Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 14, 1995                   TAG: 9503140115
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

REVOCATION

The provision, requiring an automatic seven-day license revocation for motorists arrested for driving under the influence, went into effect Jan. 1. If it must be amended to pass constitutional muster, so be it. The need for that, however, remains far from established.

Instead, there is confusion.

While one judge in Roanoke County has dismissed a drunken-driving charge on the grounds that the defendant already had been punished by the license revocation, another judge in the same jurisdiction has rejected such double-jeopardy arguments. Meanwhile, the issue in Virginia has yet to move up the judicial ladder from the lowest rung, the level of General District Court.

To us, the odds look good that the law will be upheld by higher courts.

For one thing, operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway is a licensed privilege, not a guaranteed right. Temporarily lifting the privilege, pending a hearing, isn't the same as a criminal penalty.

For another thing, the 1994 General Assembly wasn't exactly breaking new ground when it passed the provision. In writing the Virginia law, legislators could look to administrative-revocation laws in 33 other states.

Still, for now, nobody - including the police charged with keeping highways safe - can know for sure whether enforcing the law and lifting drunken drivers' licenses will have the perverse effect of rendering them immune from criminal prosecution. This needs to be resolved quickly.