Most people stopped on suspicion of impaired driving would rather avoid the trip to the police station. Some suspects attempt to dispel officers’ suspicions by answering questions about whether they have been drinking and how much they’ve had to drink. Others perform field sobriety tests. A few cut right to the chase, demanding that officers transport them immediately to the station for breath testing. That way, the person who is not impaired by alcohol can resolve the encounter without the indignity–and the record–that accompanies arrest.
Shea Denning
Assembly Line Justice
Have you ever been convicted of or pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) to any violation of the law other than minor traffic tickets?
Millions of people, many of whom were convicted of petty crimes, must answer this question (a favorite of employers) in the affirmative. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported in a recent article on the processing of misdemeanor crimes that nearly 1 in 3 Americans has a criminal record. While those records are based on arrests, not convictions, a substantial percentage of people charged with misdemeanor offenses are convicted. North Carolina’s district courts, for example, disposed of more than 450,000 misdemeanor (non-traffic) criminal cases in the 2013-2014 fiscal year. A third of those cases resulted in convictions.
Keeping a Good Thing Going: New Book Available on Impaired Driving Laws
The School of Government has been publishing reference books on motor vehicle law since 1947. The twelfth iteration of a book on motor vehicle law and the law of impaired driving, written by Ben Loeb and Jim Drennan was published in 2000. The book went out of print a few years ago, though you’ll find dog-eared copies of it in many offices, including mine. I’m happy to report that a new book in this series now is available: The Law of Impaired Driving and Related Implied Consent Offenses in North Carolina.
Felon in Possession and Felony Murder
Thirteen-year-old Nathan Clark and his teammates traveled from Winston-Salem to Raleigh last Friday night to play in a weekend soccer tournament. The team never took the field. As Clark slept in his hotel room Friday evening, a gun discharged in an adjacent room, sending a bullet through the wall and into the back of Clark’s head. Clark died before he could be transported to the hospital.
The man in the room next door, Randall Louis Vater, was a convicted felon who was prohibited by law from possessing a gun. Vater had been out of jail only two weeks, having been released on October 25 after serving a sentence for violating a domestic violence protective order. Vater was charged with involuntary manslaughter and possession of a firearm by a felon based on Clark’s death. He is being held in the Wake County Jail under a $1 million bond.
Authorities have said nothing about how the gun went off. Assuming that the discharge was accidental, could Vater be charged with first-degree murder under the theory of felony murder?
Hospitalization of DWI Suspect Does Not Create Per Se Exigency Justifying Warrantless Blood Draw
The Chatham County sheriff’s deputy who arrested Ronald McCrary in Siler City for impaired driving at 7:34 p.m. on December 28, 2010 decided that if McCrary was taken to the hospital, he would obtain a sample of his blood without a warrant. McCrary was in fact taken to a nearby hospital—at his insistence—where he refused to cooperate with the medical staff and refused to consent to the withdrawal of his blood. Once the hospital discharged McCrary at 9:13 p.m., several officers restrained him while hospital staff withdrew his blood. Was the blood draw legal?
Implied Consent Laws Can’t Provide End-Run around McNeely
The United States Supreme Court held in Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S. Ct. 1552 (2013), that the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in every impaired driving case that justifies a warrantless, nonconsensual blood draw. In so holding, the court rejected the state’s call for a categorical rule—based solely on the evanescent nature of alcohol—that would authorize warrantless blood draws over a defendant’s objection whenever an officer has probable cause to believe the defendant has been driving while impaired. Some states have continued to argue, however, that nonconsensual warrantless blood draws in impaired driving cases are categorically permissible based on implied consent laws enacted by their state legislatures. Two state supreme courts recently rejected such arguments, holding that implied consent statutes in Nevada and Idaho that do not allow a driver to withdraw consent to testing are unconstitutional. That reasoning might be applied to invalidate the provision of North Carolina’s implied consent law that categorically allows the warrantless testing of unconscious drivers.
Does Graduated Licensing Make Teens Safer Drivers or Just Postpone the Risk?
Vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers in the United States. That’s why states no longer grant unrestricted driver’s licenses to teens once they turn 16, as they did when I was a kid. Instead, states grant driving privileges to teenagers under 18 only after they have been driving under a permit with supervision for a lengthy period of time, and, even then, only by degrees. Driver’s licenses issued to such teens typically restrict nighttime driving and/or the number of minors who may be present in the vehicle for some period of time after initial licensure. While many people readily accept the notion that teens are safer during the graduated licensing period–either because they aren’t driving unsupervised at night, because they don’t have a gaggle of friends in the car, or because they aren’t driving at all given the hassle associated with becoming licensed–they wonder whether the effects vanish once the teens are on their own.
Goin’ to the Courthouse and We’re Gonna Get Married
The impediments to same-sex marriage in North Carolina have fallen like dominos over the past ten days. On Monday, October 6, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari review in Rainey v. Bostic, No. 14-153, 2014 WL 3924685 (U.S. October 6, 2014), thus declining to reconsider the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ conclusion in Bostic v. Schaefer, 760 F.3d 352 (4th Cir. 2014), that Virginia’s same-sex marriage bans, which are substantively identical to the constitutional and statutory bans in North Carolina, violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourth Circuit issued its mandate in Bostic later that day. Four days later, United States District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina Max. O. Cogburn, Jr. ruled that North Carolina’s laws prohibiting same-sex marriage were unconstitutional and enjoined the registers of deeds named as defendants in the action pending before him from enforcing the state’s marriage laws to the extent that they prohibit a person from marrying another person of the same gender, prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages lawfully solemnized in other U.S. jurisdictions, or seek to punish clergy or other officiants who solemnize the union of same-sex couples. Minutes after Judge Cogburn issued his ruling—after 5 p.m. on a Friday—registers of deeds issued marriage licenses to eager same-sex couples, and the courthouse weddings began.
Does Driver’s Education Work?
Fifteen-year-old Laura Yost died on September 23 from injuries she sustained after the teenage driver of the car she was riding in turned left in front of an oncoming dump truck. A few days later, fifteen-year-old Braden Rock died after his 17-year-old sister turned left in front of an oncoming car. The next morning, 11–year-old Michael Burgess was walking across the street to board his school bus when he was struck by a car driven by a 16-year-old and seriously injured. Many have questioned in the wake of these events how such injuries might be prevented in the future.
Some have raised concerns about the legislature’s decision last session to eliminate state funding for local driver’s education programs beginning with the 2015-16 fiscal year. Yet all of the teenager drivers involved in these accidents successfully completed driver’s education, and it obviously did not inoculate them from negligent driving. Perhaps more such accidents would occur if there were no formalized driver’s education training. Unfortunately, despite the millions spent on driver’s education programs in North Carolina every year for decades, the simple truth is that we have no idea whether driver’s education has any effect on teen driving safety.
A Young Man with a Long History of Driving While Impaired
Rabah Samara, the young man who took the wheel of the Cadillac after it crashed into and killed sports reporter Stephen Gates as he was changing a tire on I-40 in 2003 and drove away from the scene, was back in Wake County criminal court yesterday. Samara, now 37, plead guilty to misdemeanor impaired driving—resolving his fourth charge for that offense—and was sentenced to three years of probation and 14 days of imprisonment, which he may serve on weekends. The News and Observer reported that Stephen Gates’ mother, Pat Gates, watched Samara’s hearing from the front row of the courtroom.