‘Oversight’ reflects lax S.C. attitude toward DUI

IT’S TEMPTING TO blame a temporary bureaucratic snafu for hundreds of DUI suspects getting their licenses back after no one bothered to tell police about their hearings. After all, the court has come up with a way to notify police, and the Legislature is writing a more permanent fix into law. No bad guys here; just some miscommunication. No harm, no foul.

But there is harm.

Try to imagine officials taking such a ho-hum attitude if judges had dismissed charges against hundreds of people accused of burglary or assault or murder because no one bothered to notify the prosecutor of the trial. Think about how outraged we get when a magistrate lets an accused serial rapist out on personal recognizance. When a drunken driver gets back behind the wheel, that’s a crime waiting to happen.

There’s culpability here, all right. It starts with the Department of Motor Vehicles and the administrative law court, which took over DMV’s responsibility for license suspension hearings in January, and it likely extends to the Highway Patrol and local police departments. Week after week, people charged with drunken driving got their licenses back because police didn’t show up to testify against them, and no one did a thing. How much initiative does it take for a judge to pick up the phone and ask why officers aren’t showing up? How much effort does it take for police to ask why (as far as they know) no hearings have been held all year?

It’s not like no one knew what was happening. In mid-February, legislators knew enough to introduce two bills to make sure police are notified. But no one outside the State House lifted a finger until The State’s Rick Brundrett started asking questions, several weeks later; then suddenly the court’s chief judge, Marvin Kittrell, said he would start notifying police.

Obviously, this hadn’t been a priority for Mr. Kittrell or his counterparts at other state and local agencies. Little wonder. Keeping drunken drivers off the roads is not a priority in this state.

The priority in our Legislature is making sure drunken drivers aren’t inconvenienced too much. It’s making sure they have every opportunity to escape culpability for putting innocent lives at risk.

If that sounds harsh, consider the record. Mothers Against Drunk Driving says only three states have friendlier laws toward drunken driving than ours.

Lawmakers refuse to set high penalties for drivers who won’t take a breath test, or to set tougher drunkenness standards for people who have already been convicted of DUI. Worst of all, they have refused for five years to close loopholes that make our tough “illegal per se” law so useless that police won’t bring charges under it, opting instead to use the older law it was supposed to improve. What that means is that for all practical purposes, South Carolina remains one of just two states where it’s not illegal to drive with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or 0.10.

And now we learn we haven’t even been letting police know to show up in court to try to make automatic license suspensions stick. Fix that, but let’s not pretend that solves our problem. Until legislators start treating this like the crime that it is, South Carolina will continue to lead the nation in the number of people slaughtered by drunken drivers.

email this

print this