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Somewhere between 2:30 and 3:00 Sunday morning on July 27, 2008, Shia LaBeouf was attempting to make a left turn when his truck made contact with another vehicle, causing his truck to flip. According to sources, it was apparent that the injured Shia was intoxicated; he was arrested for a misdemeanor.
The 22-year-old actor was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he was treated for injuries to his head, knee, and hand which required extensive surgery. There was a female passenger in LaBeouf’s car, but neither she nor the driver of the other car was seriously hurt (guess he won’t be the next Lane Garrison or Nick Hogan – not yet anyway).
This is not Shia LaBeouf’s first run-in with the law though it’s by far the most serious. Late last year he was arrested after causing a drunken scene in a Chicago Walgreen’s; the charges were later dropped. Then in the beginning of this year LaBeouf was busted for smoking in a non-smoking area of Burbank, CA.
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After a regional alcohol-program coordinator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement failed to perform a department inspection on an Intoxilyzer 8000 machine, Judge Joyce Williams has opted to toss out breach evidence in nineteen DUI cases that occurred between February 17, 2007 and May 17, 2007.
In most situations, DUI cases are resolved within months of the arrest, but several defense motions have caused delays, according to Assistant State Attorney Greg Marcille.
Judge Williams presided over a hearing where prosecutors attempted to re-introduce breath-test evidence into the effected DUI cases. Without breath-test evidence, the state would be forced to try the cases using other evidence including the smell of alcohol, driving patterns, statements from the defendants, or other physical indicators of intoxication.
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Prosecutors Express Doubt About New DUI Law
Jacksonville, IL. Aug. 2 - While mandatory ignition locks equipped with a breathalyzer are suppose to prevent convicted first-time, drunken drivers from driving illegally, several area prosecutors doubt they will accomplish that purpose.
The new mandate won’t take effect until Jan. 1, but prosecutors for Morgan, Scott and Greene counties are skeptical about how the offenders will be able to afford the costly monitoring device and pay their DUI fines, which the counties already find difficult to collect…
He and other prosecutors see holes in the system. “It’s a step in the right direction,” said Scott County State’s Attorney David Cherry. “And, yet, it’s a costly device and doesn’t guarantee 100 percent that they won’t drive when they shouldn’t. That’s a problem.”
“If you have a crazy drunk who is going to drink and drive, this doesn’t necessarily stop them from driving,” Mr. Bonjean noted. “It only stops them from driving the vehicle that they put the (breathalyzer) device in.
“That doesn’t mean they can’t go get in their friend’s vehicle or their kid’s vehicle or get in their wife’s vehicle, which would be a violation, and drive that,” Mr. Bonjean said.
Greene County State’s Attorney Matt Goetten echoed the two prosecutors’ concerns, adding, “What’s to prevent them from having someone not drinking blow into it and start the car up?”..
Mothers Against Drunk Driving called the new law one of the most important pieces of DUI legislation passed in Illinois in several years, because ignition interlocks stop vehicles from being driven by those who are drunk, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White said in a press release he issued last month.
Those on the front lines are skeptical. “I personally don’t think it will have much, if any, effect on DUI offenders,” Mr. Bonjean said. “The only thing I think it is going to do is create a larger market for the (breathalyzer) devices, themselves.
“I think whoever owns stock in these (breathalyzer) companies is probably going to do fairly well, because this opens up a new (sales) avenue for them,” he said.
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As with the odor of alcohol on the breath, few police reports will fail to include an observation by the arresting officer that the arrestee exhibited “slurred speech”. The officer fully expects to hear slurred speech in a person he suspects is intoxicated, particularly after smelling alcohol on the breath, and it is a psychological fact that we tend to “hear” what we expect to hear. And hearing it supplies the officer with corroboration of his suspicions.
Even assuming the honesty of the officer that the defendant’s speech was slurred, there is little evidence that this is symptomatic of intoxication. Impairment of speech is, for example, a common — and sober — reaction to the stress, fear and nervousness that a police investigation would be expected to engender. Fatigue is another well-known cause.
Skeptical? Consider the following excerpt from Discover magazine (Saunders, “News of Science, Medicine and Technology: Straight Talk”, 21(1) Discover (Oct. 2000).
Bartenders, police officers and hospital workers routinely identify drunks by their slurred speech. Several investigative groups judged the captain of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker to be intoxicated based solely on the sound of his voice in his radio transmissions. But a team led by Harry Holien, a phonetician at the University of Florida, has found that even self-proclaimed experts are pretty bad at estimating people’s alcohol levels by the way they talk.
Hollien asked clinicians who treat chemical dependency, along with a group of everyday people, to listen to recordings made by volunteers when they were sober, then mildly intoxicated, legally impaired, and finally, completely smashed. Listeners consistently overestimated the drunkeness of mildly intoxicated subjects. Conversely, they underestimated the alcohol levels of those who were most inebriated. Professionals were little better at perceiving the truth than the ordinary Joes….
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After being charged with two DUIs last year (2007), Lindsay Lohan spent two months in rehabilitation and was required to perform community service as part of her plea bargain agreement. The 21-year old actress was sentenced to four days in jail, but as part of a plea bargain agreement, her jail time was reduced in exchange for 10 days of community service. Ms. Lohan must fulfill part of her community service by working two, four-hour shifts at a Los Angeles County Morgue and two days working in a hospital emergency room. The reasoning behind this requirement is to show Ms. Lohan that there are real-life consequences to drunk driving.
As this shows, nice people can get arrested too.
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While DUI/DWI is a very serious problem and not a laughing matter, I did find this amusing video on YouTube:
In a new law that takes effect on July 1, 2008, the Florida Legislature has reduced the potential penalties for certain third or subsequent driving with suspended, canceled or revoked license (DWLS) violations. The new law applies if the underlying suspension was for certain reasons, including: failing to pay traffic penalties, failure to pay child support, failing to maintain mandatory auto insurance, and having been designated as a habitual traffic offender (HTO - three violations within 5 years). The Legislature has apparently determined that many persons with multiple DWLS violations do not deserve to be classified as felons. Read on for more details.
Under prior law, a first DWLS violation was classified as a second degree misdemeanor (punishable by up to 60 days in jail); a second DWLS violation was a first degree misdemeanor (up to one year in jail); and a third or subsequent DWLS violation was a third degree felony (up to five years prison).
The new law lists certain types of suspensions, cancelations or revocations (failure to pay traffic fines, maintain insurance, etc.). A first DWLS violation involving one of the suspensions on the list is classified as a second degree misdemeanor; and a second or subsequent such violation is a first degree misdemeanor. Hence, the new law eliminates the third degree felony classification for a third or subsequent DWLS violation involving one of the listed types of license suspensions, cancelations or revocations.
The newly created first degree misdemeanor penalty will only be available to those drivers who do not have a prior forcible felony conviction.
The following is the list of qualifying suspensions, cancelations or revocations under the new law: (1) failing to pay child support as provided in s. 322.245 or s. 61.13016; (2) failing to pay any other financial obligation as provided in s. 322.245 other than those specified in s. 322.245(1); (3) failing to comply with a civil penalty required in s. 318.15 (paying traffic tickets and fees); (4) failing to maintain vehicular financial responsibility as required by chapter 324; (5) failing to comply with attendance or other requirements for minors as set forth in s. 322.091; or (6) having been designated as a habitual traffic offender under s. 322.264(1)(d) (DWLS three times in five years).
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Fort Worth, TX. AP, July 8 - A man accused of delivering baskets of drug-laced cookies to as many as a dozen police departments, causing several officers to become sick, was arrested Tuesday.
Christian V. Phillips, 18, of Watauga, was arrested Tuesday morning after allegedly taking cookies to the Lake Worth police station, where officers had been tipped off that someone was falsely claiming to deliver treats on behalf of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said Lake Worth Police Chief Brett McGuire.
“Our officers took a good whiff and thought they smelled like marijuana,” McGuire said, adding that preliminary tests instead detected traces of LSD…
BUT WAIT!!! THERES MORE……..
Tainted” Cop Cookies Deemed Safe
Lake Worth, TX. AP, July 11 - A teenager jailed on accusations that he delivered drug-laced cookies to a dozen police stations was released Thursday after tests showed no drugs in goodies taken to two departments.
Blue Mound and Lake Worth police said tests by the Tarrant County medical examiner showed there were no controlled substances in cookies delivered this week by Christian V. Phillips, 18, who had been jailed in Lake Worth on $75,000 bond on a charge of tampering with a consumer product.
Phillips walked quickly out of the jail without commenting while accompanied by his father, who then drove away with his son.
Phillips’ attorney said his client was performing community-service work when he delivered goodies for Mothers Against Drunk Driving to about a dozen stations in the past couple of weeks. Only two stations had any treats left over to be tested for drugs.
“I’m really upset that this thing has gotten to this point, that this kid has gotten convicted in the media before any evidence was collected,” said the attorney, L. Patrick Davis.
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