HOW AN ALCOHOLIC WOMAN SLIPS THROUGH THE LEGAL SYSTEM

   All of us know about the lawsuit happy public. Suppose you are a police officer, and you are making the decision to arrest or not to arrest a clearly drunk woman you have just stopped. You might imagine the confrontation between yourself  and this "sweet young thing" sitting in court with a capable DUI attorney. The attorney is droning on in front of the jury with something canned like this; 

..."studies show that her lung volume is smaller than that of a man, and the breathalyzer machines in use today don't even take this factor into account...why the machine's results are as unreliable as the chauvinist attitude of the officer!"

   Maybe this is why 85 out of 100 arrests for DUI are against men. There are lots of reasons, but the final devastating effect of our system is to compromise an important safety net designed to protect us all from alcoholism. If the suspect looks and smells good like our wives, moms, and daughters, then she really has to work hard to get a police officer to put the cuffs on her in the first place!

   OK. Now, the officer has overcome all of his or her fears and prejudices, and has arrested this woman, and she is cuffed and hauled into jail. Is she going to show up with a DUI on her record that might identify her as an alcoholic and eventually save her life from this disease?

PROBABLY NOT!

   Here is what is likely to happen. Following are the usual strategies employed by an attorney to "get her off" on the charge.

I. Probable Cause argument.

   The first strategy is to attack the officer's decision to make the stop in the first place. Every officer knows this will have to be defended in court before the arrest is made, so the probable cause argument is a major block to an officer turning on the overhead lights at the outset. The attorney implies that the officer was just stopping cars at random to improve his arrest record. Often the officer is portrayed as a right wing misogynist with a special prejudice against women drivers.

II. Inaccurate field sobriety test strategy

   There are many arcane studies focusing on the different ways that men and women metabolize alcohol. These studies, in the hands of a capable DUI attorney, serve to cast serious questions about the accuracy of the field sobriety test administered by the officer when the arrest was made. The officer may be grilled to demonstrate that his knowledge of all of this important data is limited which again makes the officer the one on trial and the person arrested for DUI to appear to be the victim.

III. Reduced charge strategy.

    "Wet reckless" is legal profession short for a reduced charge in a DUI. It means that you were driving with an elevated blood alcohol level, but NOT that you were intoxicated. Wet-reckless is achieved usually during plea bargaining. This is just plain old horse trading between the DA and the lady's DUI attorney. The concept is that the driver is admitting that she had consumed some alcohol, and that she had made the decision to drive. However, wet-reckless is not an admission of driving under the influence! This is the last resort after the above two ploys fail to have the charge thrown out altogether. If the officer cannot out-argue the lady's DUI attorney, then she is likely to dodge the DUI charge altogether by this tactic as well, since the wet-reckless charge gets her off with no record of the stop (i.e., it never appears on her driving record). Also, she does not lose her driver's license, and there is only a small fine.

   If this is a woman of means, then she doesn't get that wrung out over the $5,000-$10,000 fine or the raising of her auto insurance by about $500/month. The whole denial system comes in to play to reduce her shame, and in some trendy neighborhoods, a wealthy woman can actually receive a kind of high attention level when it becomes known that she recently was hauled in just "a little high," and actually "beat the charge" with an expensive lawyer. She certainly has some interesting stories to tell now!

   So there you have it. The youngest driving generation has the ladies at least matching the guys for alcohol abuse, and yet they still represent only 15% of the DUI convictions. Why? Because of the institutionalized denial built into our legal system. But who is to blame, gentlemen? Be honest. Which gender is making the arrest, trying the case, defending the lady, writing the laws, and being the judge?

   Finally, probably the greatest tragedy is that a lady alcoholic is not identified as a diseased person. She skates. She continues drinking and destroying herself, and we as a society are enabling her to do it!

   What is the solution? Right now, there is no solution!