$42,158,714 for California DUI checkpoint money makers!!

San Diego DUI criminal defense lawyers learned the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley found that sobriety checkpoints are more often turning into cash-generating operations for local law enforcement – rather than a means to remove drunks from the road.

We started this story in September with a tip about DUI checkpoints in the North San Francisco Bay Area that netted more than 20 vehicles impounded, but hardly any drunken driving arrests.

Community activists alleged that the checkpoints were disproportionately impacting Hispanic neighborhoods. It wasn’t easy to determine who is losing their cars at checkpoints.

Several police departments said they do not track the ethnicity of drivers they cite and also declined to release citation data on privacy grounds.

But over the past three months, we conducted dozens of interviews with law enforcement, tow truck operators and motorists who had lost their cars at checkpoints. The consensus: Vehicles are predominantly seized from minority motorists – often illegal immigrants.

We began the reporting in earnest in late October by requesting data detailing the results of sobriety checkpoints, by city, for the past two fiscal years (2007-08 and 2008-09) from the California Office of Traffic Safety and the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center.

For each city, we calculated the per checkpoint averages for the number of police officer hours worked, number of DUI arrests, and number of vehicle impounds. We also calculated the ratio of vehicles impounded by each agency for every one DUI arrest made at sobriety checkpoints.

We wanted to answer the question, do cities with larger Hispanic populations impound more cars at their checkpoints?

Next, we imported demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2006-08) for each city included in the checkpoints dataset. Specifically, we included the percentage of each city’s population that identifies itself as Hispanic. For the small number of cities that were too small to be included in the survey, we used data from the 2000 census instead.

Using statistical analysis software (SPSS), we divided the 155 California cities in the dataset into quartiles based on their Hispanic population as a percentage of the whole. In cities in the quartile with the largest Hispanic populations, Hispanics constitute at least 48.5 percent of the total population. In cities in the quartile with the smallest Hispanic populations, Hispanics constitute 17.4 percent or less of the total population.

We then calculated averages for number of impounds per checkpoint, by quartile.

The results were stark.

Checkpoints in cities where Hispanics are the largest share of the population impounded 34 cars per operation, a rate three times higher than the cities with the smallest Hispanic populations, which averaged 11 per operation.

We used state checkpoints data, hundreds of pages of city financial records and tow receipts to determine an estimate of how much money vehicle seizures at checkpoints generate. Terry Odeon, a UC Berkeley finance professor, reviewed the methodology used to calculate the estimate and found it sound.

The California Tow Truck Association says that owners of these vehicles only recover them 30 percent of the time.

We determined the average tow bill paid statewide for car owners that did recover their vehicles last year was $1,805.20, including city impound release fees, and tow and storage charges, generating an estimated total of $13,078,674 last year for tow firms and cities. For unrecovered cars, we determined each car on average created a bill of $1,720, which tow firms receive from selling cars at lien sales. Those cars generated an estimated $29,080,040.

All together, cities and tow firms generated an estimated $42,158,714 last year.

UC Berkeley graduate journalism students assisted the reporting at several stages. Linsay Rousseau Burnett helped report at a checkpoint. Madeleine Bair provided translation for several interviews. And Karen Weise fact checked numerous parts of the story.

This project was produced in collaboration with California Watch, with Mark Katches editing throughout the process.

Riverside police recommended no action in its report of Chief Russ Leach's 3 a.m. hit-and-run crash, despite indicating he "had been drinking," he couldn't recall where he had crashed and that he was unaware of the extent of his car's damage.

In the six-page traffic collision report, obtained Thursday by The Press-Enterprise, officers make no mention of attempting to give the chief a field sobriety test after they found him driving on the rims of his dented, scratched city-issued black Chrysler 300.

The report was issued by Riverside police the morning of the collision. On Tuesday police handed the investigation over to the California Highway Patrol.

Leach "was unable to provide a statement" regarding his wreck Monday at Central and Hillside avenues, according to the report by Riverside police Sgt. Frank Orta. Two officers had stopped him more than three miles away, later learning he ran into a fire hydrant and light pole.

The chief "would only say that he had a flat tire and that he had driven into a field or dirt road," Orta wrote. The chief repeated that several times.

"It was evident that he was unaware that he had a collision and that his vehicle suffered major damages," Orta wrote.

In the portion of the report where officers can address a driver's sobriety, they checked a box labeled "HBD -- Impairment Unknown." HBD stands for "had been drinking."

Other options include "had not been drinking," "impairment not known" and "not applicable."

Despite a witness reporting that Leach's car left the scene of the initial collision, officers did not check hit-and-run on the report, and ultimately, listed "file" as their recommendation for disposition.

Standard practice in cases to be submitted for possible charges is to indicate the report will be forwarded to the district attorney's office.

Leach, 61, remains on medical leave. He has said he was disoriented on prescription medication at the time.

31.6 M verdict against experienced drinker / California DUI driver with lawyers employing Trial Attorney Legend Gerry Spence’s trial methods and a theme of “win with truth and love”.

The jury is from a conservative California farming community. 2 sisters were injured by a California drunk driver.

A large percentage of the jury pool had close relatives who had been harmed by drunk drivers, so the issue had the potential to inflame the jury and spoil the verdict.

The judge warned that he would declare a mistrial if compensatory damages were based on prejudice, which forced the plaintiffs’ attorneys to tread carefully.

“This directed the entire trial,” said Beverly Hills, Calif. lawyer Alejandro Blanco, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. He noted that they never referred to the defendant as a “drunken driver” during the trial, instead calling him an “experienced drinker.” It was also a tactical decision to go easy on the driver.

Lead counsel Nick Rowley said that during the trial he decided that if they received a verdict over the $10 million policy limit, he would offer to bring a bad faith claim on behalf of the driver against his insurer. Two sisters, Rocio Landeros, 16, and Marta Perez, 25, were driving to the movies when they were struck by a truck driven by a farm worker who ran a stop sign.

According to Blanco, the driver’s insurance company, Travelers Insurance, admitted liability, yet at trial the driver testified he was suffering from a diabetic coma despite his own deposition testimony that he was “blinded by alcohol.”

The chief toxicologist for the county testified that based on a breath test taken hours after the accident, the driver would have had a blood alcohol level of 0.16 (twice the legal limit) and was more likely than not an “experienced drinker,” because otherwise he would not have been able to drive at all.

Most of the one-month trial ended up as a battle over damages.

Early on, the plaintiffs made a demand for $10 million, the policy limits. Travelers, which insured both the employer and the driver individually, settled claims against the farm for $5 million but refused to settle for the policy limits for the driver.

According to Rowley, after two years of silence, the parties went to mediation and the insurer finally offered to settle for the policy limits, but the plaintiffs rejected the offer.

“Most attorneys would jump at that,” said Rowley, who specializes in brain injury and “open policy” cases where a judgment exceeds policy limits.

Instead, Rowley went to trial, knowing that a judgment exceeding the policy limit would expose the insurer to a potential bad faith suit that could include punitive damages. “I go on the offensive against them and use their own insured to go after them,” he said.

Rowley said the plaintiffs were willing to settle for between $20 and $30 million, but the defense “was banking on the jury only giving a couple million dollars.”

The plaintiffs’ case was not without its obstacles. Rocio, who suffered more serious brain damage, was a 16 year-old unlicensed driver at the time of the accident.
Her attorneys argued that although she didn’t have a license, she was an experienced driver who had been taught by her father and who was about to get her license. This convinced the judge to keep the evidence out.

On another evidentiary issue, the plaintiffs were able to use an adverse ruling to their advantage.

The judge had ruled that the plaintiffs could not call a defense expert who had opined that Rocio’s life expectancy was reduced by 13 years because of her injuries.

The defense did not call the expert, but in closing arguments claimed that no evidence existed to support a reduction in life expectancy.

This opened the door for plaintiffs to tell the jury that the evidence did exist but the defense chose not to present it. “The defense lost credibility by calling us liars,” said Blanco.

While the defense argued that Rocio had made a remarkable recovery and could live independently, the plaintiffs alleged that she experienced traumatic brain injury, spent 15 months in rehab learning to walk and talk again and still has residual brain damage.

Rowley argued that brain scans of Rocio indicated “diffuse axonal sheering,” meaning that microscopic connections in her brain had been torn.

A physical manifestation of this condition, he said, is foot drop paralysis, which causes Rocio’s left foot drags due to damage to her right parietal lobe.

An even a bigger impact, Rowley said, was the alteration in her personality.

“The Rocio who woke up in the morning and got in the car was a different person after she was hit and became brain-injured,” Rowley told the jury.

Although the plaintiffs put on several experts, the most important testimony came from Rocio’s family.

Her sister Marta, who was a passenger in the car and also injured, testified how her sister’s personality has changed.

Their mother testified that Rocio turned into a completely different person who gets aggravated, becomes violent and shows poor judgment, such as taking off her clothes and trying to walk outside.

Rowley and Blanco put Rocio on the stand for only 5 to 10 minutes. “During her testimony, [she] looked confused and very tired. We asked ‘Why do you look so tired?’ She said, ‘I feel this way all the time,’” said Blanco.

At the start of the trial, the jury had seen videotape “snippets” of Rocio’s deposition, but during the trial, defense attorneys read her testimony into the record.

“The reason they wanted to do that is that Rocio doesn’t look normal; she looks damaged, harmed. Our rhetorical question was, ‘Why didn’t you show longer portions of the video?’” Blanco said.

After a day of deliberations, the jury awarded a total of $31.5 million to Rocio and $100,000 to her sister Marta, who also suffered brain damage but can work.

The trial theme of “truth and love” was not just a catchy phrase; the plaintiffs’ lawyers lived and breathed it.

Rowley and Blanco are both instructors at Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College and embrace their clients as friends.

For example, Rowley says they met Rocio at her house at 6 a.m. to see how she starts her day, ate meals with the family, saw her mother cut up the food on her plate for her, went to school with her to try to imagine walking into class with a disability and attended doctor’s appointments and family gatherings with her.

“It means getting to know and understand your clients, so when you get up in front of a jury, it’s not acting. It’s real,” said Rowley.


Plaintiffs’ attorneys: Nicholas Rowley and Alejandro Blanco of Trial Lawyer for Justice in Decorah, Iowa and Beverly Hills, Calif.; Daniel Rodriguez of Rodriguez & Associates in Bakersfield, Calif.

Defense attorneys: Charles Custer and Jewel Basse of Gordon & Rees in San Francisco.

The case: Landeros v. Torres; Feb. 1, 2010; Superior Court, Kern County, Calif.; Judge Sidney Chapin.

March 13, 2010 San Francisco California DUI Seminar

THIS MCLE SEMINAR IS ONLY FOR CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS

California DUI & DMV Defense Speakers:

Adam Gasner - To Testify or Not To Testify

Francisco Rodriguez - Using SFST's to win your case!

Felix D'Amico - Obtaining and Utilizing In-Unit Videos in DUI Defense

Robert Little - A Brief History of Time Waivers

Darryl Genis - We'll all be surprised

Keith Staten - All about DMV Hearings and Writs

Cole Casey - Making Clients Happier

Captain Motion - Dumptrucks and the motions necessary to avoid being one

Michael Fremont - DUI Evidence Code

Jon Bryant Artz - Plan your case to CONFRONT the evidence—strategic planning

Ted Vosk - Forensic Metrology - The Foundation of Science in the Courtroom

John Menzel - Checking Under the Hood - Breath testing

Donald Drewry - Impeach the People's Tox in Voir Dire

Donald Bartell - Melendez-Diaz

Judge Walter Gorelick - Tulare IID Implementation

Paul Burglin - DUI Law Update

Ignacio Hernandez - Legislative Update


This Year's "Fast Eddie" Kuwatch Award will be handed out during provided lunch served in the vendor area.

What I am about to reveal to you lawmakers of the world are some fool-proof instructions for drafting and enacting laws that will transform men who are disinclined to drive while intoxicated into dangerous drunk drivers. I am not sure whether you will find these instructions useful in your professional lives, but I am fairly certain that you will find this information edifying nonetheless.

The overall strategy that you ought to pursue if you want to convince men to drive drunk is to make sure that they have no (or few) viable options open to them besides getting behind the wheel when they’re drunk. More specifically, what you should aim at accomplishing is to increase the costs of the alternatives to drunk driving, which will concomitantly decrease the relative costs associated with drunk driving. While this might appear initially to be a difficult feat to accomplish, it is actually quite frequently and easily achieved in practice.

Let’s look at a classic example of how to draft a law that will convince men to drive drunk. In fact, this is one of the best possible ways to make sure that there are more drunk drivers on the road than there otherwise would be. The general objective in this case is to make sure that all men who are thinking about sleeping off their intoxication in their vehicles choose to drive home instead. In order to achieve this result, all you have to do is draft and enact laws that punish sleeping in one’s car while intoxicated in exactly the same way that you punish drunk drivers. What you will have achieved by enacting such a law is to have increased the costs associated with choosing not to drive while intoxicated, while having simultaneously decreased the relative costs associated with driving drunk. When faced with the choice of sleeping in a truck cab versus his own bed a man is likely to opt for the latter choice and drive home, when the costs associated with either option are the same. After all, why not choose to drive home and sleep in your own bed, when you could get a DUI anyway just by sleeping in your car? If you are looking for laws to enact that will convince men to drive drunk, this should be one of the first options you consider.

Another effective method for increasing the number of dangerous drunk drivers on the road is to enact laws that will lead the population to be more intoxicated on a regular basis than they otherwise would be. If you can convince men to drink a pint of whiskey instead of just drinking a few beers, for example, you will of course have drunker and more dangerous drivers on the road. Don’t for a minute think that this goal is impossibly out of reach for you far-seeing lawmakers. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this feat is to dramatically increase the tax on beer (and, hence, its overall price), which decreases the relative price of hard liquor. Since it is much more difficult for drinkers to ascertain how intoxicated they are when drinking, say, shots of Jack Daniels compared to drinking Coors Light, you can be assured that there will be many more stupendously drunk drivers on the road than there would have been without this tax. Feel free to improvise here. If you can use your taxing power in other ways to ensure that people will drink vodka, gin, and whiskey (or, better yet, Bacardi 151) instead of drinking their preferred light beer, you will have accomplished the same goal of creating more dangerous drunk drivers on the road. For more information on how to use taxes and prohibition to make Americans more drunk, I recommend reading Mark Thornton’s excellent book The Economics of Prohibition [PDF].

You can also cause people to drink more than they otherwise would by constantly tightening the legal definition of drunkenness. This option is a bit more subtle, but is nonetheless effective. In order to see how to employ this strategy, consider this example. If the definition of drunkenness is legally established at, say, .15%, men are in a position to be able to drink a few beers, have a bit of fun, and still stay well below the legal limit. They also have an incentive to slow down before they approach that limit and risk getting a DUI. If you tighten the definition of drunkenness, however, to, say, .08% or even .02%, men can only consume one or two drinks before they are already over the legal limit. And, once they are over the limit, they have no incentive whatsoever to slow down. Since they’re already over the limit with two drinks, and can already get a DUI if stopped, why not keep drinking? There is certainly no legal incentive for them to slow down after they’ve passed this ridiculous definition of drunkenness.

The same holds true should you choose to treat all people with alcohol in their veins as "drunk," no matter how much they have consumed over the legal limit. If you punish a man just as severely with a BAC of.09% as you do men with BAC’s of .25%, what possible reason could a man have to slow down his drinking after he’s over the limit? Since he will receive the same punishment whether he drinks five cocktails or fifteen, he is not encouraged by the law even in the slightest bit to slow down. If you are looking for more elegant and subtle ways to increase the number of truly dangerous drunk drivers, this might be the option for you.

Yet another method for increasing drunk driving that I would like to share with you concerns alternative transportation. If you can manage to drastically reduce the amount of safe, alternative transportation in your jurisdiction, you will go a long way toward making sure there are more drunk drivers on the road. If you can foist a government-backed cartel in the taxi and limousine trade in your jurisdiction, for example, you will be effectively depriving drunk people of a cheap and safe alternative to driving when they are drunk. And, without having the option of these cheap and safe forms of transportation, they will choose to drive drunk more frequently than they otherwise would. A more effective method for creating more drunk drivers would be hard to find. This option has the added benefit that the people thus deprived of cheap and safe transportation won’t even know that it is responsible for increases in the incidence of drunk driving!

Finally, it is critically important for you lawmakers to avoid legalizing drunk driving at all costs, if you want to make sure that there are both more drunk drivers and more dangerous drunk drivers on the road. If you follow these simple prescriptions, in no time you will find a veritable epidemic of drunk driving in your jurisdiction emerging, and the booty from drunk driving arrests will start to flow in.

Just remember not to crack a smile when you hold press conferences in your district piously proclaiming that you are doing everything in your power to reduce drunk driving.

Mark R. Crovelli [send him mail] writes from Denver, Colorado.

Hassle-free San Diego California DUI attorney help for San Diego California DUI court and San Diego California DMV. San Diego DUI Attorney Rick Mueller is a Premier San Diego California Drunk Driving Lawyer, San Diego California DUI & San Diego California DMV Defense Attorney with over 25 years of experience. San Diego California DUI Lawyer Rick Mueller dedicates 100% of his San Diego DUI law practice to aggressively defending those accused of San Diego Driving Under the Influence.

On August 1, 2009, Rick lectured at the

Annual DUI Seminar

in connection with the American Bar Association at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. San Diego California Criminal Defense Attorney Rick Mueller spoke at the prestigious California Attorneys For Criminal Justice

A Day in the Desert with the DUI Experts - Annual DUI seminar

.

Here is the Free San Diego County DUI Defense Survey

at this online DUI consultation site

to find out your best strategy and to protect your driver's license in California or elsewhere.

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