'Watered-down'version of new DUI bill draws ire of solicitor
By TIM GULLA Ledger Staff Writer tim@gaffneyledger.com

Seventh Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy makes a plea for tougher DUI laws at a Cabinet meeting in Columbia on Tuesday.

Seventh Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy is getting to be a familiar face in Columbia.

On Tuesday, the top prosecutor for Cherokee and Spartanburg counties made his fifth appearance at the Capitol at the request of Gov. Mark Sanford to speak on the state's need for tougher drunk driving laws.

Sanford made tougher drunk driving laws one of his main priorities at the beginning of the year, challenging state lawmakers to get it done within 30 days.

The state House approved a major overhaul that sat well with prosecutors like Gowdy, but the state Senate Judiciary Committee approved amendments Tuesday that neither Sanford, nor Gowdy, want.

Pointing to South Carolina's unenviable status as one of the worst states in the nation for drunk driving-related fatalities, Gowdy said, "What you need is wholesale, systematic change, not incremental changes on the margins."

The state House-approved DUI bill sought by Sanford would toughen penalties and tie penalties to the level of intoxication. Essentially, the bill said the more drunk you are when you're arrested, the worse the penalty.

"It doesn't make the roadways any safer. If I had my druthers, we would throw out the current law and start all over again." - Seventh Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy

The state House bill also would take away some technical requirements of police, namely police would no longer have to repeat the Miranda legal rights warning three times to a suspected drunk driver as they do under current law.

Gowdy pushed for passage of a tougher DUI bill in a meeting with the governor's Cabinet on Tuesday morning.

The state Senate Judiciary Committee, however, approved of amendments later on Tuesday that would remove from the House version of the bill graduated penalties for first-time DUI offenders and require police officers to give additional rights warnings to suspected offenders, according to Sanford's office.

The full Senate will now have to vote on the bill for it to move forward. If approved, the differing bills will have to be reconciled.

Gowdy believes the amendments water down the House version of the bill. "It doesn't make the roadways any safer," he said. "If I had my druthers, we would throw out the current law and start all over again."

Arguing for the need for graduated penalties based on the level of intoxication, Gowdy said, "Right now, if you had a glass of wine too much or a case of wine too much, it's the same penalty."

And requiring police to give extra rights warnings gives suspected drunk drivers more protection than someone accused of any other crime, he argued.

"That little six-foot swath of land along the roads of South Carolina continues to be the most constitutionally protected land in the state," he said.

There was no word Tuesday evening on when the full state Senate may take up the issue.