ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 20, 1996 TAG: 9609200027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
THE CONSTITUTIONAL fog has been lifted from a new state law intended to help get drunken drivers off the roads.
Good. The so-called administrative license-suspension law is an effective tool against a social menace. Fatalities caused by drunken drivers occur too frequently, in part because drunken drivers assume that even if arrested, they can keep on driving.
The General Assembly, following other states' lead, provided this tool in 1995. But law-enforcement officials had been reluctant to use it because it was being challenged in the courts. The Virginia Supreme Court's recent ruling, upholding the law, should give the green light for police to use it again.
At issue was the Fifth Amendment's protection against double jeopardy - the threat of being prosecuted or punished twice for the same crime. The court said it isn't double jeopardy for law-enforcement officials to suspend temporarily a drunken driver's license at the time of arrest, and then to prosecute that driver - leading potentially to a second judicial suspension.
The Constitution isn't violated, said the court, because the initial temporary suspension (for seven days) is more remedial than punitive, more administrative than criminal. That is consistent with court rulings in other states that have upheld similar laws.
There is, of course, the possibility that someone may press a challenge all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If that occurs, we're guessing the nation's highest court would agree with the reasoning offered by Chief Justice Harry Carrico in writing the Virginia Supreme Court's decision.
The purpose of the law - to remove immediately from the highway a drunken driver and the threat that he or she poses to others - is so clear and compelling, wrote Carrico, that it overrides any incidental punitive effect the law might have.
In any case, enforcement should resume now. These laws in other states have proved effective. Declines in DUI-related fatalities have been reported annually. This is presumably so not only because an immediate threat is removed from the streets, but because some who aren't stopped for driving under the influence decide not to take the risk. That's good for them, and for the rest of us.
LENGTH: Short : 46 linesby CNB