» DUI
The Way They Think
I know a lot of nice prosecutors. I know prosecutors who care about justice. A few of them care about people too. Unfortunately, some of the other prosecutors I know don’t care much about anything except for hurting criminal defendants. The legislature gives them permission to ruin lives, and they relish the opportunity. One of my clients is charged with first-time DUI, and she has a very long history of medical problems. She’s had five back surgeries in the time I’ve represented her. She has to take special precautions just to make it through a day of work, and she sees doctors pretty much constantly. Spending a lot of time in jail would be disastrous for her health. I obtained documentation from medical … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI, Prosecutors
It Goes Both Ways
I was in trial this past week, so I didn’t have a lot of free time. I found myself working into the night to deal with things I couldn’t address during the day. I only had enough time during breaks to respond to the things that seemed the most urgent. One of those things was a frantic message from a prosecutor. She wanted me to call her back as soon as possible. I recently tried a case with her because the state wouldn’t budge one bit on the plea. My client faces the exact same thing right now having lost at trial that he would’ve gotten had he accepted the state’s offer. After three motions, a long evidentiary hearing, various oral arguments, a bunch of … Read entire article »
Abusing Science
The government loves science. It should be quite obvious why, as science can very easily be twisted to serve the state’s nefarious purposes while maintaining the illusion of being undeniable and absolute. Science is the smoking gun in many cases, regardless of whether it really is or not. DUI cases in particular are often built on nothing more than government pseudo-science, something without which the state would only be able to prove in many instances that defendants were bad drivers who did a poor job performing parlor tricks for a cop. The results of a supposedly scientific test can instantaneously change a minor civil traffic ticket into a DUI conviction along with all of the accompanying social stigma and various draconian punishments. Most lawyers and judges are … Read entire article »
Filed under: Courts, DUI, Government Rants
Justice v. Efficiency
The criminal justice system is broken. Many judges are little more than prosecutors in robes. The courts fuss and fume when you need an extra week or two to make a decision. They push you into whatever plea comes your way. In Phoenix City Court, you usually spend the pretrial stages in front of a single judge. After you decide to fight it, though, they shuffle you elsewhere. The order says you’ll be going to trial in thirty days, but the court struggles to get you in front of a judge in sixty. You won’t know which judge you’ll get for fifty-nine. When everyone assumed you’d plead, they rushed you to a decision. After they realized you were going to fight, they stretched it out as long … Read entire article »
DUI, What Should Be a Lesser Included Offense, and a Common Trial Defense
I previously wrote about the fact that, in Arizona, you do not have to be driving to get a DUI. I’ve also written quite a few times in the past about lesser-included offenses and Arizona courts’ unwillingness to give juries the option of finding defendants guilty of less serious but potentially more appropriate offenses at trial. A fairly old opinion from the Court of Appeals of Arizona, Division One, combines those two things in a way that might be pretty amusing if it weren’t so scary. In the opinion, the court said that aggravated DUI, which means DUI with a suspended license, does not contain the lesser offense of driving on a suspended license. The court’s reasoning was that aggravated DUI does not require proof of actual driving … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI
The Decreasing Value Of Time
Ours is a world of easy answers. Type whatever you’re wondering into Google and look no further. The solution to your problem should be on the first page. Clicking onto the second is too much work, so the answer can’t be there. The easiest thing is always the right thing. For the tough problems, we have statistics to take moral and ethical judgment out of the equation. Things are bad in this world, and the numbers confirm it. Punish harshly and watch the numbers drop, they tell us. In reality, we’re watching the people who make the numbers feign a reduction to encourage us to quit thinking about whether what we’re doing collectively is right or wrong. Regardless, the numbers are what matter. A … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI
Unimaginable Stupidity
There’s no shortage of government stupidity when it comes to DUI in general. However, there are some aspects where the ridiculousness of it all is really put on show. One of the silly little tests that armed enforcers like to coerce unsuspecting motorists into performing so that other government actors can later forcibly remove blood from the motorists’ bodies is called the “walk and turn” test. I think there’s a little extra government stupidity when it comes to that test. The officer begins administering the test by saying something like this: I want you to put your left foot on the line and then place your right foot in front of it. Don’t move until I tell you. Do you understand? When the suspect assumes the position, the officer continues … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI
The Bigger Problem
There’s something called a “BAT Van” in Texas. “BAT” stands for “Breath Alcohol Testing,” and the purpose of these vans, as you might guess, is to measure whether a driver is impaired try to detect a subject’s mouth alcohol using a potentially unreliable machine made by a largely unregulated and highly secretive company and then roughly correlate that result to a subject’s blood alcohol while largely ignoring the subject’s unique and highly variable metabolism in order to convict him or her not of necessarily being impaired, but of having too much of that thing the state has so imprecisely measured in his or her blood. Those vans are pretty prevalent here in Arizona too, though we’re switching to violent, forcible blood draws in many jurisdictions and don’t have nearly as … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI
Fines
I have no problem with the idea of a court ordering someone pay restitution to a victim. Making an aggrieved party whole seems like exactly the kind of stuff a decent justice system should try to do. Probation also makes sense to me as a sentencing option. If we care about rehabilitation, services and some sort of supervision seem essential. I even understand the need for incarceration as part of the sentence in some cases. Although jail and prison terms are routinely and unfairly ordered to excess, I can see the logic in removing a dangerous person from society. I understand retribution and the idea that there may be a deterrent effect in taking away someone’s liberty. Also, when it comes to time, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Courts, DUI, Government Rants
The Makings of a Great Tragedy
I once received very wise advice to take caution when writing about things close to home. I took it to heart. Years of being told “don’t shit where you eat” didn’t sink in, I guess, but that more subtle, specific advice did. Things far away aren’t so clear, however, so they may be a different story. Circumspection be damned? If I lived in Texas, I would have had a little more background when I read this post by Murray Newman. I was skeptical about what he perceived as a double standard even reading it without context, but that by itself didn’t seem worth a post on my part. When a prosecutor gets charged and defense lawyers don’t just rant about the presumption of innocence, I … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI, Practice in General, Prosecutors
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