SpringfieldNewsSun.com

Supreme Court justice faces DUI after fleeing officers

 

Resnick registers .216 during blood alcohol test

By Laura A. Bischoff

Cox News Service

COLUMBUS — When the cops finally caught up to her Monday on Interstate 75, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick registered a 0.216 blood alcohol content — two-and-a-half times the legal limit — and smelled of alcohol, according to a report from an Ohio Highway Patrol trooper.

Resnick, 65, of Toledo was cited with driving under the influence and failure to stay within marked lanes. Her attorney, Sheldon Wittenberg, entered a not guilty plea on her behalf, said Bowling Green City Prosecutor Matt Reger.

Police received several calls Monday afternoon about a gold Jeep weaving on I-75 in northwest Ohio, straddling lanes and nearly side swiping another car.

The Jeep pulled off I-75 and stopped at a BP gas station in Wood County, where a state trooper and a Bowling Green police officer approached the driver, who turned out to be Resnick in her state-owned 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee. She told them she was a state supreme court justice, and declined to take a standard roadside sobriety test, according to the officers’ reports.

“She rolled up her window and took off,” Trooper Vilay Sayarath wrote. “Both officers told her she could not leave but she did it anyways.”

The officers caught up a with her a few miles south on I-75, witnessed her weaving in the lane, and stopped her — a stop that’s recorded in a 90-minute video tape made from the state patrol car.

While the officers were waiting for a police supervisor, Resnick got out of the Jeep, “swaying and stumbling,” with a “strong odor of alcohol,” Sayarath’s report says.

On the tape, she appears unsure of her step and a little wobbly, but her speech seems normal.

She repeatedly told officers she was fine and that they should let her go.

“This is so embarrassing to me. I’m just dying. I know all those tests you give and I told my husband I want a lawyer here. I’m not going to take any tests,” she is heard to say on the tape.

During the stop, troopers administered sobriety tests, including the portable breath test, which Resnick registered 0.216. The legal limit is 0.08.

Patrol Sgt. Joe Luebbers said the portable breath test is sometimes excluded as evidence in court. Later at the patrol post in Findlay, Resnick refused to take the official breath test, which prosecutors may use in court, he said.

Resnick was released to her husband, Judge Melvin Resnick of the Ohio 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Operating a motor vehicle under the influence is a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of 180 days in jail, $1,000 fine and a two-year license suspension. A pre-trial hearing is set for March 1.

Resnick was absent from oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday and is not expected to be at work today, said court spokesman Chris Davey.

The drunken-driving footage and charge could be used as campaign fodder if Resnick seeks re-election in 2006, said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron.

“Those kinds of campaign tactics work or often work so they’re frequently used despite a certain disdain for them,” he said. “So this could be a problem and as you know judicial campaigns in Ohio have been rough in the last couple of years.”

During the 2000 election, Resnick was the target of a $4 million attack campaign designed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and other business interests who wanted to oust her. Resnick won a third six-year term despite the campaign, and after a four-year legal battle, the chamber last week disclosed an eight-page list of insurance companies, banks, automakers, manufacturers, utilities, and other businesses that contributed to the attack campaign.

Resnick is the only Democrat in statewide elected office in Ohio.

“The Democrats are struggling to regain their footing in statewide races and to have one of their most prominent elected officials have a personal problem provides them with an additional challenge,” Green said.

Ohio Democratic Chairman Denny White said he stands behind Resnick.

“I don’t think you convict somebody based on what you read in the news,” he said.

A drunken driving charge, or any misdemeanor, does not automatically trigger a disciplinary case against a lawyer or judge.

Complaints about a supreme court justice must be made directly to the disciplinary counsel, who investigates charges of misconduct by judges and attorneys. The counsel sends it to the chief justice of the state court of appeals, who then appoints three other appeals court judges to hear the matter.

Justices aren’t immune to negative publicity when it comes to personal conduct. In 1991, two Ohio Supreme Court justices got into a fist fight in the court offices after one called the other a liar.