DWI lawyer David Burrows in the hallway leading to his corner office, surrounded by framed not-guilty verdicts.
Dallas Police Video
A woman arrested for DWI during a no-refusal weekend braces inside Lew Sterrett jail before being stuck with a needle. In her left hand she clutches a search warrant
that orders her to give up her blood.
I'm going to screw up, Andrea says to herself as she walks a straight line in front of a Dallas police officer. Only hours into what was supposed to be a relaxing Memorial Day weekend, Andrea is on the side of the road near the bar she just left on Lower Greenville Avenue. She thinks she's sober, but she has to prove it to this cop, and she's starting to doubt herself. I'm going to screw up.
It's a cold Friday night just after 11 p.m., and the 29-year-old now engages in a balancing act. She closes her eyes, holds out one leg and touches her nose. The officer points a flashlight at her face as her eyes track a red penlight that he moves back and forth. He asks her to count backward. Finally done, she thinks she has passed the tests.
The officer thinks otherwise. He handcuffs her and places her in the back of a squad car headed to the Dallas County jail. Still in handcuffs, she's brought to a room to take a breath test, which she refuses. "I'd always heard that if you've had anything to drink, do not take it," she said recently at a restaurant, as she nervously toyed with a ring. "Don't blow! Don't blow!"
The immediate penalty for refusing the test is light: a 180-day license suspension, which a decent lawyer can easily reduce. But her refusal to take the breath test means the officer will be denied a valuable piece of evidence to prove she had been driving drunk if her case later goes to court.
This night in 2008 is different, though, and it's not over yet.
Andrea sits on a bench in a long hall inside Lew Sterrett jail. After about an hour, a cop hands her a fax. "We have a warrant for your blood."
"I'm not signing this," she says. Are you freaking kidding me?
"It doesn't matter," the officer says. "Either way, your blood is getting drawn tonight."
Andrea, who recounted her story with the condition that we not publish her full name, has the dubious distinction of being perhaps the first person arrested during the premiere weekend for an experimental Dallas Police Department program called "no refusal." Since last Memorial Day, the DPD has had four more no-refusal weekends, most recently this St. Patrick's Day. So far, 404 people have been arrested and, in some cases after being physically restrained, forced to give a blood sample.
In the video above, police draw a driver's blood for evidence in a DWI case.
Drivers stopped on suspicion of DWI can refuse to take roadside sobriety and breath tests, and about half of the nearly 4,000 people arrested annually in the city of Dallas for DWI refuse the breath test. The number of "total refusals" of both kinds of tests have been skyrocketing in the last year and a half, say officers, judges and lawyers. Drivers are getting smarter about the law, and DWI cases are getting tougher for police and prosecutors to win.
To counter that, police have arranged to have judges standing by on no-refusal weekends, ready to sign search warrants that allow officers to get blood from drivers whether they like it or not. The weekend before this St. Patrick's Day, 32 people were arrested for DWI, and about half refused to give up their blood voluntarily to a certified medical technician stationed at the jail. Two resisted even after being served with search warrants and were cuffed and strapped into a chair so their blood could be drawn.
Dallas' no-refusal program is part of a trend in DWI policing that is picking up momentum statewide—one that could quickly go beyond the experimental stage here if legislation crafted by the Dallas County District Attorney's Office passes in the Legislature. It cleared the Senate on March 30. Dalworthington Gardens, a small Tarrant County community, was the first arresting agency to go full-time with a blood-draw program in 2005, and more than 30 agencies across the state have contacted the town since then to learn how to replicate the program. Most recently, the Austin police chief announced he is ready to go full-time with the program, although he is being met with resistance from the American Civil Liberties Union and a grassroots group named Stop the Vampire Cops.
It's not hard to understand why police and prosecutors are looking for a new weapon to help get drunken drivers off the road. In 2007, Texas led the nation in the number of people killed in alcohol-related accidents, according to the latest statistics available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. More than 100 people were killed in alcohol-related traffic accidents in Dallas County last year, or about 49 percent of traffic fatalities.
Alcohol floods the courts too. Around the courthouse, when lawyers talk about misdemeanors, what they really mean is DWI. That's not surprising, considering that two-thirds of the 875 misdemeanor cases that went to court last year were DWIs—which include drivers intoxicated by alcohol, drugs or both. Fully three-quarters of misdemeanor jury trials involve DWI, and defendants won 57 percent of cases heard by judges or juries.
Jesse,
Which innocent people are you referring to? When cops are forcing you to take a blood test against your will, I see an unnecessary invasion of privacy, and an assumption of guilt until proven innocent. So how is innocence protected in this case?
Jesse 05/10/2009 2:37:00 PM
Look you boneheads.....alcohol is a drug. As such it is incumbant upon you to use it responsibly. That means when you're going to be consuming , DON'T DRIVE!!!!!!! Is that simple enough you self-centered party animals? Hurray for the blood tests and the truly innocent people they protect. See you who are screaming at the Hotel Lou.
Greg 04/21/2009 10:31:00 AM
If people are'nt supposed to drive after having drinks then why do bars have parking lots? ;-/
Dovan Barvc 04/19/2009 12:10:00 AM
Joe S is absolutely correct. People get in traffic accidents. Many of them have not consumed alcoholic beverages. Some have. Just because someone is over an arbitrary limit of blood alcohol content does not mean that caused the accident. The definition of alcohol related is rediculous since it covers anyone in the vehicle. Presumably, if the driver was over the legal limit and sitting stock still at a stop light and was rear ended by a police car traveling at a high rate of speed it would be an alcohol related accident. I have known people who after a few drinks affirmatively drive more carefully than they otherwise would and are perfectly capable of driving safely. Of course, I've know a couple of people who shouldn't be walking, much less driving. The statistic in your article that the "drunk" driver gets away with it 70 times before he gets caught belies the hysteria of MADD since that statistic would be even lower if it correlated legally impaired driving with actual accidents caused by the impairment. It will be interesting to see what a jury thinks about whether it is self defense to try to prevent someone from sticking a needle in your arm.
Oliver 04/11/2009 11:19:00 AM
I lived in Dallas '99-'03. One year, I wanted to go to McKinney avenue for St Patrick's day, which happened to be on a Friday. I found out that the only bus I could figure out was going there from the East Transit Center was only going ONCE PER HOUR. That's when I told myself "You know, I never realized it's the purpose of a transit system to encourage people to drink and drive". Get real, if you can't reach an area like McKinney with public transit on a Friday evening, let alone St Patricks, yes, you're going to have people who DUI. But Dallas is not precisely the city where it's an alternative to walk for 2h, the way some folks here in Europe do.
Slim Jim Phantom 04/06/2009 4:02:00 AM
So, we have a bunch of drunks being defended by a tax cheat? Isn't America great?
Joe S. 04/03/2009 5:52:00 PM
DWI is a lie. MADD gets to 50% 'alcohol related' by including anyone with any alcohol in their system in any way involved in the accident. The individual doesn't have to be at fault or even be driving for it count as 'alcohol related'.
The truth is that 12% of vehicular fatalities are the fault of a legally intoxicated driver. That's 1 in 8. And you can easily check the numbers for yourself by reviewing the fatal accidents in the DFW area over the last 2 weeks (and if you go back 2 weeks from today that even covers the major drinking holiday of St. Patricks Day when you'd think there'd be a spike). Just because only the DWI related make it to the front page of the paper doesn't mean it's the #1 cause of fatal accidents.
88% of fatalities are not the fault of a legally intoxicated driver. Even if no one ever drove under the influence of alcohol the numer of fatalities would drop less than 12%. And the truth is that the cause of the other 88% applies equally to the those where the driver is legally intoxicated so the reduction would be less than 4%. For this I should give up my freedom? There are better ways to improve our roadways. Don't believe the hype.
Kevin 04/03/2009 9:22:00 AM
I agree with the previous posters. In cities where there are trollies and interurban railways, the DWI offenses go way down because of accessibility to transit systems. We have a constitutional right (just as many white collar criminals do) NOT to incriminate ourselves. It's called "the 5th" for a reason.
If law enforcement succeeds in perpetuating this trend, let's hope we can force politicians to a forced, surprise lie detector.
ashvega 04/03/2009 1:50:00 AM
I also feel a better, but more difficult strategy, for MADD would be to use its large political clout to support public transportation and other alternatives. It seems the lack of this agenda shows MADD is more concerned with temperance and a total ban on drinking, than a simple stop to drunken driving. If this is not the case I would like to see MADD support a responsible drinking event, perhaps have a wine tasting after the next meeting - with safe transportation of course provided.
Jay 04/02/2009 11:07:00 PM
I'm so sick of shortsighted policies and organizations like MADD, not just in Dallas but around this country. Drunk driving is terrible, but inevitable. For thousands of years people of all ages have been drinking alcohol and going home. Pretty basic human behavior. The sad thing and the thing that we need to put more effort into changing is the fact that we constructed cities which made this basic behavior so potentially harmful to society.
IF the police, city of Dallas, and organizations like MADD REALLY wanted to make things better they would throw more weight behind sustainable urban design, trolley's, shuttles from the train stations as well as longer running times from the DART train system and said shuttles and more emphasis on special event days. Instead they focus on an effect of the root problem as if it is in itself the problem. Get real. If you look around the country there's a strong correlation between places that are car dependent with few other transportation options and DWI problems. There's a fundamental issue that Dallas has to solve here before we can say anything positive has been accomplished. That underlying issue should be getting more of our energies and tax dollars. That's how we'll save lives.
