Hundreds of court cases in Orange County, California are under review amid allegations that someone forged court records to fix DUI and other traffic cases. The FBI and Orange County prosecutors are investigating close to 600 superior court cases going back as far as 2006. It has been suspected that a court employee recorded fake sentence reductions and dismissals and incorrectly made it appear that at least one defendant had served jail time. All of the cases appear to be tied to a specific clerk who left his job in recent months.
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Illinois Bill Setting Legal Marijuana Limit Awaits Governor’s Signature
A bill setting 15 nanograms as the THC threshold for DUI-marijuana is awaiting the governor’s signature. Governor Rauner has 60 days to decide whether to sign it or veto it.Under the current law, a driver caught with any amount of marijuana in his system is considered legally impaired. Opponents believe the current law is unfair because THC stays in a person’s system for weeks without causing impairment, a fact even the federal government acknowledges. The proposed bill sets a legal amount of THC in the system to account for the drug’s lingering effects and allows police to conduct roadside saliva tests to determine whether the driver is over the 15-nanogram limit.
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Illinois Supreme Court Holds Officer’s Reasonable Mistake of Law Can Justify Vehicle Stop
The Illinois Supreme Court recently held that an officer’s objectively reasonable mistake of law may form the basis for a constitutionally valid vehicle stop. Police officers stopped defendant Jose Gaytan, believing his car’s ball-type trailer hitch obstructed his car’s license plate in violation of the Illinois Vehicle Code. During the stop, officers discovered a diaper bag containing cannabis, which the defendant agreed was his. The defendant was arrested and charged with unlawful possession of cannabis and unlawful possession of cannabis with intent to deliver.
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Dirty DUI Stings Constitutional, Says Federal Court
Plaintiffs Mitchell Katz and Hasan Aksu sued Stephen Tanabe of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office for helping private investigator Christopher Butler set up a “dirty DUI” sting of which they were both victims. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that Tanabe did not violate the Fourth Amendment in stopping the plaintiffs because they were in fact driving while intoxicated.Tanabe and Butler met while they were both working as police officers for the Antioch Police Department in the mid-1990s. Tanabe left for the Danville Police Department in Contra Costa County, and Butler left to start his own private investigation firm. In October 2010, Butler and Tanabe agreed to participate in a dirty DUI scheme to catch plaintiffs with DUIs to use against them in Butler’s clients’ cases in family court. According to the court, Butler agreed to pay Tanabe for his help with cash, cocaine, and a Glock firearm.
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Officer’s Reasonable Mistake of Law Does Not Render Traffic Stop Unconstitutional, Says New York Court
In People v. Guthrie, a New York appellate court decided whether there exists constitutionally viable probable cause to effectuate a traffic stop when the stop is justified by an officer’s mistaken belief. The court concluded that when the officer’s mistake is objectively reasonable, the stop does not violate the Fourth Amendment.Just after midnight on September 27, 2009, a Wayne County police officer stopped Rebecca Guthrie’s vehicle after observing her fail to stop at a stop sign in Newark Village. While effectuating the stop, the officer noticed the odor of alcohol. The officer performed several field sobriety tests and a breath test, which suggested the defendant was intoxicated. The officer arrested the defendant, charging her with failing to stop at a stop sign in violation of New York law.
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Georgia Supreme Court Weakens Implied Consent Law
Last month in Williams v. State, the Georgia Supreme Court remanded a defendant’s DUI case after the trial court erroneously failed to address whether the defendant gave actual consent to his blood test.
After a bench trial, defendant John Cletus Williams was convicted of DUI and failure to maintain lane in violation of Georgia law. Prior to trial, he unsuccessfully moved to suppress the results of his blood test on the grounds that it was obtained without a search warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. He argued that Georgia’s implied consent statute was unconstitutional as applied to him because it did not amount to voluntary consent for Fourth Amendment purposes.
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Illinois Appellate Court Upholds Defendant’s Suspension Based on Officer’s Incomplete Report
On February 27, an Illinois appellate court upheld a defendant’s license suspension despite the arresting officer’s incomplete report.
Defendant Jaime McLeer’s driver’s license was suspended after he refused to submit to testing to calculate the concentration of alcohol in his blood. McLeer was arrested for DUI in January 2014. When McLeer refused testing, the officer told him that his driving privileges would be suspended. The officer gave the sworn report to McLeer. There was no date listed beside the “Notice of Summary Suspension/Revocation Given On.” Based on the missing date, the defendant petitioned the court to rescind the suspension.At the hearing on the petition, the officer testified that because information was missing from the sworn report, the Secretary of State’s office initially could not confirm the summary suspension. Thus, the Secretary advised the officer to fill in the portion of the form providing when “Notice of Summary Suspension/Revocation [was] Given.” The arresting officer amended the report accordingly. He then sent the amended report to the Secretary, but he never sent the amended report to McLeer or to the court. The officer confirmed at the hearing, however, that he gave McLeer notice of the suspension on January 26, 2014.
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Illinois Counties With the Highest DUI Arrests
Thanks to improved awareness, harsher penalties, and significant legislative efforts, drunk driving fatalities in Illinois have decreased by over 37 percent between 2002 and 2012. Alcohol-impaired driving remains a serious problem in Illinois and throughout the country. In the United Staes in 2013, one person every 52 minutes was killed due to a drunk driving accident.
In 1982, former Secretary of State and Governor Jim Edgar helped found the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists (AAIM), an independent non-profit group and Illinois’ first citizens’ task force. AAIM recently collected data regarding DUI arrests, accidents, and fatalities in 2013.
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Appellate Court Holds That Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply to License Revocation Hearings
Earlier this month, a North Carolina appellate court held that the Fourth Amendment does not apply in driver’s license revocation hearings, “even if those proceedings could be viewed as quasi-criminal in nature.”In 2013, Myra Lynne Combs was stopped by North Carolina police without reasonable suspicion in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The arresting officer received an anonymous call regarding a possible drunk driver weaving in a blue Ford Explorer on Highway U.S. 52. The officer proceeded to U.S. 52 and observed a vehicle matching the caller’s description. The officer and a backup officer followed the suspect, but they did not observe any erratic driving aside from a “slight cross of the center” line of the roadway, which was unpainted. After the driver pulled into a driveway, the officers initiated a traffic stop.
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Illinois Appellate Court Reverses Defendant’s DUI Based on Officer’s Fourth Amendment Violation
This month, the Fifth District Court of Appeal reversed a defendant’s DUI conviction based on the arresting officer’s Fourth Amendment violation.
The defendant, Katelyn Bozarth, was charged with two counts of DUI after being arrested in a private driveway in Wayne County. She filed a motion to quash the arrest and suppress the evidence obtained against her on the grounds that the arresting officer lacked reasonable suspicion to seize her. After a hearing, the court denied the motion.
At a bench (non-jury) trial, the court found Bozarth guilty and ordered her to one year of court supervision. The defendant appealed, arguing the trial court erred in denying the motion to quash the arrest and suppress the evidence obtained therefrom. The Fifth District Appellate Court agreed with the defendant and reversed her conviction.