Pre-Filing Investigations

Published on: March 29, 2016

Clumsy Criminal Alert: DUI Driver Leaves Trail for Police to Follow

Sometimes drivers almost appear to be asking for police to pick them up on charges of DUI in Los Angeles. They hit signs, drive the wrong way on a one-way street or make some other ridiculous move that calls officers’ attention to their driving.

Police in Riverside, Illinois, didn’t have to search too hard to find 28-year-old Joseph T. Whetter, who allegedly had been driving under the influence. All they had to do was follow the wide path of destruction that Whetter reportedly left as he careened through a local neighborhood.

The Woodridge, Illinois, Patch said that police received multiple 911 phone calls around 2 in the morning of March 19th from area residents who had heard (or seen) the damage that Whetter was wreaking. He supposedly drove on sidewalks and through several front yards, then hit a landscaping wall that sent him back onto the road. But he didn’t stay on the pavement for long; he ended up hitting bushes and narrowly missing a For Sale sign at a nearby house before the officers caught up with him. Both front tires of his vehicle had been blown out.

Published on: November 27, 2015

Too Drunk For DUI Charges?

by Michael Kraut

Imagine someone charged with DUI in Los Angeles arriving in a courtroom and pleading not guilty. Not because he didn’t commit the crime, but because he was too intoxicated to really understand what was going on at the time of the arrest and to consent to a test measuring blood alcohol content.

Georgia Supreme Court building in downtown Atlanta. Photo by Jason R. Bennitt/Daily Report (5/14/2012).

It’s happening in Georgia, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling in that state that has created a loophole in the state’s DUI law.

A report on website AJC.com said that DUI attorneys have been using this argument in court ever since John Williams won an appeal of a ruling in his DUI case before the state’s highest court. Lance Tyler, who represented Williams, said that his client could not have given his consent “knowingly and intelligently” for voluntary blood tests, since he was too intoxicated to understand what was happening and the implications of BAC testing.

The Supreme Court ruled in Williams’ favor in March 2012 and asked the trial judge to reconsider his decision not to suppress the BAC evidence. The judge, Gwinett State Court Judge Joseph Iannazzone, not only threw out the BAC evidence in Williams’ case but also excluded it as evidence in the cases of five other drivers.

Published on: October 14, 2015

Meth DUI Changes Cyclist’s Life

by Michael Kraut

Innocent bystanders often suffer from the results of a Los Angeles DUI. They may lose their lives or receive an injury from which they never fully recover.

Juan Carlos Vinolo and a group of bicycle enthusiasts were enjoying a ride on Fiesta Island in San Diego on August 12, 2014. Without warning, 50-year-old Theresa Owens, traveling in the wrong direction on the one-way road, slammed into them. Owens admitted she had been using methamphetamines, claiming that she took them to ease her back pain.

The woman injured ten cyclists, but Vinolo, who was the lead rider, took the worst hit. He is now paralyzed from the chest down.
Owens blamed the crash on her boyfriend; she said she had caught sight of him in a vehicle with another woman, and she had been driving on the road the wrong way to cut the vehicle off and confront him.

At Owens’ trial, her attorney claimed that the amount of meth in her system wasn’t enough to impair her driving. He also said that there were no signs saying the road was one way and that bushes along the road blocked her view of traffic around the curve.
According to CBS8.com, uninjured cyclists who got Owens out of the car said that she was behaving erratically and screaming after the crash. Police officers did not give her a sobriety test at the accident scene, but they took her to the hospital because she claimed to have medical issues. While she was there, a nurse trying to inset a catheter found a bag of meth in Owens’ vagina.
Owens pleaded not guilty to charges of felony driving under the influence causing bodily harm and (thanks to the hospital incident) possession of a controlled substance. In early October 2015, however, a jury convicted her on all the charges. She could go to prison for up to 18 years.

Do you need assistance constructing an appropriate response to a DUI charge? Look to the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers’ Michael Kraut for insight and peace of mind. Mr. Kraut is an experience Los Angeles DUI attorney with many relevant connections in the local legal community.

Published on: August 21, 2015

Deadly California DUIs

by Michael Kraut

DUI-related accidents in California resulted in several fatalities in early August. Although police didn’t report any deaths due to DUIs in Los Angeles proper around that time, motorists in other parts of the state weren’t as lucky.

According to Long Beach Patch, 28-year-old Alvin B. Shaw had a blood alcohol content level of 0.15 when he headed west in the eastbound lanes of the Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach around 7 a.m. on August 1. He slammed his 2012 Mercedes-Benz into two other vehicles, a 2014 Ford Fusion and a 2010 Nissan pickup. Both Shaw and the Fusion driver ended up in the hospital with critical injuries. But 30-year-old Miguel Gonzalez, the Nissan driver, wasn’t as lucky. Emergency workers pronounced him dead at the scene.

Shaw allegedly was driving on a suspended license, which he had lost because of a previous DUI conviction in 2014. He faces charges of murder and DUI causing injury within 10 years of another DUI offense.

On August 10th, 44-year old Carmen Venegas of Fremont, driving an Acura, hit a Toyota Scion that was stopped perpendicular to traffic on Highway 101. According to witnesses, the Scion had hit the center divider of the road before ending up on the second lane from the right facing the shoulder. That’s where the car was when Venegas broadsided it. After screening Venegas at the scene, police booked her on suspicion of DUI felony driving, driving without a license and felony manslaughter. She had two 14-year old boys plus another adult passenger in the car when the accident occurred.

Garrett James Gelrud, 34, caused a head-on collision near Pala on August 5th, killing the driver of the other car. His Chevrolet Suburban crossed the double yellow lines on Old Highway 395 and rammed into a Nissan Versa driven by 62-year-old Juan Corza Gonzalez. Gelrud ran from the scene but police caught up with him. He faces charges of second-degree murder, gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and DUI causing injury.

Designing and executing an effective defense against DUI charges (even simple ones) is not intuitive. Fortunately, you can trust the seasoned, highly successful Michael Kraut. Call a DUI lawyer in Los Angeles with nearly two decades of experience.

Published on: June 22, 2015

Southern California Runway DUI – Yikes

by Michael Kraut

While police have arrested drivers on a lot of different roads for a DUI in Los Angeles, it’s doubtful that they have often gone to the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport. But cops in San Diego had to head to their own city’s airport when they needed to make a DUI arrest one day last April.

According to NBC 7, James Stewart, employed at San Diego International Airport, may have had a couple of beers before he went on the job one evening. The problem was that his work involved driving a big truck—a 10,000-gallon jet fuel tanker. Uh oh. Stewart took the truck out on the tarmac, then stepped out of the vehicle to begin the fueling process. He allegedly staggered a bit when he walked and then fell down, waving his legs in the air before struggling up once again.

At that point, other ground workers contacted Stewart’s boss, who checked out his employee and then alerted police. The police came out and found that Steward had bloodshot eyes and smelled like alcohol. When they tested his blood alcohol content, they measured it at .24, three times the legal limit as defined by CVC 23152. Police also uncovered two empty beer bottles in the tanker he was operating. They also found that Stewart was so out of it that he didn’t realize that the tanker tuck he had driven out to fuel the plane was empty.

Stewart pleaded not guilty in his first court appearance, but he later changed his plea to guilty on a DUI misdemeanor charge. (The change in plea may have come from the broadcast of an airport surveillance system that recorded the whole incident.)

Do you need help defending against a serious charge? Call a qualified Los Angeles DUI defense attorney with the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers immediately.

Published on: June 10, 2015

Colorado Gets Tough on DUI Drivers

by Michael Kraut

California has some pretty tough consequences if you’re convicted of DUI in Los Angeles; if you’re found guilty of the offense a fourth time within ten years you can face a possible felony as well as up to five years in jail.

Until recently, Colorado had some of the laxest DUI laws in the country. The state lacked a felony provision for multiple DUI arrests; someone arrested for a fourth, fifth or six DUI would only face misdemeanor charges and a relatively short jail term.
But that’s no longer the case, thanks to continuing advocacy by family and friends of people killed and injured by DUI drivers. After years of legislative battles, the Colorado state legislature just passed a bill making a fourth DUI a felony. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signed the bill into law on June 1. To qualify as felony offenses, the DUI convictions don’t have to be in Colorado. If a judge or jury finds a Colorado licensed driver guilty of DUI in another state, that counts towards their total of DUI convictions.

Fox 31 Denver reports that the new law doesn’t require judges to treat the fourth offense as a felony, but it does give them the power to do so. The judges are somewhat limited by the new law, however; they can apply the felony penalty only if it appears unlikely that treatment for alcohol problems will help the convicted driver.

The bill will become law in two months, unless Colorado citizens unhappy with its provisions collect the more than 86,000 signatures required to put the issue on the ballot for state voters. They have until August 5th to file those petitions.

Do you need assistance constructing an appropriate response to a DUI charge? Look to the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers’ Michael Kraut for insight and peace of mind. Mr. Kraut is an experience Los Angeles DUI attorney with many relevant connections in the local legal community.

Published on: April 22, 2015

Driver Charged in DUI Death Picked Up Three Years Later

by Michael Kraut

Motorists arrested on a charge of DUI in Los Angeles know that they’ll have to pay the price in fines, loss of license or even jail time. When a court convicts a motorist of causing a death while driving under the influence, the penalties will be much worse. Sometimes the accused driver decides not to stick around to see what’s going to happen. But the police may nab him somewhere down the road.

It took almost six years for officers to catch up with Ramiro Alcantar, formerly of Joliet, Illinois. In 2009 Alcantar drove his Dodge Ram van into the oncoming lane of traffic, hitting motorcyclist Caesar Vallejo, who died of his injuries a few weeks later. The investigating cops found a half-empty can of beer in Alcantar’s van; he smelled of alcohol and failed the initial DUI testing. Turns out he was also uninsured.

The cops threw the book at Alcantar, charging him with DUI/alcohol, DUI/drugs and DUI/combination alcohol and drugs. But after a relative posted $5,000 bail, Alcantar fled the area, supposedly seeking refuge in Mexico.

If Alcantar did leave the country at that time, he eventually returned. Police picked him up in Springdale, Arkansas on February 18, 2015. He’s now back in Illinois, where he had a formal arraignment on the 2009 charges. He’s unlikely to get bail this time around, however.

If a court convicts Alcantar of aggravated DUI, which is a felony, he could be looking at three to seven years in prison.

Respond strategically to your arrest and charges by calling a former Senior Deputy D.A. and highly successful Los Angeles DUI defense attorney with the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers today for a complimentary consultation.

Published on: March 25, 2015

District Attorney Criticizes Colorado Law After Denver Man Racks Up 16 DUI Convictions

by Michael Kraut

Late last year, a grand jury in Arapahoe County, Colorado, indicted Denny Lovem on several charges related to a DUI incident. That kind of judicial action wouldn’t normally attract a great deal of attention unless the accused was a politician or a celebrity, but this story received extensive coverage in the state. The reason for Lovem’s notoriety? The 57-year-old has been arrested 20 times on DUI charges but has never been faced felony charges because of the provisions of Colorado’s DUI law. (It’s not like that in California, where anyone arrested for a DUI in Los Angeles or elsewhere in the state could face be looking at felony charges if the DUI incident results in someone’s death or injury.)

A local district attorney in Colorado, George Brauchler, expressed his frustration with the Colorado statutes, which don’t allow judges to sentence repeat DUI offenders to more than a year in jail. So Brauchler sought more prison time for Lovem in a different way. He asked the grand jury to indict Lovem on nine charges, including attempted first degree assault and attempted manslaughter.

Lovem was first charged with driving under the influence in 1983. In the latest incident, the habitual offender allegedly hit a car and then drove off without stopping. When police caught up with him, he admitted that he probably shouldn’t have been driving.
The attention surrounding Lovem’s arrest may have helped accomplish what frustrated prosecutors like Brauchler have been unable to do. A bill making some third DUI offenses and all fourth DUI offenses a felony is currently making its way through the Colorado House of Representatives. Anyone convicted could face up to seven years in prison. The bill appears to have a greater chance of success thanks to testimony presented to a legislative committee by families of DUI victims.

Respond strategically to your arrest and charges by calling a former Senior Deputy D.A. and highly successful Los Angeles DUI defense attorney with the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers today for a complimentary consultation.

Published on: March 2, 2015

Florida Circuit Judge Convicted of DUI, Suspended From Job

by Michael Kraut

Our Los Angeles DUI attorneys often strive to remind the general public that no individual receives special treatment for DUI. Cynthia Imperato, a 57 year old Florida circuit judge, now faces suspension, a $5,000 fine, and a satisfactory alcohol evaluation before she can resume her role on the bench.

Law enforcement arrested Imperato in November 2013 for DUI and reckless driving in Boca Raton. She allegedly refused both the breathalyzer and field sobriety tests. In December, she received 2 convictions for charges of DUI and reckless driving. The courts sentenced her to almost a month of house arrest and a year of probation.

Imperato also faced a DUI conviction 27 years ago. Early in March, the Judicial Qualifications Commission, which is responsible for assessing a judge’s misconduct, determined that the conviction did not affect Imperato’s role as a judge. She can return to her work after completing her sentence.

Judge Imperato accepts that her behavior on the night of the arrest was unethical. Some have perceived her mention of her role as a judge that night as an attempt to “obtain preferential treatment.” The judge admits that she should have been more compliant and should have submitted to a breathalyzer test.

Law enforcement officials, judges, and lawyers face the same penalties as the general public for driving under the influence. This case shows that the system can exact justice in an impartial way and proves that every citizen can face equal scrutiny under the law.

The story of Imperato’s arrest also illustrates how a person’s prior character and behavior can affect the outcome of a case. Her proven ability in the courtroom and reputation in the community both affected her sentencing. Everyone makes mistakes, but a DUI charge or conviction does not necessarily have to overshadow your life.

Locating a seasoned and qualified Los Angeles DUI defense lawyer is a critical part of the process of reclaiming your life, your time and your peace of mind. Call ex-prosecutor Michael Kraut for a free consultation right now.

Published on: December 17, 2014

Fresno Man Could Face Life in Prison after DUI Kills Mother and Daughter

by Michael Kraut

Our Los Angeles DUI attorneys were heartbroken upon learning of the tragic story of Jacqueline Rivera and her 11-old daughter, Aailiyah. Both died after being rear-ended at a Fresno, California intersection on November 22, 2014. The man charged with the DUI that allegedly caused their deaths, Rafael Arce Pedroza, could face life in prison.

Prosecutors don’t have all the necessary details yet, but an AB30 report explains Pedroza allegedly has a DUI conviction in San Diego. He has also faced assault charges in Los Angeles.

For the alleged killing of Jacqueline Rivera and Aailiyah, Pedroza faces charges of gross vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence of alcohol. On their own, these charges would be Pedroza’s second DUI offense. However, the charge of gross vehicular manslaughter carries a much harsher penalty than a normal second Los Angeles DUI offense.

Pedroza’s prosecutors now also allege that he fled the scene of the accident that killed Ms. Rivera and her daughter. Bystanders tried to help the Riveras escape their burning SUV, but Pedroza ran from the scene and was later apprehended. Legal analyst Tony Capozzi explains, “If [police] can tie the person they found under the bed to this accident… that’s going to be told to the jury [as] an indication of his guilt.”

The deaths of Jacqueline and Aailiyah Rivera could have been prevented, and surely many people are anxious to see justice. Yet the exact sentencing will depend upon what prosecutors charge Pedroza as well as the strength of the evidence in the case. Many people don’t know all the differences among DUI manslaughter, DUI manslaughter with gross negligence, and DUI murder. Knowledge of these terms can provide potential DUI defendants with the power to fight wrongful convictions if they occur. The attorneys at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers define them here:

DUI Manslaughter: This occurs when the driver was under the influence of alcohol but was not “extremely negligent.” This can also apply to cases involving traffic violations or any case in which the driver did not “take reasonable care to prevent injury or death.”

DUI Manslaughter with Gross Negligence: This is the charge brought against Rafael Pedroza. It refers to cases in which the driver was DUI and drove “in [a] reckless manner that is significantly more than ordinary negligence.” A judge can sentence the defendant up to ten years in prison for each person killed.

DUI Murder: Also called Watson murder, this occurs when a DUI driver is cited with gross negligence and committed with malice aforethought or vicious will.

Do you need help defending against a serious charge? Call a qualified Los Angeles DUI defense attorney with the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers immediately.