CLOSING THE DWI LOOPHOLE: AUTHORITIES COMBAT DRUNKEN DRIVING

Drunken driving is a crime officials throughout Cape Girardeau County try to combat at every level -- in the legislature, the courthouse, the roadway and the schoolroom.

Although the number of DWI cases is slowly dropping statewide, officials in Cape Girardeau County continue to battle the problem aggressively.

In 1997, almost 17 percent of the criminal cases filed by the county prosecuting attorney were DWI cases, and as of Aug. 12, 220 of the prosecutor's 1,267 cases, or 17.3 percent, are DWI cases.

Prosecutors also combat DWIs at the state Capitol. Because of Cape Girardeau Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle's suggestion to Attorney General Jay Nixon and members of the state legislature, a loophole in DWI laws was closed.

Before changing the law, a drunk driver who killed or injured another person might be treated more leniently by the courts for subsequent offenses than a person convicted of driving while intoxicated but did not injure anyone.

A drunken driver who killed or injured another person because of an automobile accident could be charged with involuntary manslaughter or felony assault. But if convicted, the person's manslaughter or assault conviction would not count as a prior offense to make the person a prior or persistent offender.

In a December 1996 letter to Nixon and members of the Senate and House Judiciary and Criminal Jurisprudence committees, Swingle said Missouri had a system where a drunken driver sent to prison for seven years for involuntary manslaughter and then after being released from prison committed another DWI might only be charged as a first-time offender.

"This would apply even if he stopped at a bar and drove drunk on his way home from prison," Swingle told Nixon.

After 1 1/2 years, the legislature passed a law this year closing the loophole. The governor signed the bill May 19 and, because of an emergency clause, it became law immediately.

Swingle first noticed the loophole in 1996 when he was forced to charge Johnny Wayne Newell Jr. as a first-time offender for DWI even though Newell had shortly before been released from prison for involuntary manslaughter.

Newell had been convicted twice before for alcohol-related offenses. His first conviction was more than 10 years old and could not be counted against him. The second was for manslaughter.

The manslaughter conviction was from an automobile accident in 1990 that killed Cathy Wilson of Oak Ridge. Newell, who was driving a truck that hit Wilson's car head-on, was legally drunk. He was sentenced to four years in prison and served 13 months.

When he learned of the change in the law, Swingle said, "The wheels of justice can work slowly, but at least they work."

As legislators work to toughen DWI laws, police throughout the county work to combat drunken driving by enforcing the laws.

Cape Girardeau police work not only through the regular patrols of officers trained to look for signs of drunken driving but through overtime enforcement patrol and sobriety checkpoints.

The overtime enforcement patrol, implemented this year with funds through Cape Girardeau Safe Communities, puts two officers on the streets on Friday and Saturday nights, when there are the highest incidents of drunken driving.

The city has used sobriety checkpoints since 1982, with an eight-year period beginning in 1988 when checkpoints weren't used. They were reintroduced in 1996 when the department developed what spokesman Sgt. Carl Kinnison called "a renewed aggressive philosophy of cutting down on drunken driving."

Checkpoints are used once a month or two by the department at places in the city where there are high numbers of alcohol-related accidents and arrests. The city's next checkpoint is scheduled for next weekend at an undisclosed site.

"The purpose of the checkpoints is the deterrent value," Kinnison said. "We're not there to make arrests, but to cut down on drunken driving."

Police Sgt. J.R. Davis agreed.

"There are a lot more drunks on the road than police officers," said Davis of the city's traffic division. "There is no way we arrest them all. The only way to stop them is to make them afraid that they are going to be arrested."

In January, a breath-alcohol testing (BAT) van was donated to the department by the Missouri Division of Highway Safety to aid in the checkpoints. The van allows officers to conduct Breathalyzer tests at the checkpoint.

Videotape equipment in the van records the field sobriety and Breathalyzer tests. The tape can later be used in court as evidence.

But the police are trying to deter drunken driving not only through sobriety checkpoints but also through education programs designed to stop the problem before it starts.

Working from the police department, Cape Girardeau Safe Communities Program has established several programs to educate teen-agers and adult offenders of the dangers of drinking and driving. Many programs run in conjunction with Safe Communities are aimed at first-time offenders.

The Traffic Offenders Program, run now by St. Francis Medical Center, was established by Safe Communities to show DWI and other traffic offenders the health dangers associated with poor driving. Offenders, sentenced to the program by a judge, must enter the hospital as if they were trauma patients coming to the hospital after a major crash. Hospital personnel take the offenders through the procedure.

The DWI Victim Impact Panel, run in connection with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, gives DWI offenders a chance to hear actual stories from local people who have lost family members in drunken-driving accidents. (See related story.)

The Safe Communities program also sponsors Team Spirit Leadership Training, a conference to help high school students teach each other about the dangers of drunken driving and to plan programs to promote responsible driving among teen-agers.

"They're trained to do DWI education and prevention because traffic accidents are the number one killer of teens," said Sharee Galnore, Safe Communities coordinator.

Last year 43 high school students were killed in alcohol-related traffic accidents in Missouri, Galnore said.

Last week, about 100 students from seven schools attended the 80-hour leadership training at the Holiday Inn Convention Center in Cape Girardeau.

Fast Facts

1997 Missouri Traffic Crashes

* 4.8 percent of all traffic crashes were drinking related. 20.6 percent of all fatal traffic crashes involved alcohol. A total of 205 people were killed and 4,233 were injured in drinking-related traffic crashes.

* One person was killed or injured in drinking-related traffic crashes every 1.2 hours in Missouri.

* Of all drinking-related traffic crashes, 59.3 percent occured on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and 64.8 percent occurred between 7 p.m. at 3 a.m.

* 81.5 percent of drinking drivers were male and 18.5 percent were female. The average age was 33.7 years.

*Of the drinking drivers, 60.1 percent were driving automobiles 27.8 were driving pick-up trucks and 5.7 percent were driving sport utility vehicles at the time of the crash. The remaining 6.4 percent were driving some other type of motorized or non-motorized vehicle.

* 149 deaths or 72.7 percent of all drinking-related fatalities occurred in rural areas.

* Cape Girardeau County ranked 18th among 115 Missouri counties in the frequency of drinking-related traffic crashes. The city of Cape Girardeau ranked 13th among cities with populations of 1,000 or more in the frequency of drinking-related traffic crashes.

Information supplied by the Missouri Department of Public Safety, Division of Highway Safety.