Based on my experience in a DUI case today in Phoenix Municipal Court, it is important to make sure that the VIN on your insurance card matches the vehicle you were driving if you want the prosecutor's office to dismiss a failure to provide proof of insurance charge when you didn't own the vehicle you were driving at the time of your arrest.

In my DUI Law Blog I recently posted a summary of a new Arizona Court of Appeals DUI Case. The case deals with a defendant who fled, was later caught, and then claimed his attorney didn't properly advise him of a plea offer. He claimed that if he had been advised, he would have accepted it. The Arizona Court Of Appeals didn't buy the argument, but it does bring up an important issue for those accused of DUI…

Make sure you stay in contact with your attorney. If your attorney doesn't contact you on a regular basis (say every 2-3 weeks), you should contact your attorney just to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

And don't flee. It only makes matters much worse when you get caught.

Once the new FBI system mentioned in the article below is online, it will make it easier for prior or pending DUI cases to be detected by law enforcement.

In many states, finding a prior can make the difference between little or no jail and months or years of jail or prison time.

See the article referenced below for links to the FBI's website for more information.

Quoted from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081110/ap_on_re_us/phantom_duis:

Drunken drivers roll down state information gaps - Yahoo! News

Hard-core drunken drivers as defined by National Transportation Safety Board are those with a prior drunken-driving arrest or conviction within the past 10 years or offenders with a blood-alcohol content of 0.150 percent or greater.

N-DEx was designed to search, link, analyze, and share criminal justice information including arrest and incident reports, incarceration data, and probation data nationwide.

"Anything (agencies) put in it will be available nationally," he said, but the data gold mine will depend on how each jurisdiction or state collects the data and what they want to report.

N-DEx takes 360 data elements seen in incident reports today and puts them into a master form. Agencies can then search individual or multiple elements, said Kevin Reid, N-DEx program manager.

Participation by all states will be gradual, with the goal of having the nationwide system in place by 2010, Bush said.

Submitting and receiving information from N-DEx is voluntary, Bush said, but the FBI is convinced that such voluntary programs will work, citing NCIC and a fingerprint database.

Phoenix, AZ - There is a battle raging between Maricopa County Courts and current County Attorney Andrew Thomas over the DUI Court program. Rather then explain the details, a recent article from azcentral.com is quoted in full below.

Quoted from http://www.azcentral.com/business/abg/articles/2008/10/30/20081030abg-dui1030.html:

9th Circuit questions Thomas' attack on DUI courts

SAN FRANCISCO - Federal appellate judges are questioning the legal right of county attorneys in Arizona to sue the state or its employees after the Maricopa County Attorney's Office asked a federal court to intervene to halt practices it believes are racially discriminatory.

Michael Garvin argued that the County Attorney's Office is a party in all criminal cases being heard in Superior Court, and he said that gives Andrew Thomas, as the head of that office, legal standing.

In this case, Garvin told the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Andrew Thomas filed suit to bar some special "DUI courts" set up by Barbara Mundell, the county's presiding judge. The county attorney contends they are discriminatory and unconstitutional because they segregate participants based on race.

But Judge Sidney Thomas said those claims may be legally irrelevant.

He said Garvin's argument that the county attorney has a right to sue Mundell in federal court is premised on the contention that the DUI courts, actually a part of the post-conviction probation process, damage the people of Arizona. The judge said, though, that only the state attorney general can represent the people in these kinds of lawsuits in federal court.

And Scot Claus, who is representing Mundell, noted that all judges in Arizona are constitutionally state employees who he said can't be sued by county officials in federal court. He said Andrew Thomas' lawsuit is not only legally flawed but improperly motivated "to satisfy some personal and, truth be told, some patently political motive."

The county attorney, who is facing a tough re-election campaign, denied the allegation. He said he sued because he believes the programs are "morally offensive and unconstitutional."

But Garvin acknowledged there is politics of a sort behind the dispute. "Judge Mundell is biased against this office because she's not imposing the kind of probationary sanctions that this office advocates."

The fight is over DUI courts, which oversee people already convicted of multiple drunken-driving offenses and who are now on probation. Andrew Thomas sued after Mundell created two special divisions; one for those is for Spanish speakers and one is for Native Americans.

A federal judge in Phoenix threw out the lawsuit, saying Thomas lacked legal standing. The appellate hearing was an attempt by the county attorney to get his day in court.

Garvin said county attorneys are empowered to represent the state's interests in prosecuting criminals. He said that makes them parties to those criminal cases, the same as defendants, and entitled to seek federal intervention over illegal acts by the courts.

Judge Thomas, however, said allowing Andrew Thomas to pursue this case could mean 15 different county attorneys could have 15 different positions - and 15 different lawsuits. And the judge said there is no evidence Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard gave anyone permission to sue on behalf of the state.

Appellate Judge Susan Graber suggested the county attorney might have a claim had Mundell created racially separate courts for actual trials. She said monitoring the probation of those already convicted is different.

Garvin, however, said that these DUI courts do more than supervise probationers and that judges can do things like sending them people to jail for the weekend.

He said a probationer who argued the punishment being meted out is racially motivated would have standing to sue. Garvin said the same should be true of the county attorney.

"It's clear as a bell that judges can injure litigants' interests," Garvin said, and that prosecutors, as parties to the case, can appeal.

Even if Andrew Thomas wins this appeal, that doesn't mean the special DUI courts will go away.

The Arizona Supreme Court has issued a new opinion on the proper use of prior convictions in sentence enhancement in Arizona felony cases.

On first read, this opinion appears to be favorable to the rights of those accused of felony charges in AZ who have prior convictions from other jurisdictions.

Do a Google serach for "DUI" in the news and you will see that the results are dominated by news of DUI task-forces from nearly every major jurisdiction you can imagine.

This is an election year, and no task-force holiday is closer to voting day than Halloween. Therefore, I predict record numbers of arrests, and record numbers of headlines. Expect this to be highly concentrated in jurisdictions where the local county attorneys and sheriffs are up for re-election. Nothing satisfies the average voter more than oodles of drunk driving arrests, and those who make the arrests are seen as noble heros by the average voter.

But the zeal to arrest must be tempered by law enforcement discretion. It is possible to make a taskforce event look very successful by arresting many people for DUI who shouldn't have been arrested. Their cases won't come up for review until after the elections, and then each wrongful arrest should go silently away with no politial fallout. Just as drunk driving is wrong, arresting innocent people for DUI is also wrong.

This Halloween holiday, the only way to make sure you are absolutely safe from a false DUI arrest is to not drive at all if you have had anything to drink. Any alcohol in your system, and the police may pull the trick of your lifetime on you by arresting you. Your late treat should be dismissal of the bogus DWI charge, but by then your Halloween will already have been ruined.

Have a fun and safe holiday.

A Judge in Tucson, Arizona has ordered the prosecution to get the Intoxilyzer source code from CMI, and produce it in electronic form so that it may be tested. The Tucson Citizen reported as follows:

In a recent blog post at DUI Blog, Lawrence Taylor discusses "black and white fever." In my experience, both personally and professionally, it is true.

I often use the argument that it is natural to weave and commit other traffic violations when an officer in a marked patrol vehicle is behind my client. Anybody who denies that the presence of a police vehicle on their tail makes them nervous is a liar. In fact, nervousness in that situation, even if the person has done nothing wrong and has not been drinking, is so axiomatic that it should go without saying.

What causes this nervousness?

We have all been accused of something that we didn't do at some point in our lives. We are also all aware that not all police officers are good cops or good people. I would like to hear from anybody who has had this experience, and also from anybody who denies nervousness when an officer in a marked police car is following.

The Phoenix New Times is reporting that a judge has ruled against Sheriff Joe Apraio in the latest suit about the treatment of his inmates in the county jails.

Hill represented the "class" of all pretrial detainees awaiting court trials in Arpaio's jails. The ACLU also worked closely with Hill on the case. Margaret Winter, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, said the ruling is a big win.

“Sheriff Arpaio’s horrendous treatment of detainees, especially those with severe medical and mental-health problems, has caused terrible suffering for years,” Winter said. “Judge Wake’s decision should serve as a reminder that even a man who brags about being the 'toughest sheriff in America' has to abide by the Constitution.”

“Sheriff Arpaio’s actions have gone unchecked for too long, and this ruling is a significant step toward much-needed accountability,” said Daniel Pochoda, attorney with the ACLU of Arizona. “It's time that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and all of the residents of Maricopa County take action to end his abusive practices.”

Could it finally be that there is change in the air in Maricopa County? The Sheriff is up for reelection in less than two weeks. While up to this point he has seemed politically insulated based on his popularity with voters, it may be that the tide is shifting. Only time will tell.

The LA Times is reporting that the LA Crime Lab's fingerprint analysis is responsible for implicating innocent people in crime due to faulty "science."

They describe a messy crime lab where evidence sits around in piles, is disorganized, or worse.

Think that can't happen elsewhere? If it can happen in one of the largest metro crime labs in the world, it can happen anywhere. And the fact is that flawed science and process in crime labs is not limited to fingerprints. It stretches to drug identification, alcohol analysis in DUI cases, DNA analysis and more.

Even worse than the sloppy procedures that result in flawed "evidence," is the fact that the crime lab technicians regularly come to court and testify that their process is flawless. There is no testimony more powerful than the State's experts', and none more trusted by juries in criminal cases.

Like every other report of mismanagement and sloppiness in crime labs, this one will fade in our memories, and we will be right back to allowing junk science to convict innocent people. The only way to effectively combat it is for juries and prosecutors to exercise a healthy skepticism. Defense attorneys generally already have it.