Salt Lake Telegram | 1941-01-15 | Page 6 | Delay in Drunken Driving Cases

Delay in Drunken Driving Cases tlARDLY a day passes in which newspaper stories of traffic cases in police court do rot tell of delays and continuances granted In drunken driving cases. It seems to this writer that there are a good many more delays and - continuances than there are convictions or acquittals. ac-quittals. As a result many of these drunken driving cases hang fire for months before they are finally disposed of. It's pretty generally recognized that procrastination pro-crastination and delay in the hearing of any court case tends to defeat the ends of Justice. It's a favorite trick of some lawyers to stall and stall on a case until the other side gets tired and quits in disgust, or until witnesses die or move away, or memories grow faulty, or the public interest dies down. It seems there must be some such idea back of this procrastination In the disposal of drunken driving cases. After all, a drunken driving case doesn't involve Intricate legal points or decisions. Rarely can there be any sound basis for delay. A man is arrested and accused of driving while drunk. The. evidence is all there and so are the witnesses. The man was either drunk or he wasn't. That's the only issue, and it shouldn't take weeks and months of legal maneuvering and procrastination to ettle it. It's the responsibility of Judges and members mem-bers of the legal profession to clean up this . situation. The state bar association, as the medium for group action by tha legal profession, pro-fession, could and should take forceful action to put an end to this unnecessary procrastination procrasti-nation which is hampering effective enforcement enforce-ment of the law against drunken driving.