FBI Announces San Diego DMV Hearing Officer Pleads Guilty to Bribery in Federal Court, part 3- How to Win DMV APS Hearings Fair and Square

This is the third blog post on the former DMV Driver Safety Officer that plead guilty to bribery charges on February 3, 2015.  Ms. Benavidez resigned from her position in December of 2014 after the FBI raided her home and office.  Ms. Benavidez, as part of her guilty plea, admitted to inappropriately issuing temporary driver's licenses, granting suspension set asides when not warranted, and disposing of DUI driver files before they could be entered into the DMV computer system.

Please note that I learned a competitor was copying and pasting this original post.  I spent years litigating and studying administrative law (that governs DMV hearings), as well as traveling all over California to hear other attorneys lecture on this topic.  I maintain close relationships with attorneys in California to discuss developments in DMV APS hearings, and also discuss winning strategies.

The first part of the blog series touched the effect of the license suspension on DUI defendants and the FBI press release.  The second on the environment in which the DMV driver license suspensions occur- they are in a small room with just the hearing officer, a recording system, the driver's attorney and their witnesses.  This is a very close environment to cross examine a law enforcement officer- they can not run away.

In this blog post, I will discuss how to win at the DMV APS hearing.  It is not easy for all the reasons listed in the previous post- the standard is low (preponderance of the evidence), the judge is also the prosecutor, there are institutional pressures for DMV driver safety officers to suspend driver's licenses, and the appeal process is lengthy and expensive.

The first key to winning DMV hearings is to know the law.  The DMV hearing officer has the same roles as both a judge and prosecutor.  However, DMV hearing officers are not held to uphold the law- there is no DMV hearing officer equivalent to the State of California Commission on Judicial Performance.

Second, is to cite the appropriate law.  This may be intuitive, but it isn't.  Many times the difference between winning and losing is showing that you can win.  In legal environments, that means proper citations, or showing that the law can be utilized and accessed as a tool.  This is opposed to having a general idea of what the law is. An attorney showing they can win in the later stages (DMV Departmental Review, Civil Writ) the DMV is less likely to press to the later stages.

Third, object, Object, OBJECT.  Since the DMV hearing is recorded, and the only basis for a Departmental Review or civil litigation review is the audio, it is very important to preserve the record by objecting and citing the objection.  Only a skilled an experienced litigator knows when to object, and when to let procedural objections pass.  Ask your attorney about their litigation experience and success.

I must move to another blog entry to cover the remaining strategies.  The DMV hearing process is one of the most complex and difficult aspects of specializing in DUI law.  But it is the difficulty that makes it so enticing, and the victories so rewarding.  Similarly, anyone who cheats or violates the system is an affront to the system as a whole- no matter what their role.  Due to the severity of this violation, it will also be briefly discussed in the next post.?

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Whatever Happened to “Due Process” in DUI License Suspension Hearings?

So you got stopped last night and arrested for drunk driving. And right after the breathalyzer showed a blood-alcohol reading of .09%, the officer confiscated your driver’s license and gave you a a piece of paper that said it was immediately suspended.

What happened?, you ask. Can they do that? I thought I was presumed to be innocent, and the state has to prove my guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before they can punish me. And I remember something about the Constitution and due process: Can they suspend my license for DUI before giving me a chance to defend myself?

Good questions.

The Department of Motor Vehicles (or whatever they call it in your state) is required by law to immediately suspend the driver’s license of anyone arrested for (not convicted of) DUI who (1) has a .08% breath reading, or (2) takes a blood or urine test (which will be analyzed later), or (3) refuses to take any test. This means immediately — on the spot: the license is grabbed and the DUI suspension is legally effective the moment the officer signs the notice and hands it to you.

Viewed another way, the officer in a DUI case is cop, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. You have absolutely no rights. In fact, if you took a blood or urine test, they don’t even wait for the results (which will come back from the lab days later): they not only presume you are guilty, they also presume that the evidence will eventually show it!

So, again: How can they do that in America?

Well, at first MADD and various state legislatures decided to find a way to get drunk drivers off the highways RIGHT NOW — and not be diverted by any technicalities like, well, the Constitution. So they enacted so-called "APS" laws (the phrase stands for "administrative per se", referring to the "per se" crime of .08%, as opposed to the separate crime of driving under the influence of alcohol). They justified this by saying that a license was a "privilege", not a "right" — and since the license holder had no rights, the state could do what it wanted.

Well, the U.S. Supreme Court blew that justification out of the water. In Bell v Burson (402 U.S. 535) the Court acknowledged that the right to drive is a privilege. However, once the state gives someone a license, that person then has a property right in it — and that right cannot be taken away without giving him due process. And due process means a fair procedure by which he can contest the confiscation of his property.

The reaction to this has generally been to continue suspending licenses on the spot, but to then give the driver a short-term (30 days in California) temporary operating permit during which he can request an administrative hearing from the DMV. (In a few states, the process is handed over to the courts and the suspension merged with the criminal proceedings.)

MADD has been successful in getting the Feds involved; a highway appropriations bill was passed which pretty much coerced states into adopting APS suspensions — or else no funds.  Do these APS hearings in DUI cases provide due process?

In other words, how fair are they?

Let’s take California’s APS hearings. They are conducted by a "hearing officer". Is this an impartial judge? Well, he’s hardly impartial: He’s an employee of the DMV — the very agency that is trying to suspend the license (kind of like a judge being paid by the prosecutor). And he isn’t a judge. Actually, he isn’t even a lawyer; he’s only required to be a high school graduate.

So who is the prosecutor? He’s, well, the same guy.

That’s right: this DMV employee with no legal education is both judge and prosecutor. Put another way, this government beaurocrat, without any legal education, can object to the driver’s evidence — and then sustain his own objection!  He can deny the driver’s attorney’s request a week before the hearing for a delay to subpoena a witness, then grant himself a delay in the middle of the hearing.  Well, you get the picture…

Not too surprisingly, the DMV wins about 95% of these DUI hearings.

That’s called "due process" in a drunk driving case.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 at 8:27 am and is filed under Duiblog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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