DUI probable cause

Published on: May 12, 2014

One of the Most Awful and Unfair DUI Arrests of Recent Memory

Do you sometimes wonder why Los Angeles DUI defense attorneys do what we do?

After all, isn’t it a universally “good thing” that police officers scoop dangerous drivers off the street and punish people who make dumb decisions that ultimately take lives?

Obviously, the police can and do awesome work to protect us all, and even the most aggressive DUI defense advocate believes we should live in a world with consequences.

But a recent case out of Wisconsin demonstrates dramatically why teams like the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers do what we do.

On February 20, 2013, a 25-year-old Wisconsin woman, Tanya Weyker, suffered a broken neck (in four places), after a sheriff’s deputy hit her car, sending it into a tree. As the woman told Fox News, “it was a miracle I wasn’t paralyzed.”

It was already a bad and horrible situation for Weyker. But it got much worst.

The sheriff’s deputy who hit her, Joseph Quiles, blamed her for the accident and arrested her for DUI, sending her into a legal and logistical nightmare. Weyker had been prescribed Vicodin for wisdom teeth that she had had out, but she hadn’t taken that drug for a week. She did say at the scene that she had had “a few sips” of a friend’s drink. Deputies also noticed that she had red, bloodshot eyes. But then again, she was crying from the pain of her accident (she had just been knocked into a tree and had broken her neck in four places!)

Even though she was too hurt to take a breath test or blood test, authorities still arrested her on five charges, including DUI with injury. In California, that’s a very serious charge, punished by CVC 23153, and it can lead to a felony conviction and over a year behind bars.

Even more awfully, in the police report, Deputy Quiles wrote that he had come to a full stop at the stop sign and that Weyker didn’t have her lights on. Weyker happened to have a Toyota Camry, which always turns on the lights automatically, so he was factually incorrect. And Weyker’s blood tests came back completely negative, meaning she not been DUI in the least.

Two days after the accident, surveillance footage of the accident emerged and showed that Quiles was clearly at fault. But instead of exonerating and apologizing profusely to Weyker, law enforcement continued to pursue the case.

Meanwhile, Quiles has finally admitted to causing the crash. Here is a transcript from an internal investigation:

Investigator: “You believe that you probably did roll [through the stop sign]?”

Quiles: “Yes. Yes I do.”

Investigator: “Because of that, do you believe you are at fault for this accident?”

Quiles: “That’s correct.”

Weyker has filed a complaint, which could pave the way for her to launch a civil suit against that police department.

If you or someone you love needs a DUI defense, call a Los Angeles DUI defense attorney with the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers immediately for a free consultation.

Published on: May 9, 2014

Los Angeles DUI Checkpoints and Police Patrols Abound Over Cinco de Mayo

by Michael Kraut

Cinco de Mayo is a joyful celebration that sweeps the Southland every year, but it’s also a time when many people drive under the influence in Los Angeles.

The holiday is over 150 years old — it was kicked off in 1862, after Mexicans defeated the French in a pivotal skirmish called the Battle of Puebla. But police are still trying to understand the dynamics of “celebratory DUIs” during Cinco de Mayo and other major holidays, including Labor Day weekend, Memorial Day weekend, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Super Bowl Sunday, and Valentine’s Day.

The LA Weekly reports that officers set up diverse patrols throughout the Southland for the holiday. On Friday night, for instance, the Los Angeles Police Department set up checkpoints on Western Avenue and 8th Street. They also set up checkpoints in Koreatown from 8 PM until 2 in the morning, as well as checkpoints in East Hollywood at Vermont and Melrose. Other Friday checkpoints included a 7 PM to 1 AM patrol at Huntington Drive and Popular Avenue in El Sereno and a South Los Angeles checkpoint at Avalon and Manchester Avenue. LAPD ran another checkpoint in Lancaster from 6 PM to 2 AM on Friday.

Published on: April 29, 2014

Parents of Young Woman Killed by DUI Driver Sue Congresswoman and the Federal Government

by Michael Kraut

Last December 6th, 27-year-old Mallory Dies was killed in a Santa Barbara crash, and authorities arrested driver Raymond Morua in connection with the fatal Southern California DUI.

Morua had been working as an aid for Congresswomen Lois Capps, when he hit Dies after leaving a holiday party in Downtown Santa Barbara. Now, Dies’s parents, Matt and Raeona Dies, have filed a wrongful death suit against Morua… and named Congresswoman Capps and the Federal Government as defendants.

The plaintiffs claim that Representative Capps hired Morua, even though he had two DUI convictions as well as convictions for embezzlement and hit and run under his belt. Capps also failed to monitor his behavior or his driving. The lawsuit claims that Morua had been working for Capps on the night in question — as the plaintiff’s attorney put it “Mr. Morua has said under oath, under penalty of perjury, that he was on the job… [and this makes] Lois Capps … responsible.” Congresswoman Capps claims that Morua had NOT been working for on the night in question, and she issued statements of empathy: “My heart goes out to the family of the victim… I lost a daughter way before her time, and it’s a heartache.”

The 27-year-old had been on life support for several days before she passed away from her injuries. Her family claims that they incurred medical bills to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they want compensation. Morua could face two decades behind bars on his May 28 sentencing.

We’ve been talking a lot recently about Los Angeles DUI manslaughter laws — such as Penal Code 191.5 (a), which defines gross vehicular manslaughter while DUI. But even if you don’t kill someone, you can face substantial jail time (over a year), just for injuring someone while driving DUI. According to California Vehicle Code Section 23153 (a) and (b), your penalties will depend on how many people got hurt and the nature of those injuries. If a person got seriously hurt, prosecutor can ask for a “great bodily injury” charge, which is an enhancement, and it can lead to three additional years of jail time. For help coming up with an appropriate defense against your Los Angeles DUI charges, call attorney Michael Kraut and the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers team immediately to schedule your free consultation with us.
Continue reading

Published on: April 7, 2014

Should Certain Los Angeles DUI Offenders Be Punished Much More Harshly Than Others?

by Michael Kraut

Are all Los Angeles DUI offenders equal?

Obviously, the simple answer is no. For instance, let’s say you just got pulled over at a checkpoint. A police officer gave you both breathalyzer and field sobriety tests. You failed both. Now, you face a misdemeanor charge of violating California Vehicle Code Section 23152.

Alternatively, let’s say you hurt somebody while committing the same crime. Suddenly, you face charges under a different law – felony charges! – per California Vehicle Code Section 23153. There are other ways the law slices and dices DUI offenders. The law stipulates different punishments, depending:

•   If you were under age when you got behind the wheel while DUI;
•   If you’re a repeat offender (the law suggests more intense punishments for second and third time recidivists);
•   If you committed additional crimes while DUI, such as hit and run, battery against a police officer, etcetera;
•   If you were egregiously over the legal limit.

But are these classifications “fine grained” enough? More to the point: might there be certain classes of offenders who should be punished far more harshly than “standard” Los Angeles DUI offenders?

For instance – and we’ve all seen drivers like this – but let’s say you see a 19-year-old kid in a hot rod car speeding while likely DUI on the 405. He cuts across 4 lanes of traffic and nearly causes four wrecks before police pull him over. He behaves extremely aggressively/recklessly/obnoxiously. In an ideal world, perhaps the 19-year-old should lose his license for ten years and be forced to write handwritten apologies to everyone he almost killed.

Obviously, that wouldn’t/shouldn’t happen. But that’s the gut reaction many of us have, when we see drivers behaving super obnoxiously: “that guy should have his license taken away forever and should be thrown in jail, just for being a jerk.”

We’ve all had those thoughts – even people who defend DUI drivers for a living!

The question is: is there scientific merit to such thinking? Are superb obnoxious drivers, for instance, more likely to get into injury crashes? If we could catalogue drivers in a more fine grained way, could we come up with more appropriate punishments for certain crimes? Even if we COULD slice and dice the galaxy of offenders like that, would we really want to? Practically speaking, this strategy would open up a whole raft of moral and legal questions.

The problem is inherently complicated and messy – and that’s the point of this thought exercise. Dealing with DUI is an inherently messy exercise. The law cannot foresee every situation, nor spell out every contingency plan. And that’s why it’s so important for a defendant to work with a seasoned Los Angeles DUI lawyer. You need to stay on track and avoid getting confused or misled.

If you haven’t already retained an attorney, call Michael Kraut of the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers today to explore your defense options. Mr. Kraut is a seasoned former prosecutor; he can help you come to terms with your charges and get excellent results.
Continue reading

Published on: March 24, 2014

Los Angeles DUI Crash: Police Officer Arrested in Diamond Bar After He Crashes into McDonald’s Drive Through

by Michael Kraut

Some disturbing Los Angeles DUI news: An LAPD officer, 29-year-old Jonathan Chel of Fullerton, was arrested on Friday, after he slammed his car into a McDonald’s drive through in Diamond Bar while DUI.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Chel had been exiting the 60 freeway at Golden Spring’s Drive at around 1 in the morning, when his Mazda slipped off the exit ramp, “launched” across a 50-foot gulf, crashed the McD’s, and finally stopped at Brea Boulevard in Golden Springs.

Per a California Highway Patrol report, rescue workers took Mr. Chel to UC Irvine Medical Center for his injuries. Fortunately, they were not too severe. A CHP officer arrested him at the hospital for DUI. Mr. Chel had been off duty. No one else was hurt in the incident, no other vehicles suffered damage.

“Do you want fries with your DUI?”

The image of a rouge, off-duty LAPD officer smashing through a McDonald’s drive through while DUI sounds almost comical – like something you might see in a spoof movie. However, this incident obviously is no laughing matter. It does, however, allow us to segue into an interesting conversation about the relationship between DUI and food consumption. The rate at which your body processes alcohol depends on many factors, including:

•   Whether or not you eat a meal when you drink;
•   Your metabolic state;
•   Your genetics;
•   Whether you’re a man or a woman;
•   The amount of alcohol you’ve consumed recently and throughout your life — chronic alcohol consumption can also affect your metabolic rate.

Police officers are subject to the same exact DUI laws that citizens must obey, including California Vehicle Code Section 23152(a) and 23152(b), and they, too, can face punishments such as DUI alcohol school, jail time, forced license suspension, and mandatory installation of an Interlock Ignition Device (IID). In addition, a police officer who violates the law – e.g. causes a catastrophic DUI accident — can lose job responsibilities and/or get fired. In fact, if the news reports prove accurate, it would highly unlikely that Mr. Chel would not face serious repercussions at his job — e.g. a suspension, if not an outright termination.

No matter what happened with respect to your Los Angeles DUI arrest, the team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers can provide a free, confidential case assessment. Mr. Kraut is a former Los Angeles prosecutor with relationships with many experts in the field, and he can help you contrive a smart and ethical defense.

Published on: March 21, 2014

Does “When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemonade” Apply to Your Los Angeles DUI?

by Michael Kraut

Before the police tagged you for driving under the influence in Los Angeles, you probably used to glibly give people advice along the lines of “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” In other words, when you face a difficult situation, see the best in it. Turn it into a positive. That advice is obviously well intended. But it’s not necessarily intuitive to implement.

Your DUI Arrest: Just When Things Were Already Bad, Now This!

Your arrest couldn’t have been more poorly timed. Perhaps you’ve been engrossed in a big project at work. Maybe you and your spouse have been “on the rocks,” relationship-wise. Or maybe your doctor just diagnosed serious health problem. The last thing on Earth that you need at this moment is a charge pursuant to California Vehicle Code Section 23152 or 23153 (the injury DUI section – which escalates standard DUI charges to felony charges).

Point is, life has really thrown you a curve ball. Not every DUI occurs during “hard times.” But a surprising number of them do. Why is that?

Obviously, without accurate science, we can’t tease cause from effect. Perhaps DUI defendants notice their bad luck more when it comes packaged with criminal charges. Or perhaps life’s stresses somehow promote more dangerous driving behavior (on average, in the population).

What might the mechanism be, if that second hypothesis is correct?

Perhaps – and this is just speculation – but perhaps, stress and anxiety spark a desire to use medications or alcohol to numb the discomfort or at least diminish it somehow. In other words, maybe people who go through very stressful, anxious, or disruptive situations turn more frequently (and more heavily) to drinking and taking drugs and medications. That would explain why Los Angeles DUI events tend to correlate with “bad times” over all. Of course, there is a difference between this kind of speculation and clinical science, which requires far more vigorous testing and statistical analysis. And that points to a broader issue: the Southern California criminal defense system is an evidence based system. To prove (or defend against) a criminal charge, you need to submit evidence and outline a logically thorough, taut argument. You can’t speculate – or if you do speculate, the degree that you argue from indirect logic is the degree that your case can be seen as flimsy. It’s a lot easier to believe evidence to the effect of “you failed a Los Angeles breathalyzer test and blew a 0.11% twice” than it is to believe evidence like “you smelled a bit like alcohol and stumbled around.” The first statement contains far more objective proof than does the second, which uses inferences.

To build a steady and successful defense against your Los Angeles DUI charges, connect with Harvard Law School educated Attorney Michael Kraut and his team today for a free case evaluation.

Published on: March 6, 2014

File Under: “Is This Really Happening?”– Police Defend Arrest of Black Man, Even After He Blew a 0.00% on Breath Test

by Michael Kraut

There’s no doubt that certain Los Angeles DUI cases are ambiguous.

Police should be entitled to some discretion when it comes to deciding whether to arrest people. If you look and act like you are DUI — and you blow a high number on your breath test — the police may have good cause to place you under arrest.

•   But what happens if you blow a 0.00 percent on your breath test?
•   What if a chemical test shows that you are literally stone cold sober?
•   And what if police arrest you anyway?
•   And what if you are black, and they arrest you for this “crime”?
•   And what if you are black, and they arrest you in Texas after blowing a 0.00 percent BAC, and then police still stand by the arrest months later?

If that scenario sounds fictional, think again.

Police in Austin arrested an African American man, Larry Davis, on January 13, 2013, after Davis ran a stop sign. Davis told police that he had only one drink of alcohol — and a breath test showed that he had a 0.00 percent BAC. He also volunteered to take a blood test. Weeks later, Davis’ blood test results came back showing exactly what he had insisted – there was zero alcohol in his system.

Nevertheless, Davis had to spend a whole day behind bars and deal with an arrest record that continued to dog him into 2014. To add insult to injury, Austin Police Commander, David Mahoney, told the local paper that he supported the officer’s decision to bust Davis for DUI: “if there’s someone who is possibly impaired, we don’t want them driving… we need to get them off the road, so that was probably the officer’s mindset.”

Statistically speaking, it’s easy to make a case that the Austin police are a bit “trigger happy,” when it comes to busting people for DUI. Travis County, Texas, has the highest DUI dismissal rate in Texas, per an Austin Statesman analysis — a whopping 30% of cases are dismissed.

That said, battling back against a DUI charge anywhere is neither simple, nor cheap.

First of all, the defendant must contend with direct costs, such as legal fees. The indirect costs can be far more pernicious. If you sit in jail for a day or two — or spend several days going back and forth to court — you waste many potential billable hours. That “time suck” alone can cost some people hundreds or thousands of dollars. Secondly, consider the indirect psychological and relationship costs. Many people are both judgmental and superficial. If police arrested you for DUI, others may judge you, even if the facts are totally on your side. Davis spoke to this frustration: “I was arrested for nothing, really… it was suspicion of drunk driving, which I wasn’t, so I am surprised and hurt at the same time.”

In Los Angeles, California police must respect your Fourth Amendment Rights. In other words, they must be able to justify stopping you by pointing to clear, easy to articulate facts about some criminal activity. It is possible to challenge probable cause by asking for a hearing per California Penal Code Section 1538.5.

The team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers can assist. Attorney Michael Kraut is a former prosecutor who has a stellar reputation for helping clients like you with Los Angeles DUI defense.