Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [177]
The traffic court judge, as one would expect, did not have the prestige and dignity of higher-grade judges. A study of South Carolina in the 1960s found a “distressing lack of formality and dignity.” The judges “conducted court in street attire or workclothes, rather than judicial robes.”13 George Warren, who studied traffic courts around 1940, reported that some judges seemed to treat “the proceedings in these courts as a joke.... Instances of familiarity and light by-play with defendants, of pleasantries with women violators and of the use of good-natured profanity were observed.”14 As a result, the defendant “leaves the traffic court without ... a heightened consciousness as to safety problems” and without “a feeling of respect.”15
The root of this evil was, perhaps, the fact that defendants did not—and do not—see themselves as criminals, but rather as unlucky people who got caught breaking a rule that everybody breaks once in a while. The judges probably felt no different. Traffic crime is middle-class crime. For much of the century, the poor did not own cars, and even now, most car-owners (like most people in general) are solid members of the solid middle class. A “crime” that everybody in this group commits is unlikely to carry much of a stigma.
This attitude came to the surface in a 1958 American Bar Association report on traffic matters in Oklahoma. The report concluded that traffic cases should be treated differently from other police court cases, because “traffic offenders are of a different class of people than drunks, thieves, prostitutes, and similar offenders and should not be compelled to mingle with the latter when summoned into a court of justice.”16 Most people would probably concede the need for traffic laws, and for enforcing them. But they think of their own “punishment” as a kind of traffic tax, and an unfair tax at that, because its incidence is so random and irregular.
Drunk Driving
Attitudes toward drunk driving are generally much less cavalier. The formal legal system takes driving “under the influence” fairly seriously. In 1910, in New York, it was a misdemeanor to operate a motor vehicle “while in an intoxicated condition”; the second offense was a felony and could bring a prison term. Violators were in danger of losing their licenses; and owners of vehicles driven by drunks could lose their “certificate of registration” as well.17 In 1926, New York created a new felony: causing serious bodily injury by driving while intoxicated. In 1941, a further statute on drunk driving allowed courts to “admit evidence of the amount of alcohol in the defendant’s blood,” as “shown by a medical or chemical analysis of his breath, blood, urine, or saliva.” The statute also laid down the rule that a blood-alcohol level of more than 1.5 percent was “prima facie evidence” of intoxication.18
In 1953, New York took a further step; it enacted an “implied consent” law. Any driver with a license was “deemed” to have allowed the police to run a “chemical test of his breath, blood, urine or saliva” to see how much alcohol he had in his system. Of course, this “consent” was pretty much coerced. If a driver decided to be unreasonable and withhold consent, or refused to allow the tests to be given when stopped on the road, the state could use this stubbornness as an excuse to revoke his license.19 Interestingly, this provision bypasses the courts (potentially at least), in favor of an administrative process. If a drunk driver refuses the test, he may lose his license, but he does not go on trial for the offense.20
On the books, then, drunk driving is a major crime, with heavy penalties. The reality—the law in action—is, as usual, a good deal more complicated. Large segments of the population are ambivalent, or worse, with regard to drunk driving. Thousands