GA Accountability Courts News

New program combines lots of help for long-term offenders, tough sanctions

By BETH WARREN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/17/07

Two defendants showed up drunk this summer at the Fulton County Courthouse.While that’s never a good idea, it’s especially problematic considering it was their first day in a new program for repeat DUI offenders.State Court Judge Susan Forsling says the men’s condition in court underscores the grip of addiction and the need for courts to find creative solutions to break the dangerous cycle of drinking and driving. She and Judge Brenda Cole have agreed to head Fulton County’s inaugural DUI Court program, which got under way in June combining some jail time with intensive treatment and heavy monitoring. The program, with a startup budget of $45,000, is funded through county and state money and participant fees. The first class includes a defendant with 14 prior DUI convictions. When he appeared before Forsling last month she somberly said: “You have failed the system and the system has failed you.” The man wept.But as the judge addressed her new class Aug. 9, she tempered her judgment with humor and hope. She assembled probation officers and mental health counselors and talked with each defendant about his or her problems. One man seemed surprised the judge knew that he and his wife were separated and he was having trouble finding a place to live due to his criminal record.“There’s not going to be too much about your life that I don’t know about,” Forsling said with a laugh.

Barbara Lattimore, director of Fulton County’s mental health department, said two main things help stop recidivism: peer support and heavy sanctions. Her employees are part of the DUI Court program, providing one-on-one and group counseling to help participants explore the reasons they drink. Participants also face frequent drug screenings, random home visits by probation officers and court hearings before a judge who gets to know them personally.

Georgia has a dozen DUI Courts, including programs in Gwinnett, Cherokee, Clayton, Hall and Rockdale counties. It’s part of a national trend to move toward courts that tackle special problems. Fulton officials are modeling their program after the one in Athens-Clarke County.

The judge there, Kent Lawrence, started Georgia’s first DUI Court in February 2001 and is considered a national expert, recently speaking before a congressional committee in Washington. Lawrence is a former police officer and police chief in Clarke County who worked plenty of alcohol-fueled fatal wrecks and was motivated to find a solution.

“I’ve had victims die in my arms,” he said. “I’ve had to knock on doors and tell their parents or their spouses their loved one just died because of an alcohol-related wreck. It’s usually the same reaction: they fall on their knees and start screaming.”

Lawrence remembers those haunting images when drunk drivers stand before him in his courtroom and he sentences them to jail. But, like Judge Forsling, he is also driven by compassion to get to the root of what draws the alcoholic to the bottle.

“They’re not bad people,” Forsling said. “They don’t wake up that morning and say: ‘I’m going to get in my car, crash and kill somebody.’ “

Statewide, impaired drivers were involved in crashes that killed nearly 545 people in 2005, the last year for which figures were available, said Alvin Shultz, epidemiologist for the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

Bob Dallas, the Highway Safety office’s director, said the Athens judge is helping break the cycle.

“It’s a program that seems to show success for a very difficult offender — someone who has been drinking and driving for years,” Dallas said.

Someone like Alpharetta area resident Justin Dinsmore, 30.

He admits he started drinking at age 12 and drove drunk in at least three counties for years, crashing cars, a motorcycle and four-wheelers. He said he got into several high-speed chases with police, but usually outran them in his high-powered Mustang.

But as he sped recklessly through Athens a few years ago, police closed in and Dinsmore found himself standing before Judge Lawrence.

As Dinsmore recalls, the judge was irate, tossing the four-time convicted drunk driver into the slammer for 15 months. That’s when Dinsmore said he had an epiphany: “I’m either going to be dead or in jail the rest of my life if I keep this up.” He thought about his dreams for a wife and kids and how he needed to be sober and responsible to make that happen.

The judge was there to help. He said you can often see participants begin to make life changes in up to three months.

“It’s like a light bulb,” the judge said. “It gives us chills. Their attitude changes and their appearance changes.”

Dinsmore completed the DUI Court program in 13 months and says he’s been sober for two years.

“This isn’t a program for a first offender. It’s for someone like me, someone on their last leg,” Dinsmore said of the structured program, which includes surprise home visits and lots of drug screenings. “It put me on the path of where I needed to go.”

Veteran defense attorney William “Bubba” Head, known nationally for his specialty in DUI law, said he has qualms about the program, which requires defendants to plead guilty to DUI charges.

“If I were in their shoes, I wouldn’t do the program,” said Head, who often prefers to take his clients’ cases to trial.

He said he worries that the program is too rigid and if a participant fails to show up to court, fails a screening or doesn’t check in with his or her probation officer, they’ll end up kicked out of the program and behind bars for up to two years.

The judges in Athens and Atlanta say there are other types of sanctions besides revoking the defendant’s probation, which is reserved for more serious violations.

Head acknowledges that more needs to be done to stop drunk driving.

“It can destroy your life,” said the lawyer, whose DUI clients have included clergy, teachers and Supreme Court justices in several states.

To view the entire article: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2007/08/17/dui_0818.html