Yet Another Judge Refuses to Blow
May 16th, 2008 at 10:43am Aaron Chambers
Illinois judges are on a roll:
Almost without exception, any Illinois judge arrested for DUI refuses to take a breath test. Many also refuse the field sobriety test.
From the AP, via the Daily Chronicle:
TINLEY PARK, Ill. - A Cook County judge is expected to appear in court next month on drunken driving charges filed last week in the southern Chicago suburb of Tinley Park.
Tinley Park Police Commander Rick Bruno said Thursday that 47-year-old Judge Sheila McGinnis of Chicago was charged with misdemeanor driving under the influence after she struck another vehicle stopped at a traffic light on the evening of May 8.
Bruno said it appeared McGinnis was not traveling at a high speed, and neither she nor the five occupants of the minivan she struck were injured.
Officers said that when police arrived, McGinnis appeared intoxicated and smelled strongly of alcohol, but she refused to submit to a field sobriety test or a breath analysis.
Since covering appellate courts for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin in 1999 and 2000, I’ve been intrigued by the uncanny consistency with which judges handle DUI arrests.
Who knows the law better than a judge?
Last spring, I authored an overview on this topic for the Register Star:
Cases filed by the state’s Judicial Inquiry Board, which prosecutes judicial misconduct, read like a playbook for limiting your culpability during a DUI stop. […]
John Karns, an appellate court justice from southern Illinois, refused to blow when he was arrested for DUI in 1978. He threatened to fight police officers and “challenged one or more of the police personnel to engage in such fighting,” the JIB said.
The next morning, Karns and his lawyer seized all police documents pertaining to his arrest. The JIB said he and his lawyer destroyed or suppressed them, and that he was never prosecuted.
The JIB prosecuted two other judges arrested for DUI in the 1970s, but its complaints in those cases make no mention of breath or field sobriety tests. In that decade, breath tests were not yet widely used.
George Ray, a trial judge in central Illinois, refused field sobriety and breath tests during his DUI stop in 1989. A sheriff’s deputy stopped him for swerving in and out of his lane 20 minutes after seeing the judge sleeping in his vehicle outside a tavern.
Ray was convicted of improper lane usage but the DUI charge was dropped.
Edwin Gausselin, a Cook County judge, was stopped in 1998 for DUI in Michigan City, Ind. He refused field sobriety and breath tests, and officers later found an open bottle of whiskey in his vehicle. An Indiana judge dismissed a drunken driving and two other criminal charges, according to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.
The same year, a sheriff’s deputy arrested LaSalle County Judge Cynthia Raccuglia for DUI. The deputy discovered her vehicle in the middle of a street after another motorist towed it from a ditch. As the deputy followed her from the scene, the judge steered her vehicle off the road and attempted to drive down railroad tracks.
Raccuglia submitted to field sobriety tests but refused to take a breath test. She pleaded guilty to reckless driving.
Then in late April, there was this:
Lake County Chief Judge David Hall refused to take Breathalyzer and field sobriety tests Saturday morning when he was pulled over for allegedly weaving across the center lane, according to Lake County court documents.
Entry Filed under: DUI
8 Comments Add your own
1. LGC | May 16th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
So, do these people lose driving priveleges? Isn’t it illegal to refuse the test in itself? In your opinion, is it in one’s best legal interests to not take the breathlayzer? Please, I need the answers to these questions.
2. Aaron Chambers | May 16th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
If you read the coverage to which this post links, you will find the answer to your first two questions.
As to your third question, you’re welcome to draw whatever inference you may wish to draw from the actions of judges, as reported by this and other newspapers.
If you’d like a more definitive legal opinion, then you may wish to consult with a lawyer.
I am not a lawyer. I am not offering legal advice. I am a reporter, and I’m reporting on research and observation.
3. thedudeabides | May 16th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
You are not required to submit any evidence which may be used to prosecute you, as per the 5th amendment. Your driving rights may be affected in the short term, but that’s a small tradeoff for no DUI on your record.
….nor am I a lawyer. Don’t listen to my advice.
4. Aaron Chambers | May 16th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Note to readers: The “LGC” who posted above is not the same LGC who serves as executive editor of this newspaper.
5. Linda Grist Cunningham | May 16th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
But, I am the executive editor of the Register Star. And, if I have a question for my staff, I ask them; I don’t need to do it through their blogs.. And, none of us, including me, post anonymously.
6. Aaron Chambers | May 17th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Hokumboy,
This blog would not be the appropriate place for you to insult my executive editor. Accordingly, I deleted your comment.
If you wish to weigh in regarding the subject of this post, please do. Otherwise, take your comments elsewhere.
7. Bookworm | May 18th, 2008 at 7:21 am
At first glance the practice of refusing to blow looks like a case of judges using their authority to get away with something the “average” person can’t.
However, the point of these articles is that this is a legal option open to ANYONE pulled over for DUI. You can choose to accept an immediate penalty (6 month suspension) or take the chance of receiving a harsher penalty later (jail time, fines).
The bottom line is that either way, “you drink, you drive, you lose”… but you potentially lose more if you take the tests.
Of course, let’s not lose sight of the fact that any of these judges (particularly the ones who were seen driving erratically) could have ended up dead or permanently injured or killing someone else if they hadn’t been stopped. Be careful out there!
8. Bookworm | May 24th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Well, I wonder what these judges are going to think of the “No Refusal” program taking place in Peoria and in Kane County… whereby if anyone stopped on suspicion of DUI refuses a sobriety test, they will be detained and a judge contacted to obtain a search warrant. Once the warrant is obtained, the person must either submit to blood and breathalyzer tests, or risk charges of resisting a peace officer, which is a misdemeanor offense as serious as DUI. It will be interesting to see what happens if a judge runs into this situation.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed