Case Summaries

February 22, 2016

Florida Supreme Court Pressures DUI Judge To Resign

What would happen to a judge convicted of a DUI in Los Angeles? When a court in Broward County, Florida, found a circuit judge guilty of that offense, she ended up losing her job.

On November 5, 2013, a 911 caller alerted police that a white Mercedes was driving erratically on Federal Highway in Boca Raton. When a police officer pulled the car over, Circuit Court Judge Cynthia Imperato told the officer that she was a judge. Instead of handing over her driver’s license as the officer requested, Imperato handed him her judge’s badge. (She later insisted that she wasn’t looking for special treatment because of her status.)

February 8, 2016

Hawaiian Prosecutors Seek 24/7 Warrants for DUI Drivers (Part 1)

by Michael Kraut

Will judges in California soon be working round-the-clock issuing warrants for blood alcohol tests for drivers suspected of DUI in Los Angeles? That’s what’s happening in Hawaii, thanks to a ruling last fall from the state’s Supreme Court.

The Hawaii Supreme Court said that police officers could not coerce drivers (by threatening them with jail or loss of license) to submit to a BAC. The ruling said that “the right to be free of warrant-less searches and seizures is a fundamental guarantee of our constitution.”

So unless a driver voluntarily gives consent–which most will not–or unless there is an emergency, jurisdictions in Hawaii that want to use BAC evidence in court now have to get warrants. But Hawaiian law also requires that the police measure blood alcohol within three hours of the alleged offense. The situation has left prosecutors scrambling to find ways to make it easier for judges to issue BAC warrants on short notice. Continue reading

January 18, 2016

Wow – Verdicts Overturned in 30-Year Old DUI Cases

by Michael Kraut

If a judge had accepted your guilty plea case involving a Los Angeles DUI, and new evidence turned up, would you take the time and spend the money to have that verdict overturned? What if your conviction dated all the way back to 1986? Some people in Massachusetts who pleaded guilty to DUI are willing to do it.

District Court in session. Edgartown.

A recent article in the Vineyard Gazette (the newspaper for the upscale Martha’s Vineyard) reported that attorneys who practice in the Edgartown District Court are taking a look at the operating under the influence (OUI) cases handled by Judge Brian Rowe over his 20 years in office. When accepting an accused DUI driver’s guilty plea, Judge Rowe apparently neglected to follow a procedure called colloquy. According to the Gazette, the judge was supposed to advise the guilty party that he/she had the right to a jury trial if desired and to ask each defendant if he or she fully understood the consequences of the decision to make a guilty plea. There’s a box on some court forms that the judge should have checked if the discussion had taken place.

January 15, 2016

Courts Rule For and Against Accused in Two DUI Cases

by Michael Kraut

The results of court cases in other states may not directly impact the outcome of Los Angeles DUI arrests, but they sometimes indicate the direction in which the judicial wind is blowing across the U.S.

The State of Georgia has already made it harder for prosecutors to win DUI convictions because of a ruling that people suspected of DUI may be too intoxicated to give their true informed consent to a breathalyzer test. Now an administrative law judge has thrown out the state’s attempt to suspend the license of a driver accused of DUI.

Atlanta Police Officer Justin J. Brodnik pulled David Leoni over for exceeding the speed limit by 20 miles per hour. The officer smelled alcohol on Leoni’s breath and noticed that his eyes were watery. (Leoni said he had just woken up from a nap.)

Despite the fact that Leoni answered questions without any difficulty and didn’t have trouble passing a balance test, Brodnik arrested him for DUI. That meant the Department of Driver Services automatically suspended his license. The law judge ruled that the watery eyes and a moderate smell of alcohol weren’t enough to prove that Leoni was impaired, so he ordered the state to restore Leoni’s license.

January 6, 2016

Minnesota Court Rules Warrants Required For DUI Urine Tests

by Michael Kraut

Under California law, police officers arresting a driver for a Los Angeles DUI don’t use a urine test for determining blood alcohol content at the time of an arrest. AB 2020, which became effective in January 2013, requires law enforcement officials to employ the more accurate blood test. The idea behind the law is that relying on the more reliable blood test will prevent DUI defendants from contesting the charges against them (if they’re based on a urine test).

But Minnesota still permits urine tests for DUI—and it just got a little harder for police officers to get that type of evidence when they suspect a driver of DUI. According to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled on December 28th that a state law that makes it a crime for a driver to refuse a urine test without a warrant is unconstitutional. This court said that making it a crime to refuse a blood or urine test in a DUI case implicates a defendant’s fundamental right to be free from unconstitutional searches. The court reversed the conviction of a driver found guilty of refusing to submit to a blood or urine test.

December 18, 2015

Could Hawaii DUI Ruling Signal Changes in Other States’ DUI Laws?

by Michael Kraut

Have you been convicted of a Los Angeles DUI based on a breathalyzer test that you took only because you didn’t want to lose your license? You may be particularly interested in a recent decision by the Hawaii Supreme Court, which ruled that the state’s “implied consent” laws regarding BAC tests are unconstitutional.

In the case of the State of Hawaii vs. Yong Shik Won, the justices found that officers had coerced Won into taking the test. He originally refused but changed his mind when police had him sign an implied consent form that stated under Hawaii law he must take a breathalyzer test or face 30 days in prison and a $1,000 fine. Won took the test, which resulted in his DUI conviction.
Won appealed his conviction based on the fact that officers had not read him his rights before administering the BAC. His attorneys argued that this was a warrantless search, and that under Hawaii’s constitution the state cannot compel someone to submit to a search when consent was gained “by explicit or implicit coercion, implied threat or covert force.”

December 14, 2015

DUI Arrests in Los Angeles Drop But Fatalities Up in 2015

by Michael Kraut

While police are making fewer arrests for DUI in Los Angeles and the rest of the state, they’ve been seeing more deaths as a result of DUI-related accidents.

The Sacramento Bee took a look at California’s DUI statistics from 2013 (the latest figures available from the state) and compared them with results from previous years. It found that the number of DUI arrests had declined from 188, 327 in 1998 to 160,388 in 2013. The rate of DUI arrests decreased from 908 per 100,000 licensed drivers in 1998 to 651 per 100,000 licensed drivers.
That’s the good news. But there is a downside. The Bee analysis found that while there were 1,417 motor vehicle deaths related to drugs and alcohol in 2010, that number increased to 1,699 in 2013.

San Francisco had the smallest rate of DUI arrests in 2013, with a rate of just 2.5 percent per 1,000 drivers. But if you want to avoid sharing the road with a driver under the influence of drugs or alcohol, steer clear of Inyo County, where they have a DUI arrest rate of 16.3 percent.