DWI A Common Crime, an Out-Of-Control Industry

[Shirawilliam]

In the late 1970s, it becameUS Concealed Carryapparent to people not just in the United States but in other parts of the world that too many people were dying on the roads as a result of drunk driving. Because the United States is such a large country and most people rely upon their cars to travel even short distances, these DWI deaths were more frequent in the U.S.

At the same time, national organizations, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) were founded. MADD was founded by the mother of a 13-year-old Texas girl who had been killed by a drunk driver. Other organizations, including SADD, soon followed. But MADD was the most powerful, helping to lobby for extensive new laws that would lower limits on the amount of alcohol someone could have in his system while still driving legally.

This BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) is set by the states, but is the same across the United States because of a federal highway law which limits the amount of highway funding a state can receive if it does not agree to a.08 BAC. In North Carolina, the number is expressed in the law as the volume of alcohol per volume of exhaled breath.

Before the 1970s, the amount of permitted alcohol in the system was fairly high -.15 in some states. But in the 1970s and 1980s, states started to lower the BAC permitted. By the 1980s, most states had lowered the limit to.10, which is where it stayed until the 1990s, when states, pressured by the federal government, lowered the limit to.08.

Today, in North Carolina (and in all states) it is a "per se" violation of the law to drive with a BAC of.08 or above. By "per se," the State says that all it has to prove is that the person had a.08 BAC at a relevant time after driving on a highway or public vehicular area in order to find someone guilty of a DWI. This means that the state does not necessarily have to prove the person was driving badly. The.08 is enough.

The Court of Appeals has recently held in North Carolina that a jury is not required to convict on a.08. In other words, if evidence of a.08 (or.10 or.15 or whatever number) comes into court, but a jury thinks that the person was not the driver, or that there was too much delay in testing the person, or that the reading was an error, the jury can find the person "not guilty."

So while a.08 is a per se violation of the law, the.08 does not require conviction. (That may not make sense to a non-lawyer, but that's how the legal world functions.)

http://wedidreviewforyou.com/us-concealed-carry-review/