SOME BILLS WE ARE FOLLOWING

There are some bills that have been introduced in the Colorado General Assembly in 2011 that we are following:

HB1261 deals with driving under the influence of marijuana. It will add driving with a blood content of 5 nanograms or more of THC to the state’s DUI law. Driving with a THC level of 5 nanograms or more would be added to Colorado’s DUI Per Se law. This bill was passed in the state House and has been sent to the Senate for consideration.

HB 1189, as originally introduced required the court to order a person charged with DUI who had two prior alcohol convictions to be placed on electronic monitoring; to submit to testing and to have an ignition interlock installed in their car as a condition of bond. When the bill was considered by the Senate, the requirements for electronic monitoring, testing and the interlock were removed. In its place, a person with one prior conviction would be ordered by the court to abstain from alcohol. The bill has been referred to a conference committee to resolve the differences between the two versions.

Please call us if you have any questions.   The lawyers at The Liberty Law Firm can be reached at 1-877-384-2656.

In 2006, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) joined forces with various members of the automotive industry, the government and traffic safety advocates to form a panel to encourage and support the development of new technology that would prevent drunk drivers from operating a vehicle. The panel developed the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety, or DADSS, program. The DADSS program researches, develops and demonstrates non-invasive alcohol detection technology that measures a driver’s BAC (blood alcohol concentration). The technology offers the potential to prevent vehicles from being operated when a driver’s BAC is over legal limits.

Drunk driving remains a contributing factor in tens of thousands of alcohol-related vehicular deaths every year, despite the efforts of car manufacturers to reduce such deaths. Since 1997, one-third of all vehicular fatalities involved persons with BACs over the legal limit. The objective of the DADSS program is to make it very difficult for a drunk driver to drive his vehicle, which could result in a reduction of vehicular deaths by as much as 9,000 per year.

The implementation of ignition-interlock requirements have made a dent in alcohol-related deaths since they came on the scene more than two decades ago, but they are aimed primarily at convicted DUI offenders and are considered too intrusive for use by the general public, most of whom drive sober or with BACs well under the legal limit. The DADSS system promises to eventually become an effective weapon in the fight against drunk driving. You can go to the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety site from the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for more information about DADSS.

2010 Colorado Legislative Update

There wasn’t much action in the legislature this session on issues involving criminal/DUI cases.

We wrote about the new DUI sentencing law in an earlier blog.

Here are some other laws of interest that recently went into effect.

HB1201 requires a police officer to read an advisement and obtain a written consent to conduct a search.  This applies only to searches for which there is no legal basis to perform the search.

HB1090 eliminated the mandatory 5 day jail sentence that was required for Driving Under Suspension (DUS) convictions that are non-alcohol based.  The 30 day minimum sentence for an alcohol based Driving Under Revocation (DUR) was not changed by this law.

HB 1338 allows a person with two or more felonies to be eligible for probation. 

HB 1334 moved some activities from the public indecency statute into the indecent exposure statute