The California Court of Appeal delivered a bombshell ruling to the DMV last week. This could be a gamechanger for any attorney who practices DUI defense, and to anyone arrested on suspicion of DUI in California. To understand the magnitude of this ruling, let me first give a little bit of background.
Under California law, the DMV must automatically suspend the driver's license of any person who is arrested on suspicion of DUI. That suspension goes into effect before the driver is convicted of any wrongdoing in court.
If a driver wants to challenge this automatic suspension of his license, he must contact the DMV within 10 days of his arrest and demand a hearing (called an "Administrative Per Se" hearing, or an "APS" for short). At the APS, a DMV hearing officer will review the police report and any evidence collected during the arrest. The issues are limited to: 1) Did the officer have reasonable suspicion to believe that the driver was operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol? 2) Was the driver lawfully arrested?, and 3) Did the driver submit to a chemical test of his breath or blood with a result of 0.08% or greater? If the answer to all 3 of those questions is "yes", then the DMV will suspend the defendant's license, regardless of the outcome of any court proceedings.
Notice that the DMV is not interested in whether or not the defendant is actually guilty of DUI. They are strictly trying to decide whether or not the officer was acting reasonably at the time he arrested the subject on suspicion of DUI. Being arrested on suspicion of DUI is enough to lose your license in California.
But that's not the worst part. The thing that really unfairly stacks the deck against defendants in APS hearings is the fact that the DMV hearing officer serves several roles simultaneously. He or she acts as the prosecutor who presents evidence against the defendant, AND as the judge who determines which evidence should be admissible, AND as the jury who ultimately decides whether or not the prosecutor (him or herself) has carried the burden of proof. Even a Russian gymnastics judge would say, "That doesn't smell right."
The Court of Appeal finally stepped in last week and ruled in favor of the California DUI Lawyers Association in their suit against the DMV. It determined that the practice of using hearing officers as both advocates and as triers of fact violates the principles of due process and fundamental fairness. The DMV is prohibited from doing so in the future.
The DMV has rescheduled all APS hearings until new procedures can be implemented and adopted. Stay tuned to see what comes out of this. I predict that the DMV will now assign two officers to each APS hearing -- one as a prosecutor and one as a judge / jury. The court did not specifically rule that the same agency couldn't serve both roles, only that the same officer could not do so.
This a baby step towards fairness in California DUI laws, but I'd still like to keep the box-checking bureaucrats at the DMV out of the process entirely.
If you or a loved one has questions about DUI laws in California, call us for a free attorney consultation. (714) 449-3335. Ask for John.
Thanks for reading.
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