The law - If police arrest you for DWI, you must allow them to test your blood-alcohol level, or your license will automatically be suspended for a year.

The catch - You can file an appeal in civil court, arguing that police unfairly targeted you, or that you tried to provide a sample. A judge quickly issues an order granting you the right to drive as long as the case is pending. The county prosecutor becomes the lawyer for the Department of Revenue and, theoretically, prepares a case to prove the police were right.

The deal - Area prosecutors either handle the separate DWI criminal case or work with municipal prosecutors who do. If you plead guilty to DWI in criminal court, you are likely to get a suspended imposition of sentence, which doesn't count as a DWI conviction and keeps your driving record clean. Prosecutors then go to civil court and formally "confess" - or tell a judge the state had no right to take your license. A judge orders the state to let you keep driving. So - from the date of the arrest - you haven't missed a day behind the wheel.

The rationale

Reason No. 1 - The deals are needed to coax guilty pleas.

St. Charles County prosecutor Jack Banas considers the deals a necessary evil in the courts. Banas, a former police officer, says juries increasingly don't believe that someone was drunk unless police have test results to back it up. Defense lawyers know that and insist on the best deals for clients, including prosecutors letting clients win the suspension appeals.

The counterargument: Prosecutors in Franklin and Lincoln counties say they give up on suspension appeals only if the evidence is weak. They say the policy may make their civil courts busier with hearings over the appeals, but they can still get DWI defendants to plead guilty based on the evidence gathered.

"We do a lot of trials, or have a lot of hearings," said Robert Parks, prosecutor for Franklin County. "But it has not affected our plea bargaining."

Reason No. 2 - The law, as written, is too harsh.

St. Louis County prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch said the one-year suspension was too tough on first-timers, most of whom need to drive to work and, statistics show, won't get arrested again. Why put their jobs, homes and families at risk if most already have learned their lessons?

"It seems excessive to me, and there's no discretion. There's no in-between. It's one year or nothing," McCulloch said.

He said he wouldn't have confessed any petitions if the license suspensions were 60 or 90 days.

The counterargument: There is a provision in state law allowing first-time offenders who refuse tests to get their suspensions partially lifted after 90 days so they can commute to work, court, treatment or school.

Reason No. 3 - Suspensions can backfire in rural areas.

Jefferson County prosecutor Forrest Wegge says his county is largely rural with little mass transportation. If he didn't confess appeal cases, most first-timers would be forced to drive to keep their jobs anyway, dropping car insurance along the way. That would put more uninsured drivers on the road and clog the courts with more arrests for driving with a revoked license.

"Innocent drivers should not be exposed to uninsured revoked drivers, and to prevent this is reasonable in some situations," he said.

The counterarguments: The two counties that rarely confess cases - Lincoln and Franklin - are largely rural. They don't report the problems that Wegge fears. They argue it's simply a matter of following the law.

"The law is that you have to take the breath test or lose your license," said Lincoln County prosecutor G. John Richards, "and you shouldn't get a benefit out of basically working the system to say, 'Hey, I just won't take the test.'"