Even before it appeared that Mr. Corbin might avoid the more serious charges, the accident brought more than the usual agony to this tightly knit rural area. Mr. Corbin and Mrs. Dirago did did not know each other, but both worked in the same I.B.M. complex, and he is a distant relative of her mother through marriage.

Now, many in the area are wondering aloud how legal technicalities could triumph over justice in a case where one driver's blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit and where another driver lay dead.

''They say they can't try a man twice; that's the law,'' said Joseph Dirago Jr., the victim's father-in-law. ''But it's not really fair. What this guy did was like taking a knife or gun to somebody.''

Mrs. Dirago's parents, who live in a yellow clapboard house in Highland in Ulster County, had fought to have Mr. Corbin prosecuted on homicide charges. Her father, Pat Carter, a dispatcher for an oil company, and her older brother, Gary, an oil-burner repairman, traveled to Washington in March to hear the arguments before the Supreme Court. Her mother enlisted the support of the national organization RID, for Remove Intoxicated Drivers.

Husband's 'Not the Same Boy'

The dead woman's husband, Daniel Dirago, a 29-year-old machinist, has suffered greatly, his parents say. ''He's gone for treatments, but he's not the same boy anymore,'' his father said.

Mr. Corbin lives across the Hudson River, in the Dutchess County town of Wappingers Falls. He is his early 40's and works as an inspector at I.B.M.'s semi-conductor development and manufacturing site in East Fishkill.

Mr. Corbin lives with his wife, Joyce, in a modest pale-green ranch house on a dead-end street. He did not return phone calls to his home and office. In the drunken-driving case, he was fined $350 and his license was suspended. He has a civil suit pending against him.

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Mr. Corbin is pained by the episode, his lawyer, Stephen L. Greller, said. ''Mr. Corbin will live with that for the rest of his life,'' he said.

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Mr. Grady, the Dutchess County District Attorney, said it would be ''an understatement to say he was extremely disappointed'' by the Supreme Court ruling. ''I will always have a bad feeling in my stomach about this case,'' he said. ''Obviously, if you could roll back the clock, you would do many things differently, but you can't and you have to live with the consequences.''

Unaware of Fatality

Mr. Grady said mistakes were made at the outset. An assistant district attorney, he said, was working on Mr. Corbin's traffic charges without realizing that a fatality was involved and that another prosecutor was preparing the homicide case for a grand jury. The two prosecutors failed to communicate, Mr. Grady said, and also failed to find out when Mr. Corbin was scheduled to appear before the La Grange town justice on the traffic charges.

As a result, Mr. Corbin showed up with his lawyer and pleaded guilty to the traffic violations without mentioning an accident or a death to the town justice, Edmund V. Caplicki. Had an assistant district attorney been present or called the judge in advance, the arraignment could have been adjourned.

Further complicating the events surrounding the plea was the fact that the original hearing date of Oct. 29, 1987 was moved up to Oct. 27. The police officer who wrote Mr. Corbin's traffic ticket put down a wrong appearance date - a night when the judge was not presiding - and the town clerk later changed it. The victim's family planned to attend the Oct. 29 hearing but were not told of the switch. They, too, might have told the judge of the fatality and prevented the guilty plea.

Judge Has Regrets

Judge Caplicki, too, said he regrets the way his office handled the case. ''It's a poor reflection on the court system,'' he said.

Even though Mr. Corbin entered a guilty plea, the District Attorney believed he could still win an indictment, which he did. The charges included criminally negligent homicide, vehicular homicide, manslaughter and reckless assault.

A Dutchess County judge denied a double-jeopardy motion filed by Mr. Corbin's lawyers to dismiss the case. And the appellate division of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn unanimously affirmed the decision. But the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, reversed it in a 4-3 vote, and the case went on to Washington.

The law firm representing Mr. Corbin - Crane, Wolfson, Roberts and Greller - has felt honored to be the first from Poughkeepsie to take a case to the Supreme Court. But the lawyers have had to defend themselves before a community which, like many others, is fed up with drunken drivers.

''The attitude out there is, How could a man who admitted he was drunk and killed a woman get away with a $350 fine?'' said Joseph A. Egitto, an associate in the law firm. ''But this office has an obligation to vigorously and zealously represent its clients, and sometimes it's difficult to set aside personal feelings and hard-to-swallow facts. We'd like to think the Constitution prevailed rather than Mr. Corbin.''

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''The district attorney made a mistake, and it was our obligation to take advantage of that,'' said Carl S. Wolfson, a partner in the law firm and himself a former assistant district attorney in Dutchess County. ''But Mr. Corbin does not feel vindicated, and no one here is rejoicing.''