The Habeaser You Drink, The Corpuser You Get
With Harriet Miers mercifully out of the running, it’s time to look about the nation and select the best and brightest legal mind for the job. Personally, I like the looks of this Ian M. O’Flaherty:
A Fairfax County judge who believes Virginia’s drunken driving laws are unconstitutional has begun dismissing cases, including five DWI cases in a week, and has threatened to throw a veteran prosecutor in jail for arguing with him.Judge Ian M. O’Flaherty made it known in July that he felt Virginia’s DWI law unfairly deprived defendants of the presumption of innocence if breath tests showed that they had a blood alcohol content of .08 or higher, levels at which people are presumed to be intoxicated.
Story here. (Hat tip: Hit & Run, who ask, “did he have to be Irish?”)
Best legalwanking headline ever.
So he’s saying that the government shouldn’t punish anyone until they’ve causes person or property damage…radical!
Not exactly. He’s making a constitutional point about statutes that presume guilt and force defendants to prove innocence, rather than presuming innocence and forcing prosecutors to prove guilt. And it is a very good point.
An excellent point.
In a somewhat related story: “A group of accused drunk drivers in Florida are demanding to see the source code for the breathalyzer software that fingered them for being over the limit.”