IANAL, but I’d say this is a poor definition of “a crime”. I’d argue that a better definition would be “a violation of a criminal law statute,” which excludes many traffic offenses in many states esp in the past. people have been arrested or spent a weekend in jail for [allegedly] having a single overdue library book (Try googling “arrested” “over due library” or “arrested” “library fines”)
Arrest warrants can be issued for many things that we do not consider crimes: a state legislator failing to appear for some votes of some state legislatures; failing to report for jury selection (whether or not it is a ‘crime’ in that jurisdiction]. There is also no monolithic “criminal record”: what you see on a report depends on the source of the report, and the reporting sources. I wouldn’t expect to see “Failure to pay a library fine” in an NCIC (FBI) report, but I would not be surprised to see it in many state reports, and NCIC is known for not cleaning up the information it recieves from the states.
Even the “criminal code” definition is a compromise. I’m not qualified to address finer points embedded in the laws themselves (e.g. statutes in the criminal code that refer to certain acts as “unlawful” and others as “illegal”), but I’m sure a lawyer could argue that some offenses in the criminal codes aren’t “really crimes”
Current cites of DUI laws may not be germane. A (viable) presidential candidate generally has to have kept a fairly clean record for the past decade or two, and the law regarded drunk driving quite differently 20 years ago. If it wasn’t a ‘crime’ at the time, isn’t it a bit unfair to call it one decades later? [We know that internal combustion engines are bad for the planet; in 20 years, they may be considered “self evident” crimes against humanity. Societal values change.)
In fact, the terms DUI/DWI generally arose after changes in the law. While they were used earlier in some jurisdictions, they spread nationally after the states began revising their laws, partly as the result of a campaign led by MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), founded in 1980 out of a mother’s outrage at the leniency of the sentence for the drunk driver who killed her child. The first “Drunk Driving Awareness Week” to change public attitudes was in December 1982.
Before then (when almost all pre-President arrests would have taken place) drunk driving was often charged as a traffic offense (e.g. “weaving in traffic”, “reckless driving”) and often taken casually. Attitudes didn’t always change as rapidly as the laws, either, and I know of cases that were treated as traffic offenses in the late 80s, in states where a heavier charge could (or should) have been levied. Campus police also see a large fraction of youthful DUIs and generally didn’t refer them for criminal prosecution until the late 80s or 90s.
Should we allow ourselves to speculate on what various Presidents could or should have been charged with, to decide if their arrest was for a “crime” or not?
“Drunk walking” is a crime in many states. Even sitting, drunk, on your front stoop can be “public inebriation” in most cities (which may be a criminal or civil offense). Clearly, enforcement (arrests) for these offenses is fairly selective (I think most of our presidents, like most of us, have probably stumbled into a cab drunk at some point in their lives)
My point? One man’s crime is another man’s civil offense. We need a cut-off . I think the “criminal code criterion” is as good a compromise as any.
Some cites:
‘Driving under influence’ culture more lenient during 1970s [CNN]
Allen, TC. (1991). A study of university students regarding driving under the influence. Campus Law Enforcement Journal 21(2):34-35.
Jones, RK; and Joscelyn, KB. (1978). Alcohol and highway safety 1978: A review of the state-of-knowledge. Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Jones, RK; and Lacey, JT (1989). Alcohol and highway safety 1989: A review of the state of knowledge. Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
1988 Surgeon General"s Workshop on Drunk Driving: “in most jurisdictions, fewer than one in 1,000 [drunk drivers] are apprehended [for driving while intoxicated]” Quoted in “Drunk Driving, The Legal Criteria”, policy manual of the AAPA
