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feelgood · 04-01-2004, 08:05 AM

Quote:

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Saying that depriving Los Angeles residents of their cars may be a worse punishment than jail, city leaders Wednesday proposed seizing and selling the vehicles of those arrested for drunk driving.

Officials in Los Angeles -- which is crisscrossed by freeways and difficult to navigate with public transportation -- think the sprawling metropolis would be the first major U.S. city to confiscate and auction off the cars of drunk drivers, although authorities elsewhere impound vehicles.

"Driving while drunk or under the influence of drugs continues to be a problem in the City of Los Angeles," police chief William Bratton said. "We can arrest and jail a driver under the influence. But unless we can take away their keys and their cars, they can and will be a deadly menace on city streets."

But legal scholars said the proposed law, which would allow the Los Angeles Police Department to keep the money and use it for drunk driving programs, raises issues over due process and property rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

"What's so troubling to me is that they are doing this as a civil proceeding so that you lose all of the protections that are present in a criminal prosecution, such as due process and reasonable doubt," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of Southern California constitutional law professor.

"I have no problem if they want to take away cars as a criminal penalty but they are taking them away before (the drivers) are convicted," he said. "I've lost my car when I haven't been deemed guilty of anything (in court)."

A spokesman for Greig Smith, a Los Angeles city councilman who proposed the law, said enforcement details still needed to be decided by council members. But he said officials were confident that it would pass constitutional muster.

"This is the toughest legislation that's ever been proposed in the country," spokesman Mitch Englander said. "It gives much stronger teeth to helping the LAPD crack down on drunk driving."

Englander said that under the proposed law, the vehicle's owner would have his or her car confiscated even if someone else was arrested for driving it while drunk -- a provision that he said would prompt parents to "think twice" before letting their teenagers borrow the family car.

He said the proposed legislation -- which must be voted into law by the city council and signed by Mayor James Hahn -- may call for the car to be impounded at the time of arrest but not sold unless the accused drunk driver is convicted.

Englander said there were 2,218 drinking-related collisions in the city of Los Angeles and 9,812 such arrests in 2003.

Well, this idea would be good for repeated offenders but as for others...