Thanks to improved awareness, harsher penalties, and significant legislative efforts, drunk driving fatalities in Illinois have decreased by over 37 percent between 2002 and 2012. Alcohol-impaired driving remains a serious problem in Illinois and throughout the country. In the United Staes in 2013, one person every 52 minutes was killed due to a…
Earlier this month, a North Carolina appellate court held that the Fourth Amendment does not apply in driver’s license revocation hearings, “even if those proceedings could be viewed as quasi-criminal in nature.”In 2013, Myra Lynne Combs was stopped by North Carolina police without reasonable suspicion in violation of the Fourth Amendment.…
This month, the Fifth District Court of Appeal reversed a defendant’s DUI conviction based on the arresting officer’s Fourth Amendment violation. The defendant, Katelyn Bozarth, was charged with two counts of DUI after being arrested in a private driveway in Wayne County. She filed a motion to quash the arrest and…
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) released a report last Thursday evaluating the status of drinking and driving across the United States. The report was put together by MADD’s Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving, a program launched in 2006 in response to over 13,000 annual drunk driving fatalities in the United States. Eight years…
The Illinois State Bar Association submitted a bill to the Illinois legislature last month seeking to amend Illinois’ no-tolerance DUI law. The bill refers to a 2011 incident in Lake Island where driver Scott Shirey was charged with homicide when his son died in a car crash. The accident was not…
Defendant, Mr. Chiaravalle, was charged with a DUI in January 2014. His attorneys filed a pre-trial motion to bar the admission of his Breathylzer test, arguing it was improperly administered. The lower court granted the motion and the state appealed. The appellate court agreed with the state and reversed.In February of…
A Champaign County trial judge’s improper response to deliberating jurors prompted an Illinois appellate court to reverse one defendant’s aggravated DUI conviction recently. Mr. Hasselbring, 31, was charged after cocaine metabolites were found in his blood following a motorcycle accident killing his friend, a Mr. Piat, age 26. Piat died in November 2010 from head trauma sustained during the September…
Bob Avellini, Chicago Bears quarterback from 1975 to 1984, was sentenced last month to 18 months in prison for an aggravated DUI. Avellini agreed to plead guilty in exchange for the sentence. Had he not taken the plea, Avellini could have been sentenced to up to seven years for the felony DUI. DuPage…
The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. Searches and seizures executed without a warrant are presumed unreasonable unless there is an established exception. The Supreme Court has found the act of drawing an individual’s blood (such as in a DUI investigation) to be a form of a…
Illinois recently updated its DUI law in response to its new medical marijuana law, which became effective in January of 2014. Under the new law, an authorized medical marijuana user can legally use marijuana and operate a motor vehicle as long as he or she is not impaired while driving.…