Defending the alcohol-related driving charge had been a formidable challenge for years before the Minnesota Society for Criminal Justice initiated its national seminar 18 years ago. The challenge is now dramatically amplified. Legislatures have lowered per se alcohol concentration limits to .08 (and even .04 for some situations), criminalized test refusal, enhanced criminal penalties, and summarily impacted livelihoods and lifes’s freedoms by administratively seizing driving privileges and license plates, sometimes using technology and theory that lack the credibility of real science. At the same time, courts are eager to accept prosecutors’ arguments that erosion of the Bill of Rights is necessary to stem the "carnage" on the highways.

The defense lawyer must be prepared to aggressively challenge every phase of a drinking driving prosecution. The objective of the Minnesota Society for Criminal Justice is to find and develop theories and techniques to confront these significant assaults on personal freedoms.

The 18th Annual "Getting Tough on Drunk Driving: the Defense" seminar will feature speakers from both the defense and the prosecution in the controversial Jessica Williams trial. That case has raised significant questions about the effectiveness and constitutionality of laws aimed at use of controlled substances while driving. John Watkins and Ellen Bezian for the defense and Gary Booker and Bruce Nelson for the prosecution will take seminar participants behind the scenes in a nationally-televised trial.

This year’s seminar will also feature as the luncheon speaker Judge Roderick Kennedy, an internationally known expert on DWI-related law and science.