Athens Clarke County Officer Gregory Gilchrist, 36, was arrested on a drunken-driving charge early Thursday, (February 15, 2007) morning in southeastern Clarke County.  An unknown type of chemical test indicated that he had a blood-alcohol content level of 0.185 although it is not clear if this was a field breath test, a blood test or an Intoxilyzer 5000 test.  He is accused of driving his pickup truck through a red light and hitting the side of a car traveling through the intersection. The woman in the car wasn’t injured. Gilchrist claims he was making a left turn with a green arrow.

After a 2006 St. Louis Rams Football game this fall an Illnois Circuit Judge refused field test, a blood test and threw away a beer can after an accident with injuries. The police indicated that the Judge who had his chief judge as a passenger had a strong odor of alcohol, slurred speech and red and glassy eyes. Why would a judge do this? Judges know that field tests are a farce and blood tests are not accurate. Judges also know that a DUI without field tests and blood tests are hard to prove because the 0.08 limit is so ridiculously low that impairment is not detectable in the absence of blood tests presumption of impairment. What should you do if you are pulled over for a DUI? Only the Judge knows!

A MADD spokesperson announced their intention of seeking to increased penalties for DUI offenders making a 2nd conviction in 5 years for DUI a felony and a third lifetime DUI conviction a felony as well in the 2007 Georgia legislative session. Again our freedoms are never more in jeopardy than when the legislature is in session. Given the current state of the law, a person can receive multiple DUIs in a single occurence if there are minors in the car as the Supreme Court has held that the offenses don’t merge into a single occurence or transaction. This means potentially instant felonies for first time DUI offenders. Further, given that some people can blow over the legal limit with less than two twelve ounce beers and not be impaired in the slightest, this new law if passed with be a font of hardship and tradegy. It will also be the DUI lawyers full employment act.

The Ocean City Police Department’s in the State of Maryland is scrambling to explain why it let a drunk politician off the hook. It is waging a public relations campaign to explain to the public that field sobriety evaluations are relative and not pass/fail. This is testimony that you would never hear on the witness stand from a police officer and should provide excellent fodder for able DUI attorneys in the area.

300 DUI Breath tests in 300 DUI prosecutions in Broward County, Florida were thrown out of court because the Area Supervisors in Florida calibrated the Intox breath testing machines with tap water containing unknown chemicals instead of using laboratory certified distilled water. The Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal upheld the trial court judge’s ruling to exclude the breath test results in a DUI case because the machine had been tested with tap water instead of distilled water. Florida Administrative rules require breath test machines be tested with distilled water. Without knowing what is in the tap water, it can not be established that the breath test machines were properly calibrated to be accurate. Yet another reason not to voluntarily submit your liberty to junk science.

It is time to re-evaluate our attitudes about alcohol and other drugs
By Chip Parkhurst a guest columnist to the ocregister.com.

In purely objective terms, beverage alcohol is a recreational hard drug: mind-numbing, easy to misuse and intimately connected with aggression, carelessness, and despair. When a drugged individual is involved in a violent crime or an accident, the drug is most often alcohol. In America, alcohol is responsible for 65 percent of murders, 55 percent of college rapes (that’s 70,000 per year), 39 percent of traffic fatalities, 33 percent of all trauma injuries, 33 percent of drownings and other accidental deaths, and 25 percent of teen suicides. About 150,000 Americans die from chronic alcohol-related illnesses each year, and another 3,000 from accidental overdoses.

Police urge, offer DUI alternatives
By MARGIE KACOHA, Daily News Staff Writer
Sunday, December 24, 2006

Drivers who get behind the wheel in Palm Beach after having too much to drink are gambling with an unpleasant encounter with the police.

But residents and guests who’ve overindulged can make the encounter much more amicable by staying off the road and calling Palm Beach police instead.

DUI a prescription for jail time
By Debby Schamber
The Orange Leader

Driving under the influence of prescription medications has become a more common occurrence in Orange. “There has been an increase of DUI versus DWI because of an increase of people being on prescription medication,” said Sgt. L.L. Claybar of the Orange Police Department.

According to reports, shortly after 9: 30 a.m. Nov. 3, an officer was patrolling MacArthur Drive when he noticed a gold-colored vehicle pulling out of a parking lot and across several lanes of traffic. Two vehicles slammed on their brakes to avoid hitting it.

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK: Perdue campaign manager charged with DUI

Gov. Sonny Perdue’s campaign manager, 24-year-old Nick Ayers, was arrested in Atlanta this week and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and failure to maintain his lane.

According to the the Georgia State Patrol: On Wednesday, a few minutes before 11 p.m., a trooper spotted Ayers driving a 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe down East Paces Ferry Road through light traffic at about 50 mph. He was traveling outside of his lane in a 35 mph speed zone. The trooper followed Ayers into a parking lot, where his Tahoe briefly sped up.