were that high on the list
nationwide.”

Driver Gets 16 Years in Baby’s Death

Drunken motorist blamed for premature delivery

Oct 23, 1996

Associated Press – Corpus Christi, Texas

A drunken driver got 16 years in prison yesterday for manslaughter in
the death of a baby who was delivered prematurely after an auto
accident.

The case is one of the first in Texas to test whether a person can be
held criminally liable for harming a fetus. Because it touched on the
question of when life begins, it was closely watched by both sides of the
abortion debate.

Frank Flores Cuellar, 50, had faced as long as 20 years in prison in
the death of Krystal Zuniga, who was delivered shortly after a June 15
car accident. Cuellar’s blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal
limit when he drove his truck into a car driven by Jeannie Coronado as
she returned from a late-night trip to the grocery store. Coronado, 7 and
one half months pregnant, gave birth to Krystal by emergency cesarean
section. The baby weighed just four pounds and suffered extensive brain
damage, and died with two days.

The jury took an hour to convict Cuellar last week of intoxication
manslaughter and six hours to decide on a sentence yesterday. Cuellar
apoligigized after the sentence was read, saying, “I didn’t intend for
any of this to happen.”