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Ichabod!

04 December 2005 08:22

Old New Mexico Woe, Drinking and Driving, Is Vexing State Anew

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: December 4, 2005

SANTA FE, N.M. - After pleading guilty to drunken driving, Joseph Tapia followed the judge's orders and showed up one night in November at a forum at Santa Fe Community College to hear from accident victims.

Rachel O'Connor was appointed last year by the New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, to deal with the state's drunken-driving problem.

The trouble was, Mr. Tapia appeared to be drunk.

"He was making sounds, staggering and swaying as he stood in line, telling people to hurry up," Sgt. Joseph O'Brien, a Santa Fe County sheriff's deputy, told the sentencing judge, Magistrate Pat Casados, after tracking her down at home while Mr. Tapia, a 51-year-old suspended lawyer and repeat offender, stood in handcuffs.

The episode highlights the intractability of the problem of drunken driving in New Mexico, which until the early 1990's regularly led the nation in the rate of alcohol-related road deaths.

But the carnage stirred an outcry, leading to legislative measures that cut the toll and made New Mexico something of a model.

Now experts worry that despite their best efforts, the gains are eroding.

New Mexico is still seeking solutions. It is the only state with a D.W.I. czar. A groundbreaking federal grant has put 10 full-time officers on patrol for drunken drivers in five problem counties. And this year New Mexico became the first state to require first offenders to install a device on their vehicles that prevents their starting if the driver's breath betrays appreciable alcohol.

But with fatalities again on the rise, some embarrassing incidents involving public officials and a string of deaths involving serial offenders, some of whom were still on the roads after as many as two dozen arrests for driving while intoxicated, experts worry that New Mexico is losing ground.

Recently, an Indian tribal police chief was charged with drunken driving after a wreck; the chief business officer for the Albuquerque school system was accused of driving drunk and pleaded no contest; a judge was forced to resign after intervening to release a friend arrested for drunken driving; a chief state district judge resigned after pleading guilty to aggravated D.W.I. and possession of cocaine; another judge quit after being accused of altering court records to make her appear to have been tougher on offenders, and two Albuquerque police officers in the D.W.I. unit were found to have drunken-driving convictions.

New Mexico is hardly alone in suffering from what has been called the most common crime in the United States. Nationwide, about 1.5 million drunken-driving cases are filed annually - 300,000 more than all theft and larceny cases combined, according to F.B.I. figures. The impact has been disproportional in New Mexico, a largely poor and rural state of about 1.9 million people, where overburdened courts, haphazard record-keeping, ethnic and cultural factors, and a society that long winked at alcohol abuse are all cited as factors.

The problem is more complex than mere alcohol consumption. New Hampshire leads the nation in drinking, with 4 gallons a year per person, far more than New Mexico's 2.4 gallons. But New Hampshire's alcohol-related road fatality rate is less than half of New Mexico's.

"Why, after all this legislation, this funding, this research, the grass-roots programs, why are we not making better progress now?" asked Nancy Owen Lewis, an anthropologist specializing in addiction studies and the director of academic programs for the School of American Research in Santa Fe.

Dr. Lewis spoke in October at a conference on the problem held at the school, where Judith Scasserra-Cinciripini had worked until she was killed on her bicycle on July 27 by a drunken driver with three convictions and a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit of 0.08 grams per deciliter. The driver pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and was sentenced Nov. 23 to 12 years in prison.

In September, a multiple offender in Albuquerque killed a court employee who happened to have processed some of the driver's previous drunken-driving arrests. The driver, Ruby Sanchez, is being held on $250,000 bond and is awaiting trial.

"There is a long history of D.W.I. in New Mexico," said Rachel O'Connor, an injury specialist named last year by Gov. Bill Richardson to coordinate research and enforcement programs as the first D.W.I. czar.

As far back as 1913, the first New Mexico Legislature voted to jail and fine drunken drivers. By 1982, when 375 people died in alcohol-related vehicle accidents, New Mexico had the worst record in the nation, more than three deaths for every 100 million vehicle miles - almost twice the national average, according to Federal Highway Administration figures.

The state sought various remedies, passing a measure holding liquor sellers accountable for intoxicated customers involved in serious accidents. It revoked licenses of drivers with a blood alcohol level of 0.10, won court approval for sobriety checkpoints and banned open alcohol containers in vehicles.

But nothing galvanized public action like a crash in 1992 when a drunken driver going the wrong way on Interstate 40 killed an Albuquerque woman and her three daughters on Christmas Eve.

In the ensuing furor, with the driver, Gordon House, sentenced to 22 years in prison, the drunken-driving threshold was lowered to 0.08, from 0.10, jail terms were specified for repeat offenders, liquor drive-up windows were shuttered and licensing restrictions were expanded.

By 2000 fatalities had dropped by about 48 percent, to 194, with Montana and six other states and Puerto Rico overtaking New Mexico in the rate of alcohol-related road deaths.

Since then, the number of New Mexico deaths has crept back up, to 219 last year, prompting an investigation by The Albuquerque Journal. Arrests, which had hit a high of 23,597 in 1993, declined to a low of 18,719 in 1999 but began climbing the following year to 19,400 last year.

At the same time, convictions dropped from a high of 17,392 in 1993 to a 20-year-low of 11,735 last year. Conviction rates dropped from nearly 75 percent in 1985 to 60 percent last year. And drunken drivers still kill people on New Mexican roads at twice the national average, state figures show.

"What everybody gets flabbergasted about are the repeat offenders," said Linda Atkinson, executive director of the D.W.I. Resource Center, a nonprofit victims-advocacy group in Albuquerque. But, Ms. Atkinson said, first offenders account for 70 percent of the drunken-driving fatalities.

The challenge, experts said, is prevention.

"People are trying to enact laws based on emotion rather than what works," said State Senator Phil A. Griego, a three-term Democrat who credited his two arrests for drunken driving and the "learning experience" of three days in jail in 2002 for helping lead him to sobriety and prominence as an anti-D.W.I. crusader.

What worked, Mr. Griego said, were tough law-enforcement and the forced installation of ignition-interlock devices, under the law he co-sponsored. He credited the device, which is set off by a blood-alcohol level of 0.025, with helping him stay sober.

"I was probably a drunk for 28 years," said Mr. Griego, who is 57. "There was no way I was going to stop until I killed somebody, killed myself or got thrown in jail."

Ms. Atkinson, of the D.W.I. Resource Center, said that while the research and the laws and the money were in place, "we haven't been able to put the pieces together."

Terry Huertaz, executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in New Mexico, said many factors worsened the state's problem, including the proximity to Mexico, where young people flock for inexpensive drinks and entertainment.

Ms. Huertaz said a 2001 federal study also showed that Indians and Hispanics, two major population groups in New Mexico, had a disproportionately larger chance of getting into an accident after drinking than other groups, and that offenders often slipped through a chaotic and overburdened court system.

Many cases are heard in municipal courts, where no transcripts are made of the proceedings and judges often lack law degrees and receive minimal legal training.

But judges reject the blame. George Anaya Jr., a Santa Fe magistrate who was in the audience at the conference after the death of Ms. Scasserra-Cinciripini, grew upset, standing to say that probation officers were overwhelmed with monitoring offenders.

Judge Anaya said high turnover in the district attorney's office meant cases were transferred from lawyer to lawyer, and cited an "outrageous" scarcity of space for keeping records.

"There's a revolving door with the D.A.'s," he said. New Mexico this year increased penalties for drunken driving. First offenders lose their licenses for a year and must use the ignition device for a year. Limited licenses for driving to work were abolished. Drivers with multiple offenses lose their licenses for up to five years.

Criminal penalties can be up to 90 days in jail for first offenders and three years for a seventh conviction. But maximum penalties are rarely imposed.

If anything illustrated the seriousness of the problem, it was the appearance of Mr. Tapia at his court-ordered victim impact panel at the community college on Nov. 9.

Lining up to pay his $20 and register with the other 65 offenders alongside posters of gruesome accident scenes, Mr. Tapia created a disturbance, drawing the attention of Sergeant O'Brien, who was there to deliver one of the lectures.

"If you can't come in sober, you're not going to be let in," the officer said.

Mr. Tapia, whose law license was suspended for "probation violations," was no stranger to Mike Eiskant, a Santa Fe police officer who arrived with a Breathalyzer. "When I saw him, I said, 'I know this guy,' " said Officer Eiskant, who recalled chasing him in a car and on foot several years ago in another drunken-driving case.

"You've arrested me a couple of times" Mr. Tapia acknowledged. After refusing several times to take a breath test - "What part of 'no' don't you understand?" he asked - Mr. Tapia was arrested for disorderly conduct.

"I come to class and this is how they treat me," he said.

Officer Eiskant said that little surprised him anymore. "I've seen people come drunk to their D.W.I. trial," he said.