San Diego California DUI criminal defense lawyer information

Why does Ashley Pattillo have a November 7 court date?

It's after 2 a.m. The 22-year-old Homer Glen woman has been stopped on suspicion that she's driving drunk, and she's being given a battery of field sobriety tests.

Orland Park police officer Marty Nitsche hits the streets on Thursday, Oct. 2.

Pattillo allegedly says she's just come from a local bar, where she was waiting on customers.

She's supposed to be keeping her head straight as she watches a pen that's being waved side to side in front of her face. She's unable to keep her head still. Pattillo keeps giggling as her head turns to look at the pen.

During the two-minute test, Pattillo apologizes half a dozen times. But, claiming she's sober, she never says what she's sorry for.

Even as alcohol-related traffic fatalities are on the long-term decline - nationwide, they have dipped 33 percent in the past 25 years - Orland Park police say incidents of drunken driving still are staggeringly high: For every one drunken driving arrest Orland Park police officers make on a weekend night, they estimate 100 other inebriated motorists don't get stopped.

During a weekend night shift patrolling the village's bar- and restaurant-lined streets, officers described drunken driving as an intractable problem, saying they don't know why the dangerous behavior hasn't been eradicated.

"With all the publicity that it gets, it's hard to believe that people still do it," Andy Boblak said.

Boblak is Orland Park's most prolific DUI nabber, catching about 30 drunken drivers a year.

To Boblak, the persistence of drunk driving rests in the nature of how alcohol affects the mind: Consuming alcohol impairs one's judgement, keeping a drinker from realizing that he or she is too inebriated to drive.

"Most people think that when their head is spinning, that's considered drunk and anything other than that is OK," he said. "You don't realize your speech is slurred."

Pattillo's stop was initiated moments earlier, when a concerned motorist called 911, telling the dispatcher a silver SUV was driving erratically south on LaGrange Road. Orland Park Police officer Marty Nitsche located the car, a silver Kia Sportage, a few blocks south, at 149th Street. After watching the car swerve and almost hit a raised median, he pulled it off the road, into the parking lot of Orland Park Place shopping center.

As the driver speaks to Nitsche, he notices she has a strong odor of alcohol on her breath, Nitsche would later write in his police report.

At first, she denies drinking.

"Right now she's lying to him, trying to claim she didn't have a drink," Boblak says.

Later, Pattillo says she's just had two drinks.

But Nitsche knows better. Her speech is "slurred and thick tongued," her eyes "bloodshot and glassy," as he later reports, so the officer asks her to step out of her car to take three tests. And she's just failed the first one.

Numbers down, problem persists

According to the national statistics, the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities dropped from 28,000 in 1980 to 17,000 in 2006. "It's on a long-term decline," said Marti Belluschi, who has worked with an alphabet soup of anti-drunken driving groups, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists. "The frustration is that it's still going on."

In Illinois, 594 people died of alcohol-related crash fatalities in 2006, accounting for just under half of all crash fatalities, Belluschi said.

Each year, about 50,000 drivers are arrested in Illinois for driving under the influence, she said.

Some nights Orland Park police will nab three or four drunken drivers, many nights none, Boblak said.

When someone's caught driving drunk, they often are breaking two laws: The first is "driving under the influence," which simply means that a drug - usually alcohol but possibly another controlled substance - has impaired one's motor skills, reflected in skill tests such as the one Pattillo failed.

This law, commonly known as a "DUI," often is confused with the legal 0.08 blood alcohol limit. Under this state law, driving with a blood alcohol level at or above 0.08 is a second offense, commonly tested by a Breathalyzer test.

Concerned drivers are increasingly calling in possible DUIs because cell phones are now ubiquitous.

"They'll usually call it in, but they won't take it a step further and sign a complaint," Boblak said.

But without a signed complaint - or a police officer actually witnessing erratic driving and catching the motorist - there are no grounds to prosecute a drunken driver.

After Pattillo fails the eye test, she's asked to walk in a straight line and lead with her left foot. Before Nitsche asks her to begin, she starts walking. When he stops her, she says, "I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous." Then, when she starts the test again, she leads with her right foot.

Though police officers use specific tests to determine if someone's impaired, they're also using the same clues that any civilian looks for in determining if a friend is sober.

"One time, I had a girl tell me that she was the designated drinker," officer Shawn Walsh said. "Just as you notice when your friends are drunk, we notice, too."

Often times, deciding if a driver is drunk is a tough call. "It's a hard decision as an officer," Walsh said. "When you make a DUI arrest, you're taking someone's life."

Walsh reiterates that Illinois State Law doesn't forbid having any alcohol. "You just can't be impaired."

"What do I do when you're on the border line?" Walsh said. "You've taken the tests, and you're on the edge."

Belluschi thinks that the core problem of drunken driving is that campaigns against it focus on discouraging driving, not excessive drinking.

"In thinking about drunk driving, we continually look at the driving, driving driving," she said. "But we have to make sure that all the offenders get the treatment they need."

Another reason drunken driving persists, Belluschi thinks, is simply that people have done it without getting caught - and therefore think they can continue with impunity.

"One of the worst things that can happen is when you drink and drive home safely," she said. "Then, you're be more likely to do it again."

Though society has become intolerant of drunken driving in the past two decades, Belluschi says, she still sees more work.

"We have to make it not a threat to your macho-ness if I take your keys," she said. "The message has to be not that I am challenging you, but that I care about you."

More than two drinks

Pattillo is failing the third and final test. Her task is to raise her leg and look at it as she counts to 30. After Pattillo counts to 10, she loses her balance. She keeps apologizing.

"I'm so nervous," she says. "My heart is beating."

Nitsche asks her four times if she's willing to submit to a portable Breathalyzer test. "This will take the nerves out of everything," he says.

Pattillo declines, saying her boss at the bar warned her never to submit to the test.

He arrests her and whisks her across LaGrange Road to the headquarters.

Though there still are thousands of drunken drivers on the road each weekend, advocates see a solution: technology.

"Car manufacturers will put in alcohol sensors in steering wheels," AAIM executive director Charlene Chapman said. "It will be in every car in 20 years."

Engineers already have developed alcohol-sensing technologies, which keep a car from being driven when it gets a whiff of a drunken driver, but designers will need another 10 years to perfect the devices, Chapman said. Passing a federal law will take another 10 years, she thinks.

She compared the alcohol sensors, or interlocks, to seat belts. "They're in every car now," she said. "People take them for granted."

But it's not clear that automakers want the new technology to become mandatory. Wade Newton, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said car companies are supportive of a "comprehensive look" at interlocks but wouldn't say they are necessarily in favor of the devices.

"It has to be non-invasive," he said. The technology can't hassle the sober driver."

Boblak stays with Pattillo's car, waiting for a tow. To get her car back, Pattillo will have to pay Orland Park's impound fee of $500 - which was raised last summer to deter drunken driving.

In the station, Pattillo agrees to take a Breathalyzer. While waiting the for a Breathalyzer - authorities must make sure she doesn't vomit or bleed in her mouth, which could artificially inflate her blood alcohol level - she cries.

Seconds after she puffs into a machine, the alleged results are printed on a receipt. Nitsche alleges: .184, well over twice the legal limit.