Fresno Criminal Lawyer Blog

The Fresno Bee recently reported that four people were arrested and 22 vehicles impounded during a DUI checkpoint, which comes on the heels of the Fresno Criminal Lawyer Blog analyzing the relative uselessness of such a strategy.

Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently put out a study that shows drunk driving is down 30 percent since 2006.

DUI in Fresno and elsewhere may not be nearly as big a problem as authorities would have you believe. In fact, the numbers are shrinking. Still, Fresno DUI defense lawyers continue to get requests from people asking for help with their DUI case. Which means even though the number of drunk drivers are down, arrests remain steady.

The Bee reports that the weekend DUI checkpoint at Ventura Avenue near R Street resulted in four people being charged with suspicion of drunken driving. More than two dozen vehicles were impounded, although a law change going into effect Jan. 1 will give drivers more time to find a person to drive their vehicle home if they are charged with driving without a license. Currently, their vehicle can be towed within 15 minutes. The law change, the newspaper speculates, would give officers less time to stop cars at checkpoints because they have to deal with parked cars for longer periods of time.

On a national level, NPR reports that 112 million Americans drove drunk in 2010, but that's down significantly from 2006, when the number was closer to 161 million.

The CDC study shows that young men -- from 21 to 34 -- account for 32 percent of drunk-driving incidents, though they only make up 11 percent of the nation's population.

As The Car Connection reports, DUI-related fatalities are down to about 11,000 per year, which is far lower than the 25,000 reported in 1980, when there were far fewer vehicles and people on the road.

But they cite the CDC statistic that 81 percent of drunk-driving incidents in 2010 were committed by men. And of those incidents, 85 percent were a result of binge drinking, which is defined as having a large amount of drinks in a short period of time.

While no one would argue that drinking and driving is a good thing, it certainly may have been over-hyped by law enforcement and lobbying groups in recent years. Many people charged with DUI in Fresno and elsewhere throughout the nation either never planned to commit a crime or have had a few drinks but still have the capacity to drive home.

Something can be said for people who have one or two drinks and are intoxicated but not legally drunk versus a person who has three or four drinks, but doesn't have a loss of senses, but legally is drunk.

Every case must be defended, and in DUI cases, that means looking at the initial stop, whether the officer had probable cause, as well as the training to conduct field sobriety testing. Breath testing machines have also have a list of problems, as they have outputted incorrect results, leading to unlawful convictions.