DUI Lawyer

Is there hypocrisy in DUI laws?

It seems that every day you hear about law makers and cops getting busted for DUI.  Just recently in San Diego a sheriff’s deputy was busted at nearly 3x the legal limit.  He smashed his pickup truck into a tow truck severely injuring 2 other men on a local highway in San Diego county.

My question is, ‘how often do you think this occurs?’  Not the accident but police officers driving after having a couple drinks.  Would we even be hearing about this offense had there not have been an accident?  Or would he had been given a ride home as a professional courtesy?

I applaud everything the police do to keep us safe but for some reason it seems like these guys think they are ‘above the law.’  How many people do you think this guy issued previous DUI offenses to? 

If he is treated as a “normal drunk” then there would be several assumptions made after this particular offense:

1.  This is not the 1st time he has driven drunk.

2.  He has a drinking problem and most likely and alcoholic.

3.  Someone who may be subject to the term ‘moral turpitude’

Now those aren’t my opinions but the assumptions that society in general makes about drunk drivers, especially those that crash their cars and cause death or injury due to the fact that they get behind the wheel and drive after drinking enough alcohol to push them over the legal limit (in this case 3x the legal limit).

Now based on those assumptions, whose to say this guy wasn’t drunk when he issued those previous DUI citations to others?  How can those arrests be ‘just’ if he was drunk?  Most likely if he is an alcoholic that means that he has drank on the job before, right?  That’s the assumption that gets made after someone is caught for an offense of this severity.

Yes i’m playing devils advocate here but again, these are the scrutinies that the ‘average joe’ faces when they do somthing similar.  It will be interesting to watch how this case develops… let’s see how this one plays out and what assumptions are made in this case by the police dept., defense attorney’s, and the DA’s office.

For more information you can read about the story here,

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20061107-9999-1m7deputy.html

Disclaimer:  The above blog post are opionions and are not to be considered facts of any specific case and are not meant in malice in any way.  These are not slanderous comments but are intended to stimulate thought and to evaluate the fairness of DUI laws in general.  I do not know the sheriff’s deputy nor am I privy to any case details therefore I am not making any comments about his guilt or innocence.  I am merely expressing my right to free speech based on the media releases about this specific topic.  This is a general post about a broader issue; DUI laws.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.