Redondo Beach Arrest for DUI, Set Aside at DMV Hearing

In late July,2022, after the bars and restaurants had re-opened with relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions, our office again started representing those arrested and charged with DUI.

At about this time, one day, we received a call from a person explaining that he had been arrested for his first DUI ever and his first criminal matter ever.  He was retired DirectTV employee who was 71 years old.

As he described, the Redondo Beach Police Department made contact with him in the early morning as he was driving his 2000 Dodge three-quarter ton van from Hermosa Beach southeast along Pacific Coast Highway towards Western Avenue to turn right to Rancho Palos Verdes.  The road was empty at that time and the client estimated he was travelling at 55 miles per hour, or slightly above the speed limit.  The client had no passengers.

Police noticed the client’s speed and initiated a traffic stop.  Our client, however, could not pull over to the right side of the road because there just was not much space at all and there were many parked cars.  So, he continued driving perhaps a whole mile before he made a left-turn into a strip mall parking lot.

Police correctly believed our client was possibly under the influence of a drug as he was very talkative with police, which generally irritated police trying to do an investigation.  The client asked them many questions about their procedures, which was an implied challenge to their competence and authority. 

The client earlier had dinner (soup) and nothing more before leaving to go back home to Rancho Palos Verdes to be with his wife.  Before leaving, he ingested methamphetamine, which he had been using off and on for about ten years.

 

The client does not and, this evening in particular, did not drink at all.

Police first demanded that our client perform some field sobriety tests, the results of which were generally meaningless because of our client’s age and how talkative he was.  As the officers were explaining the test procedures, he would ask them questions in response, which greatly slowed down the administration of the tests. 

Police eventually told our client that he had a right to refuse to take any of the field sobriety tests and our client agreed not to take the tests.  It seemed police were exasperated at his many questions and simply wanted to end the investigation.  However, they demanded he submit to a blood test only after he commented to police that he never drinks. 

Depending upon how the police report was written, Greg stated, this may constitute an improper test because he was not given the option to submit to a breath test, which would not have detected methamphetamine.  The requirement from the police that he only could comply by giving blood would only be proper if police wrote in the report that our client volunteered that he never drinks alcohol.

Our client then provided a blood sample and was held at the Redondo Beach City Jail until late in the afternoon before being released.

The client explained all these facts to Greg and retained Greg Hill & Associates.  Our office then reserved a DMV hearing for the client to preserve the client’s driving privileges, at least until the DMV ruling after the DMV hearing, if it took place at all.

Our experience in such cases is that the police will require a client to submit to a blood test, but then the lab will only check for alcohol (actually ethanol), which will yield a result of 0.0%, and not test for the presence of any controlled substance.

In this case, the laboratory indeed only tested for alcohol and the DMV reviewed the lab results prior to the DMV hearing date.  The DMV then realized our client’s BAC was 0.0%,, so they set aside the license suspension and reinstated our client’s driving privileges, which made our client very happy because had we not reserved such a hearing, the client’s license would have been automatically suspended for 120 days starting 30 days after his arrest.  Reserving such a hearing, while believing the blood results would return a 0.0% BAC measurement, seemed unnecessary to the client, but we insisted on doing so to bar the automatic suspension.

For more information about DMV Hearings, please click on the following articles: