Drunk-Driving Conviction Voided : Law: Appellate court says police sobriety checkpoints are illegal without advance publicity.

Advance publicity is needed for police sobriety checkpoints to be legal, an appellate court said Wednesday as it reversed a woman’s drunk-driving conviction in Orange County.

Mary Louise Banks was convicted in Municipal Court in Westminster after being arrested at a sobriety checkpoint, officials said. But defense attorneys appealed the conviction, arguing that the checkpoint was illegal because it was not properly publicized ahead of time.

“Is advance publicity necessary to a constitutionally operated sobriety checkpoint? We conclude it is,” three justices wrote in a unanimous opinion issued by the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana.

Orange County Public Defender Ronald Y. Butler said that as a result of the decision, his office will review other drunk-driving convictions to determine whether they were properly obtained. He said he did not know how many cases the decision could affect.

“We consider it a victory,” Butler said. He said he had not yet read the decision and declined to comment further.

Butler said publicity does not defeat the purpose of sobriety checkpoints, noting that many publicized checkpoints still manage to snare drunk drivers. He said that, in fact, publicity may help deter people from driving under the influence of alcohol for fear of being arrested.

Additional information regarding Banks’ arrest and conviction was not immediately available.

The appellate court decision points out that a 1987 state Supreme Court ruling upheld the constitutionality of sobriety checkpoints, provided they are operated in an approved manner that includes advance publicity.

Prosecutors argued that the Orange County case was excluded from this requirement, but the court disagreed.

In striking down the Municipal Court decision, Presiding Justice David G. Sills and Associate Justices Thomas F. Crosby Jr. and Henry T. Moore Jr. wrote that the district attorney “somehow derives . . . the remarkable notion” that the high court ruling “has, in effect, been overruled . . . on the advance publicity point.”

Assistant Dist. Atty. Maurice L. Evans said he was unaware of the ruling.

The decision reverses a judgment by temporary Municipal Judge Martin G. Engquist.