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North Carolina native Randy Travis has had his second brush with the law of the year on alcohol related allegations. The singer was accused of an alcohol offense in February, after law enforcement found the musician sitting in his car with an open bottle of wine outside a church. Late Tuesday evening, law enforcement in Texas claims that a convenience store clerk called to report a naked man who tried to buy cigarettes at the store. The clerk says that the regular customer left in frustration because he did not have any pockets for cash or a wallet to pay for the smokes.

A short time later, police say a second caller reported a man lying in the street. Law enforcement reportedly arrived to find Travis, naked and bruised, near his crashed Trans Am in a construction zone. Police arrested Travis on suspicion of DWI. But the musician’s legal troubles deepened while troopers transported Travis after the DWI arrest.

Generally, law enforcement occasionally tacks on charges after a DWI investigation related to allegations of resisting arrest and similar claims. In the recent Randy Travis incident in Texas, law enforcement accuses the North Carolina native of threatening police officers. Authorities allege Travis threatened to shoot and kill the officers.

Law enforcement claims Travis refused to submit to an alcohol test after the DWI arrest. Authorities reportedly obtained a blood sample at an area hospital, purportedly under that state’s DWI and implied consent laws. The musician reportedly was released from jail on ,000 bond Wednesday morning.

Source: Los Angeles Times, “Randy Travis: Naked DWI arrest allegedly escalated with threats,” Christie D’Zurilla, Aug. 8, 2012

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I’ve written in the past about the growing practice of forcibly taking blood from a drunk driving suspect, sometimes done by a cop in the field.  See, for example, Taking Blood by Force, Forced Blood Draws by Cops: Constitutional?, Forced Blood Draws by Cops Spreading, Blood Draws in the Back Seat by the Dashboard Light and Forced Blood Draws: Citizen Backlash?.   

Here’s a new tactic: threaten the suspect with strapping him down and painfully jabbing a needle into him (however many times it takes to get a blood sample)…unless he agrees to "voluntarily" take a breath test.

Texas Blood Test Aims at Drunk Drivers

Wall Street Journal, Dec. 11 —  Texans arrested for drunken driving should be prepared to give blood this holiday season.

Cities and counties across the state are increasingly demanding that drunken-driving suspects who refuse to take breathalyzer tests submit to blood tests that measure the amount of alcohol in their systems.

The blood-test policy—dubbed "no refusal" by law-enforcement officials, because it prevents drivers from refusing to provide evidence of intoxication—has grown from a novel procedure used in a few Texas jurisdictions to an initiative used by police statewide, particularly during weekends and holidays when drunken driving is most common. The no-refusal initiative has also caught on in other states, including Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and Missouri…

Texas courts have uniformly upheld the constitutionality of mandatory blood testing, attorneys said. But criminal-defense lawyers say such mandatory tests trample suspects’ rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. "It’s an erosion of civil liberties," said Austin defense lawyer Samuel Bassett. "If we can poke people involuntarily for evidence, where do we draw the line?"…

Police are empowered to strap a suspect to a chair, if necessary, to obtain a blood sample. That allows blood to be drawn quickly—a key benefit to prosecutors because blood-alcohol concentrations dissipate over time…

In El Paso, police find that the policy actually encourages people to submit to breath tests. "We give people the option of blowing into a tube or getting poked with a needle," said Lt. Rod Liston. "People increasingly are going with the less painful option."…

Hmmm…Threatening to "poke" a suspect with a needle actually "encourages" him to submit to a breath test?  What a surprise!  But I guess this wouldn’t be "torture" using the Attorney General’s definition requiring organ failure.

So:  "Submit to a breath test…or we’ll strap you into a chair and jam needles into you."   Welcome to the War on Terrorism…I mean, Drunk Driving.
 

DUI BLOG

The NAACP is pledging to lead what it says will be a strategic focused attack on the civil rights problems facing African-American men, not the least of which is the high percentage of Blacks that wind up incarcerated in the United States.

Researchers presenting at the organization’s annual convention in Los Angeles this week suggested that one of the reasons for the high rate is that U.S. lawmakers have criminalized a long list of non-violent behaviors involving drugs. In North Carolina these can include cases alleging prescription fraud, drug possession, or intent to sell. Even convictions on such charges as underage drinking and underage DUI during one’s student days can cast an unwanted shadow over a person’s future for years.

At the convention for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, presenters told the audience that drug arrests in the U.S. have more than tripled in the last 25 years. According to officials of the U.S. Student Association and the Criminal Justice Program, the United States leads the world in incarcerations, accounting for 25 percent of all people jailed around the world. And they say that in 2005 alone, nearly 43 percent of all drug arrests were for offenses involving marijuana.

In one major speech to delegates NAACP leader Ben Jealous said, “We can’t ignore that 45 percent of Black males are on a path right now to end up chronically unemployed, incarcerated or dead. Nor can we ignore that we have more Black men in prisons than in our universities.”

He pledged that the organization will work on a nationwide basis to build a coalition to reverse such trends.

Source: Los Angeles Wave, “NAACP pledging renewed focus against threats to civil rights,” Olu Alemoru, Andre Herndon and Leiloni De Gruy 27 Jul 2011

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