San Diego DUI criminal defense attorneys at San Diego County DUI Law Center, including Drunk Driving defense lawyer specialist Rick Mueller, were told about one judge who wants interlock devices. Here's his take:

He was the first California judge to order convicted DUI drivers to install ignition-interlock devices in their vehicles. The device is designed to stop people who have been drinking alcohol from starting their cars by requiring them first to blow into it. If there is alcohol on the driver's breath, the California DUI device will not allow the ignition system to operate.

Ordering convicted California DUI drivers to install these devices seems to this judge to be a matter of common sense and basic safety. But in fact, it was far more complicated. The California courts may soon require judges to follow this California DUI judge's lead on ignition-interlock sentencing.

20 years later, the judge is waiting on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature. Fellow judges did not support this California DUI judge's ignition-interlock sentences. Judges, no less than the rest of us, resist change. Colleagues who were assigned to calendars filled with California DUI charges wanted to dispose of these cases quickly and quietly, obtaining guilty pleas as early in the process as possible. Completing the additional paperwork that went with ignition-interlock devices did not sit well with them.

There was also initial opposition from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In their view, the ignition-interlock devices weren't punitive enough; they preferred more jail time for California DUI / drunk drivers. Incarceration, however, is a temporary remedy. As the recidivism numbers clearly demonstrate, convicted California DUI drivers return to the roads in numbers too great to ignore.

Then there was the issue of fairness, since the devices are expensive. (20 years ago, the installation fee was $150 and the lease fee was $50 per month; prices have gone up a bit.) Convicted California DUI drivers are often low-income.

By ordering them to use the devices, this California DUI judge was effectively raising their fines, so he lowered those to offset the fees. That proved unacceptable to Santa Clara County's district attorney's office, which took the position that California DUI judges could not lawfully reduce drunk driving fines

Now 50 states have laws permitting the imposition of ignition-interlock devices as sentencing alternatives for drunk drivers. The devices have a proven track record as reportedly an effective deterrent. The American Journal of Preventive Medicine notes that five out of six studies found that interlocks reduced the rate of recidivism for DWI charges. Participants in the interlock programs were 15 percent to 69 percent less likely than other offenders to be rearrested for drunk driving.

Still judges often fail to order the installations, even when the law requires it. Anecdotally, you can take your pick of explanations: too much paperwork; too much court time to review the results of the breath printouts; opposition to any other sentencing options other than jail; ignorance of the fact that this is a California DUI sentencing alternative.

Just as convicted California DUI drivers must be made to use the devices, California DUI judges must be made to order them. The well-documented carnage on our highways and the tremendous economic impact wreaked upon us by California DUI drunk drivers are far too great to leave to judicial whim.

This California DUI bill rests on the governor's desk, which passed earlier this month - it would require judges to order the installation of ignition-interlock devices in the vehicles of convicted first-time California DUI drivers and repeat California DUI drivers, as a pilot project in the counties of Los Angeles, Alameda, Sacramento, and Tulare.

If Schwarzenegger signs the bill, the pilot program would start in July 2010 and become statewide law in 2016. This California DUI legislation is supported by a wide array of law enforcement agencies, including MADD, which has changed its stance on ignition-interlock sentencing.

San Diego DUI criminal defense lawyers wonder what will happen.