The National Transportation Safety Board said states should shrink the standard from the current .08 blood alcohol content to .05 as part of a series of recommendations aimed at reducing alcohol-related highway deaths. More than 100 countries have adopted the .05 alcohol content standard or lower. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was dropped.

Currently, all 50 states have set a BAC level of .08, reflecting the percentage of alcohol, by volume, in the blood. If a driver is found to have a BAC level of .08 or above, he or she is subject to arrest and prosecution.

The recommendation to drop the legal limit down to .05 is prompting immediate criticism from restaurant trade groups. Many feel that further restricting the moderate consumption of alcohol by responsible adults prior to driving does nothing to eliminate hardcore drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel.

The United States, Canada and Iraq are among a small handful of countries that have set the BAC level at .08. Most countries in Europe, including Russia, most of South America and Australia, have set BAC levels at .05 to constitute drunken driving.

The NTSB reports that at .05 BAC, some drivers begin having difficulties with depth perception and other visual functions. At .07, cognitive abilities become impaired. At .05 BAC, the risk of having an accident increases by 39 percent. At .08 BAC, the risk of having an accident increases by more than 100 percent.

While many may believe this proposal criminalizes otherwise responsible behavior, the fact remains that drunken driving is one of the biggest killers in the United States. Each year, nearly 10,000 people die in alcohol-related traffic accidents and 170,000 are injured. Though that’s a big improvement from the 20,000 who died in alcohol-related accidents 30 years ago, it remains a consistent threat to public safety.

The NTSB is an investigative agency that advocates on behalf of safety issues. It has no legal authority to order any change to state or federal law. It would be up to individual states whether to accept the NTSB’s recommendation, and up to the Department of Transportation whether to endorse the recommendations. The last move from .10 to .08 BAC levels took 21 years for each state to implement.

The Arizona Cardinals, a team with a new head coach and leadership, did not anticipate the player then getting involved in a physical confrontation leading to arrest. Now, Arizona may need to avoid that large bonus, and are free to do so in light of the most recent legal troubles.

Washington was under investigation on allegations of an assault on his ex-girlfriend. Then, after meeting with police, he was arrested on two counts of aggravated assault. This is obviously a very serious charge, and one that could lead to his outright release from the franchise before the start of next season, despite last season’s emergence.

Washington’s bond was set at $4,200 following his initial court appearance. A probable cause statement released by Phoenix police said Washington’s ex-girlfriend claimed he grabbed her by the throat and shoved her to the ground following an argument at her apartment Wednesday.

The woman told police that Washington also pushed her with two hands, causing her to fall and break her right collarbone. Police later interviewed the woman and their report noted her clavicle injury along with road-rash type of scrapes, bruising and cuts to her right arm, right hip and right leg.

Per the report, paperwork filed in court indicate that Washington and the woman, the mother of his five-month-old daughter, got into a fight near the woman’s apartment, where Washington allegedly choked her. Then, they got into another fight in the parking lot, where Washington allegedly threw her to the ground and broke her collarbone.

It should be known that the couple has had past altercations that were not reported to police. This time, the victim allegedly threw a plastic plant at Washington, but it didn’t hit him. She possibly will face charges.

For now, Washington is out of jail after posting the aforementioned bond. But the broken collarbone makes his situation significantly more ominous.

Guadalupe-Gonzales had recently crossed the border unlawfully after having originally come into ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations custody following her March encounter with U.S. Border Patrol near Nogales, Arizona. She had been detained at the Eloy Detention Center since March 20th, awaiting immigration hearings related to her removal case. While at Eloy, Guadalupe-Gonzales received two routine medical screenings, but did not seek any medical or mental health treatment.

ICE has notified the Guatemalan consulate. Consistent with ICE protocol, the appropriate state health and local law enforcement agencies have also been informed.

According to initial sources, it is being reported that the woman hanged herself with her shoelaces from her bunk bed. She left no note.

Guadalupe-Gonzales, who has family in the United States, was subject to expedited removal, but was awaiting a court hearing. She was not part of Operation Streamline, which charges immigrants criminally in federal court.

It should be noted that the privately-run Eloy Detention center boasts the highest number of immigrant detainee deaths of all facilities that house immigrants. More immigrants have died in custody at this particular detention center than any other facility in all of the United States. Eloy is run by Corrections Corporation of America, and is under close watch by human rights groups due to the high number of fatalities.

Daniel Gibb was arrested for extreme DUI after the officers suspected him of being at a certain level of intoxication based on the series of tests he was asked to perform. On Tuesday, the arresting officer was called to the court to speak in a sealed meeting with the judge, the prosecutor and the defense attorneys handling the trial. What was discussed in the secret meeting at the Maricopa County Courtroom was closed and confidential, however just two days later the man was dismissed by Judge Sherry Stephens with no reason given in open court.

The male jury member, who was known as “The Note Taker” for his constant scribbling in court, became the third juror to be released. The first juror was released after showing bias while the second was excused by the judge for a medical illness. This leaves 15 people, nine men and six women. Twelve of whom will eventually be selected at random to deliberate whether Arias, 32, goes free, spends the rest of her life behind bars, or is executed by lethal injection for the brutal slaying of Travis Alexander in Mesa, Arizona home.

Courts prefer that biased and misbehaving jurors are excused during the voir dire process, but like in the Jodi Arias trial, sometimes problem jurors fall through the cracks. Now Mr. Gibb will face legal woes of his own and the question remains whether any of the lasting 15 jurors will also be sent home before a verdict is reached.

An estimated 2 million such young people have been waiting for such a bill to be passed that would finally grant them legal status in the United States. Activists are quick to point out that the possibility of such reform can be directly attributed to years of thoughtful, hard work from a well-organized movement of passionate individuals.

This particular Senate bill is much less restrictive in terms of its eligibility criteria and more generous in what it offers than were previous versions of the DREAM Act. The new “Gang of Eight bill would allow undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as children to attain lawful permanent resident status more quickly, with a wait time of five years rather the 10 required of others. DREAMers would be eligible if they entered the country under the age of 16, earned a high school diploma or GED here, and attended college for at least two years or served in the military for at least four years.

Whereas previous DREAM bills restricted eligibility to those under the age of 30, the current Senate bill has no such cap. Past measures required five years of continuous residency in the US. The current measure stipulates only the time individuals must have been brought into the country and their age at that point.

Moreover, potential DREAMers who have been deported would be allowed to apply for inclusion in the policy if they would otherwise have been able to apply except for the fact of their deportation, a new avenue not available in prior legislation. Previous DREAM bills not only offered hope to those already deported, but also explicitly declined to shield from deportation potential DREAMers still in the US.

The Senate bill would also repeal the law that some states interpret as barring the undocumented from receiving in-state tuition rates at public universities, another novel development. Those who have already been offered temporary protection – some 450,000 as of the end of March – would be “grandfathered” in to provisional legal status.

Clearly, this is exciting news for undocumented young people brought to the US as children after decade-long wait for legislative relief. DREAM Act advocates view the latest version as by far the most generous version of the bill seen to date.

Eleven felony DUI cases have been consolidated into an ongoing evidentiary hearing in Superior Court, all of which involving serious DUI allegations. At least two of the suspects submitted themselves to preliminary breath tests, and their blood-alcohol content registered more than 0.20 percent, more than twice the legal limit. At least eight of the suspects had prior DUI convictions.

Scottsdale police have been aware of potential problems with the blood-testing equipment for years. For example, the equipment mislabeled vials with wrong names or numbers, quit running during tests and erased baseline information from measurements during test runs.

The question is whether a crime lab technician’s decision to use old software on a new blood-testing machine in 2009 has affected evidence handled by Scottsdale’s crime lab. Scottsdale police maintain that the lab has been accredited since 1996 because its practices for maintaining equipment meet or exceed national standards, a belief not shared by most defense attorneys. By the following summer, the supervisor determined the old software was incompatible because half of the information on the reports was nearly impossible to interpret accurately. The machine’s manufacturer sent a technician to install a patch but said it would not be liable for problems with the software. The supervisor later testified that the patch did not fix the problem. However, according to a forensic scientist with the crime lab, the manufacturer refused to exchange the machine.

According to a published report from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, Scottsdale police issued citations for more than 2,500 DUIs last year. Approximately 150 of those were the type of felony DUIs that end up in Maricopa County Superior Court. The vast majority go to Scottsdale City Court, where attorneys say most judges don’t even let juries hear information about potential problems with crime-lab evidence.

Any criminal defense attorney will argue that this deliberate omission presents a serious problem as they try to defend their client. It goes beyond suppressing evidence. Juries are kept in the dark about potential inaccuracy in lab testing to determine blood alcohol content. Clearly, this results in a much higher conviction rate.

Louis Taylor was just a 16-year-old kid in December of 1970. He said he had gone to the hotel that night to try to score free food and drinks from holiday parties happening there. Within hours of the fire, police had Taylor in handcuffs. He wasn’t a guest and did not work there. And he had books of matches in his pocket. During police interrogations, the juvenile claimed to have seen someone set the fire. This was before anyone had even suspected arson. Then the young man changed his story multiple times making officers suspicious. Maybe it was arson; maybe it was Taylor who started the fire.

Experts for the prosecution and the defense testified that the fire, in their opinion, was caused by arson. Their explanations differed greatly, of course. In the end, Taylor was convicted on 28 counts of felony murder for arson and sentenced to consecutive life sentences. Despite the 29 deaths, one of the victims, a nurse, died of smoke inhalation months after the fire, but Taylor was never charged with her death. Taylor has maintained that the police targeted him because he is black, and that he had no chance before an all-white jury.

Then in 2002, the Arizona Justice Project took on his case and questioned the evidence against the convict. The Justice Project’s investigation raised serious concerns. Most notably, Taylor was interrogated without a lawyer present, and officials used racial profiling in finding a suspect. Also, newer fire-investigation techniques could not even pinpoint arson as the cause of the fire. Forensic experts now say they can no longer determine whether someone set the hotel fire on that cool winter day in 1970. And so this week, after almost 43 years, Taylor pleaded no contest to the charges in a new hearing and was sentenced to time served.

Taylor is still a felon because the no-contest plea has the legal weight of a conviction.

These invasive raids have long been a source of widespread anger, frustration and anxiety among immigrants. Many of them have accused immigration agents of overly aggressive tactics. Upon knocking on the doors of the homes, these agents will often simply identify themselves as “police,” prompting some people to open their doors, believing that the agents were local law enforcement. But ICE agents are enforcing immigration laws, which are in the civil realm — not criminal.

A Federal District Court judge approved the new rules included in a settlement. This concludes a six-year-old class-action lawsuit contending that in eight raids in 2006 and 2007, ICE agents forced their way into the homes of Latino families without court warrants or other legal justification.

The plaintiffs in the suit contended that during the raids, armed agents surrounded their homes in the predawn hours, pounded on windows and shouted orders to open up. When occupants opened the doors, the plaintiffs contended, the agents barged inside — in at least one instance with guns drawn — then swept through the homes, corralling occupants for interrogations. Other suits have said agents gained access into private residences saying they were looking for a person who did not live at the location, and then proceeded to ask people living there for proof of their legal status.

Law enforcement agents without a judicial warrant are permitted to enter a home only under certain conditions, including if they receive consent. A central point of contention in the case was what constituted valid consent.

According to the settlement, immigration agents needing consent to enter a private residence will now have to seek permission in a language spoken by the resident “whenever feasible.” Agents must also get consent from residents to enter the yards and other private outside areas adjoining their homes. Under the settlement, agents are forbidden from conducting protective sweeps through the homes without “a reasonable, articulable suspicion of danger.”

The settlement essentially means that agents will no longer have “carte blanche” to invade the homes of immigrants, especially Latino immigrants, and be as abusive as they want without fear they will be reprimanded.

The elected officials in Washington, D.C. are desperately trying to work out a plan that would overhaul immigration law whereby the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants would have to wait a full decade for a green card but could earn citizenship just three years after that.  The two waiting periods would ultimately provide the nation’s illegal immigrants with a path to U.S. citizenship in 13 years, matching the draft of a plan by President Obama to offer full participation in American democracy to millions who are living in fear of deportation.

The arrangement would reduce the amount of time it takes to become a naturalized citizen down from five years to just three years.  In an effort to appease Republicans, it would also extend to ten years, from eight, the amount of time that illegal immigrants must wait before receiving permission to work in the United States permanently.

Negotiations among the senators have intensified significantly in recent days as they push toward a goal of announcing comprehensive immigration legislation in early April.  Republicans and Democrats say they believe that a 10-year wait for a green card would provide enough time to clear out the existing backlog of millions of immigration cases, so that illegal immigrants would not skip ahead of legal entrants.  Currently, it can take up to 20 years to obtain a green card to work in the United States.

Republicans are concerned that a three-year naturalization process for illegal immigrants could give them a faster path to citizenship than people who enter legally.  The senators also remain at odds over a series of other major issues, including the establishment of a guest-worker program for low-skilled immigrants; a better system for companies to verify the immigration status of job applicants; determining who has the final authority to declare the borders secure; and modifying rules that prioritize the family members who can immigrate to the United States legally.

This much is clear.  No immigration debate has been more contentious over the years than the question of whether, and how, illegal immigrants eventually become citizens.