Hamden, Conn., Police Department

Edwin Velez III was charged with DUI after a crash in Hamden, Conn. His wife was charged with DUI when she showed up to pick him up, police said.

Police in Hamden, Conn., charged a man and his wife with drunk driving just hours apart from each other.

According to police, April Cassidy Velez, 32, drove to Hamden Police Headquarters on Saturday to bail out her husband after his DUI arrest earlier that day. She appeared intoxicated and was arrested, police said.

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Officers found April Velez's pickup truck parked in a snow bank in an area of the parking lot marked "Police Vehicles Only." They found empty wine bottle and empty beer cans in the truck, as well as a full six-pack of beer resting in the snow in the bed of the pickup, police said.

Velez's husband, Edwin Velez III, 33, was charged with drunk driving about 5:30 p.m. Saturday after police found his car crashed into a snow bank on Pine Rock Avenue. The car was empty with the engine running. 

Officers found Velez at his Pine Rock Avenue home a short distance away and arrested him after he failed a field sobriety test, police said.

Edwin Velez, who had his wife and 5-year-old daughter in the car with him at the time of the crash, registered nearly three times the legal blood-alcohol limit. He is charged with driving while intoxicated and risk of injury to a minor. 

April Velez is charged with driving while intoxicated. Both were released and scheduled to appear in court Feb. 22.

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Police say a 70-year-old man was driving drunk when he caused 15 car crashes near Atlanta -- one of them fatal -- before smashing his pickup truck into a restaurant.

Michael Owen Snider was charged with driving under the influence, vehicular homicide, serious injury by vehicle, following too closely and reckless driving, the Gwinnett Daily Post reported on its website, citing jail records.

The Post reported that authorities said Snider was driving a 2006 Ford Super Duty pickup on Wednesday evening when he caused five hit-and-run accidents in DeKalb County and about 10 more in Gwinnett County.

Authorities said he caused a five-vehicle chain-reaction pileup that killed 69-year-old Mintiwab Woldeyhans of Loganville.

Minutes later, authorities told the Post, he went off the road and smashed into Johnboy's Home Cooking restaurant along U.S. 78 in Snellville, northeast of Atlanta. He was taken to a hospital for treatment and was being held without bond.

Justices indicated Wednesday that the dangers of drunken driving don't trump the Fourth Amendment, peppering lawyers for the state of Missouri with objections to their request that the Supreme Court allow law enforcement to order blood tests for DUI without suspects' consent.

The case, Missouri v. McNeely, is seen as a landmark that could clear up almost 50 years of uncertainty over the constitutionality of blood tests that are conducted without a warrant. Legal scholars say it could rewrite drunken-driving laws in all 50 states.

The case hinges on how you interpret a 1966 opinion by then-Justice William Brennan, who wrote (.pdf) that law enforcement should get a warrant before taking a blood draw without a suspect's consent, except in a few very limited circumstances that rise to the level of an emergency.

Missouri wants the court to declare that the dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream is, on its face, an emergency allowing officers to get a blood test immediately and without a warrant.

But justices indicated that they firmly believed that taking someone's blood was an intrusion that in most cases constituted a government "seizure" subject to protection of the Fourth Amendment and requiring the subject's permission or prior approval from a judge.

"How can it be reasonable to forgo the Fourth Amendment in a procedure as intrusive as a needle going into someone's body?" Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked John Koester, a prosecutor in Jackson, Mo., who represented the state Wednesday.

Related: Full preliminary transcript of Wednesday's arguments (.pdf)

Sotomayor said that if the court ruled Missouri's way, it would be giving law enforcement free rein to "use the most intrusive way you can to prove your case," which wouldn't always be the most constitutionally sound way.

The officer who arrested Tyler McNeely acknowledged that he didn't seek a warrant when he told a hospital lab technician to draw McNeely's blood after a DUI stop in 2010 because he believed he didn't need to, not because he didn't think he couldn't get one in time. 

That troubled several justices, who wanted know how a suspect's fundamental Fourth Amendment rights could be overshadowed for the convenience of law enforcement.

"Why should the Fourth Amendment permit the search to take place without the warrant when it could have been obtained?" Justice Samuel Alito asked Nicole Saharsky of the U.S. solicitor general's office, who joined Koester in arguing Missouri's side.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "It was and I think still is the main rule that if you can get a warrant, you must do that."

Even Antonin Scalia, the court's most law-and-order justice, questioned Missouri's argument, telling Koester, "Once we say that you don't need a warrant, you know, even if things improve, the game's up, right?"

"Why don't you force him (McNeely) to take the Breathalyzer test, instead of forcing him to have a needle shoved in his arm?" Scalia asked.

Justices' questions during arguments don't always signal how they will vote; the justices often pose hypotheticals designed to crystallize or clarify a contrary position.

But Lyle Denniston, a Supreme Court expert writing on Scotusblog, said it seemed clear that "the court is not going to let police across the nation order — on their own authority — the taking of blood samples from those suspected of drunk driving."

"Two impressions were dominant throughout the argument: the Justices generally do regard the use of a needle to take a blood sample as quite an intrusive gesture by the government, and the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement should not be cast aside for all cases of drunk driving when officers decide to order a blood draw," he wrote.

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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a landmark Fourth Amendment case that could clear up almost 50 years of uncertainty over the constitutionality of blood tests that are taken without a suspect's consent.

The case involves a traffic stop in Missouri, but its ramifications could range far wider, potentially rewriting drunk-driving laws in all 50 states.

"It comes down, basically, to are you going to see blood draws every single time someone gets pulled over for a DUI," said Michael A. Correll, a litigator with the international law firm Alston & Bird, who examined the legality of blood draws in the West Virginia Law Review last year. 

Because drunk-driving stops are such an everyday occurrence, "it's going to affect a broad area of society," he told NBC News, adding: "This may be the most widespread Fourth Amendment situation that you and I are going to face" for the foreseeable future.

Writing last month in the journal of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, Lauren Owens, a research attorney for the organization, said, "The outcome of the case could lead to a dramatic increase in the number of DWI cases supported by blood evidence."

The case began in October 2010, when Tyler McNeely of Cape Girardeau, Mo., about 100 miles south of St. Louis, was pulled over for speeding. According to court documents, McNeely was unsteady and failed field sobriety tests, so state Highway Patrol Cpl. Mark Winder asked him to take a breath test.

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When McNeely refused, Winder took him to a hospital, where McNeely refused to take a blood test. Winder told the lab technician to take a sample anyway. The record shows that at no time did Winder seek a warrant compelling the test, which indicated that McNeely's blood-alcohol level was almost double the legal limit.

But McNeely's lawyers persuaded the trial judge to exclude the evidence as a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Here's where it gets complicated. Earlier in 2010, the Missouri Legislature changed the state's "implied consent" law, which says that if you drive on Missouri's roads, you've automatically consented to take a sobriety test. 

The previous language said explicitly that if you refused to take a test, then "none shall be given" and the refusal itself could be used as evidence against you.

The new language left out the four words "none shall be given," re-emphasizing that the driver had consented simply by having gotten behind the wheel in the first place. Winder testified that he had read a journal article about the change and said he made a "conscious decision" not to seek a warrant "due to the law changes."

On appeal, the state argued that no warrant was needed because of a 1966 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a California DUI case that laid out circumstances under which law enforcement could order a blood test without a warrant.

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In general, a person's blood is protected under the Fourth Amendment, Justice William Brennan wrote in Schmerber v. California (.pdf): "Search warrants are ordinarily required for searches of dwellings, and, absent an emergency, no less could be required where intrusions into the human body are concerned."

But Brennan noted that Armando Schmerber, the driver in the California case, had been in an accident. Because the officer had to investigate the scene and make sure Schmerber was taken to a hospital for treatment, "there was no time to seek out a magistrate and secure a warrant" before the driver's body metabolized the alcohol in his system, Brennan wrote.

So Brennan carved out what he called a "stringently limited" exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement because of the likelihood that evidence — the alcohol in the driver's blood — would be destroyed during the delay. That clause has come to be known as the "exigent circumstances" or "special facts" exception. 

Missouri argued that delaying McNeely's blood test while the officer sought a warrant amounted to an exigent circumstance because the alcohol in his blood would be destroyed. McNeely argued that because his case involved a straightforward DUI stop — he wasn't in an accident, unlike Schmerber in 1966 — Winder had plenty of time to seek a warrant.

Missouri's Supreme Court agreed with McNeely in January 2012, writing (.pdf):

The patrolman here, however, was not faced with the "special facts" of Schmerber. Because there was no accident to investigate and there was no need to arrange for the medical treatment of any occupants, there was no delay that would threaten the destruction of evidence before a warrant could be obtained. ... The sole special fact present in this case, that blood-alcohol levels dissipate after drinking ceases, is not a per se exigency pursuant to Schmerber justifying an officer to order a blood test without obtaining a warrant from a neutral judge.  

As the court itself noted, Brennan stressed 47 years ago that his analysis was expressly limited to the facts of the Schmerber case, but that hasn't stopped various state and federal courts from referring to it over the years, not all of them reading it the same way. 

So in May, the state of Missouri asked the U.S. Supreme Court (.pdf) to step in because "this emerging conflict on a fundamental Fourth Amendment issue will likely continue to divide courts throughout the United States."

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The federal government has sided with Missouri, writing in a friend-of-the-court brief (.pdf) that "the fact that the evidence of intoxication is necessarily leaving the suspect's system provides the required exigency." Prosecutors from across the country joined to file a similar brief (.pdf).

But the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing McNeely, argued that there were no special circumstances trumping the Fourth Amendment.

In any event, it told the Supreme Court (.pdf), the issue is groundless, because — as he testified himself — the arresting officer ordered the blood test because he thought he could, not because of any "special facts." That means it's "a strange case in which to construe the exigency exception to the Fourth Amendment," the ACLU argued.

The court's decision is likely to come down to one simple question, Correll said: "Did Schmerber create a blanket exception to the Fourth Amendment or didn't it?"

"What does the court indicate the emergency is?" he asked. "Is the emergency the inability to get a warrant in a set period of time, or is the emergency that the blood alcohol is dissipating?"

As for McNeely, he's not off the hook even if he wins. Under a separate law that isn't at issue, his driver's license was revoked because he refused to take the breath and blood tests. And both sides agree that the blood test wasn't the only evidence against him, meaning he could still be convicted of felony drunk driving.

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A Mississippi man has been charged with six counts of DUI manslaughter after an SUV carrying members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians drove off an embankment into the frigid waters of a rain-swollen creek over the weekend, killing five of his children and a woman.

The man, Duane John, 34, was at the wheel when the vehicle shot off the roadway on Saturday shortly after midnight near the Neshoba-Newton county line in eastern Mississippi, authorities said. He was charged with six felonies Monday after his release from a hospital where he was treated for hypothermia.

The children, ages 18 months to 9 years, and a 37-year-old woman identified as Dianne Lewis Chickaway drowned, NBC station WLBT of Jackson, Miss., reported. Surviving were John, the children's father; their mother, Deanna Jim; and Chickaway's husband, Dale Chickaway.

"When officers and rescue personnel arrived on the scene, the vehicle was totally submerged," Neshoba County Sheriff Tommy Waddell said.

Choctaw Tribal officials said John and Deanna Jim also have two other children who weren't involved in the accident. Tribal spokeswoman Misti Dreifuss said a funeral for the children would be Wednesday at a tribal building in Choctaw. Chickaway's funeral was set for Thursday.

Waddell said it appeared that none of the children was in a child restraint and that none of the adults was wearing a seat belt, even though they were driving late at night along a dangerous stretch of roadway. 

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"We had an accident approximately a month or so ago where there was a fatality just a few hundred yards from this location," Waddell said.

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma is not happy with a judge's decision to require a teen to attend church as a condition of probation for a fatal drunk-driving crash.

In November, Muskogee County District Judge Mike Norman stipulated that 17-year-old Tyler Alred should attend church regularly for 10 years as a requirement to avoid a prison sentence, the Tulsa World reported. The teen admitted to police he had been drinking in the Dec. 3, 2011, crash that killed his 16-year-old passenger and friend, John Luke Dum, according to the newspaper.

The ACLU of Oklahoma filed a complaint with state judicial misconduct authorities Tuesday alleging Norman's ruling disregarded religious liberties in the federal and state constitutions.

"It is shocking that a judge would so blatantly ignore the First Amendment, which at a minimum prevents the government from forcing church attendance and from interfering in deeply personal matters of faith," Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma, said in a statement.

Alred had been charged with manslaughter as a youthful offender and had pleaded guilty in August, according to the Tulsa World.

By getting the mandatory church order as part of the decade of probation, Alred averted prison time. The judge also required the teen to wear an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet, undergo drug and alcohol assessments, finish school, attend counseling, and speak about the consequences of drinking and driving, among other probation requirements, the Tulsa World reported.

"If someone wants to appeal my decision, they're entitled to do that," Norman had told the newspaper in November.

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But Alred's defense attorney, Donn Baker, has told the Tulsa World they have no plans to fight the probation terms.

"My client goes to church every Sunday," Baker told the newspaper last month. "That isn't going to be a problem for him. We certainly want the probation for him."

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Carol Robinson / al.com

Birmingham police on Thursday arrested a costumed woman on a DUI charge after responding to a report that she was shot. A passerby called 911 after seeing the woman unresponsive at a traffic light.

Updated at 6:57 p.m. ET: Birmingham, Ala., police got a Halloween surprise when they responded to a concerned citizen’s 911 call of a woman shot in her SUV at a city intersection.

Officers found a woman bloodied and slumped over the wheel of her car at a traffic light Thursday morning, al.com reports.

But the blood wasn’t real, and she hadn’t been shot. Instead, police told al.com, she was just drunk and still dressed in her Halloween costume, which appeared to resemble something like a blood-splattered, pregnant zombie.

"We’re unsure the amount of time she was at the intersection, but we do know that it was not a very long period of time, due to the location. It’s a busy intersection and it would be easy to cause a delay in traffic," police Sgt. Johnny Williams told NBC News via email.  

"I can say that we are uncertain what her costume represented, but it did entail face paint and a large amount of fake blood. She believed that officers pulled her over, but they had to wake her as she sat at a traffic signal. The car was still running (in gear) when officers managed to wake her. "

The woman was taken to the city jail on a DUI charge, al.com reported.

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Updated at 11:05 p.m. ET: Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, San Francisco's Roman Catholic archbishop-elect who was arrested early Monday for driving under the influence in San Diego, apologized, saying he felt "shame for the disgrace I have brought upon the church and myself."

Cordileone, who last month was named the next archbishop of San Francisco, was arrested early Saturday morning, according to police. Authorities stopped him at a checkpoint near the San Diego State University campus, the AP reported.

Cordileone, a San Diego native, was released on $2,500 bail about 11 hours after his release, a San Diego detective told Reuters. He had been booked on a misdemeanor DUI charge after he was stopped at a police checkpoint and failed a field sobriety test.

In his apology, released as a statement by his diocese, Cordileone said: "I will repay my debt to society, and I ask forgiveness from my family and my friends and co-workers at the Diocese of Oakland and the Archdiocese of San Francisco. I pray that God, in His inscrutable wisdom, will bring some good out of this."

Cordileone, 56, is currently the bishop in the Diocese of Oakland, Calif. Previously, Cordileone was an auxiliary bishop in San Diego, the AP reported.

He is expected to take over San Francisco's top spot when the current archbishop, 76-year-old George H. Niederauer, retires in October. Cordileone must make a court appearance on Oct. 9, the AP reported.

Michael Ritty, a private practice canon lawyer in upstate New York, told the AP that since Catholic bishops are accountable to the pope, potential discipline would have to come from the Vatican.

"If there was anything, it would be handled in Rome, most likely by the Congregation for Bishops. Depending on the question or type of criminal charge, it might go directly to the Pope or as directly as you can get," Ritty said.

Cordileone is known for being a strong, public opponent of same-sex marriage, and he is expected to govern 432,000 Catholics under his new post in the largely gay-friendly Bay Area. He'll also oversee the bishops in Honolulu, Las Vegas, Oakland, Reno, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Jose, Santa Rosa and Stockton, according to the AP.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco office declined to comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker upon his arrival at Bagram Air Base in Kabul, Afghanistan May 1, 2012.

Ryan Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, has been charged in Washington state with drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident on Aug. 14, local media reported Thursday.

Crocker, who also served as ambassador to Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon, left his post in Kabul last month, citing health reasons.

Crocker was driving his 2009 Ford Mustang convertible on a highway in his hometown of Spokane, Wash., when he turned directly into the path of a semitruck, Washington State Patrol trooper Troy Briggs told the Spokesman-Review newspaper. Crocker then fled the scene without stopping, Briggs said.

A test of Crocker’s blood alcohol content registered .16 percent, Brigg said.

Crocker was not booked into jail, NBC station KHQ in Spokane reported.

A pretrial conference on the DUI and hit-and-run charges was scheduled for Sept. 12 in Spokane County District Court.

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Kerry Kennedy, a human rights activist and the ex-wife of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was arrested and charged with driving while impaired by drugs Friday morning after the car she was driving collided with a tractor-trailer on a freeway in the town of North Castle, N.Y., state police confirmed Saturday.

A spokesman for Kennedy denied that tests for impairment were positive.

"Kerry Kennedy voluntarily took breathalyzer, blood and urine tests — all of which showed no drugs or alcohol whatsoever in her system," said Ken Sunshine. "The charges were filed before the test results were available."

According to the police statement, 911 calls reported the car moving erratically on the freeway before hitting the tractor-trailer. The collision caused a flat tire and Kennedy exited the freeway, it said. Kennedy, 52, was found seated at the wheel of the disabled vehicle by North Castle Police.

State police arrived and found Kennedy to be impaired by drugs, it said.

Kennedy, who lives in Bedford, N.Y., was not injured, The New York Times reported, citing an unnamed person close to her.

A Forbes report speculated that the incident was a case of  "sleep driving" — a rare side effect of the sleep aid Ambien that causes users to get out of bed and drive while still asleep with no memory of their actions — but did not quote any sources close to Kennedy who could corroborate the speculation.

The New York Daily News reported that Kennedy told police she had taken Ambien, citing an unnamed law enforcement source, who also said she was taken to Northern Westchester Hospital where she consented to a blood test, the results of which are expected in about a week.

Kennedy, born Mary Kerry Kennedy, is the seventh of eleven children born to Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. She is president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in Washington, D.C.

Her accident comes just a week after the body of another member of the Kennedy clan, the late Mary Richardson Kennedy, was exhumed and reburied 700 feet away.

Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was a close friend of Kerry Kennedy's since childhood. After she died, Kerry Kennedy wrote a tribute about her describing her as her "best friend," writing in The Huffington Post on May 22, "Mary was brilliant, strikingly beautiful, radiant, luminous, spritiual, funny, fun."

Kerry Kennedy is due in North Castle Court on Tuesday, according to the Bedford-Katonah Patch news site.

NBC contributed to this report

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A young girl died and her mother and sister were injured in a hit-and-run collision in Santa Ana, California, police said Saturday.

The suspected driver was arrested a few blocks away when a witness driving behind blocked the car in, pinning the suspect until police could arrive, according to Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna. He called the witness' response a "heroic action."

The driver, Jessica Louise Cowan of Frazier Park, was being held at Santa Ana jail on suspicion of felony hit and run, as well as driving under the influence, Bertagna said. She may also face vehicular manslaughter charges, Bertagna said.

A preliminary field sobriety test led police to believe she was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, Bertagna said.

More details, including video, at NBC4 News

In video shot at the scene on Saturday morning Cowan is seen handcuffed and being placed into a patrol car. Her 2002 silver Lexus sedan had a smashed windshield and dented hood and front bumper.

The mother, a 45-year-old Latina, and her two daughters, ages 5 and 6, were crossing in the cross walk at 17th and Spurgeon streets when a small silver car ran a red light "at a high rate of speed" and collided with all three victims, Bertagna said. The victims had the right of way.

The victims were pushed 60 to 70 feet down the road, he added. A pair of children's shoes could be seen left in the roadway in video from the scene.

"The suspect in this case showed no regard for the actions they did," Bertagna said. "This is horrific."

The 5-year-old was killed, while her 6-year-old sister and mother were in critical condition with head trauma, Bertagna said.

They live close to the scene of the collision, he said. A crowd of relatives could be seen at the collision site.

The incident was reported to police at 11 a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET.

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