February 11, 2011 Transcript:Governor's Advisory Committee On DUII's -- Grassroots People Forum

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 09:46:22 03/31/11 Thu
Author: McGee
Author Host/IP: 97-120-177-210.ptld.qwest.net / 97.120.177.210
Subject: February 11, 2011 Transcript:Governor's Advisory Committee On DUII's

GAC, February 11, 2011

The Governor’s Advisory Committee on DUII is:

Chuck Hayes, Chair
Tom Erwin, Vice Chair
Kathleen M. Dailey
Teresa Douglas
Vinita Howard
Lorna Kautzky
Heather Warren Kirby
Jason Myers
Andy Nicholes, DDO
Anne Pratt
Jody Vaughan
Staff: Linda Fisher-Lewis , DUII Program Manager

CHAIR HAYES: We’re recording. Always remember that. Just a little warning. I am Chuck Hayes, your chair of the Governor’s Advisory Committee on DUII. Thank you very much for attending our February 11, 2011 meeting on the GAC on DUII.
I kind of feel like the Lone Ranger up here. I’m up here at the table all by myself, so everyone has deserted me. Normally I’m surrounded by support people here, but we have a number of our members who are not able to make it today. And so as Rachelle just pointed out, we probably don’t have a quorum to take care of things as far as any voting matters unless we get a few more people today.
We’ve got a rather full agenda and so if anybody needs an agenda, I’ve got a few extras right here, so I’ll just give those to Anne and if anybody needs one, go ahead and take one. And I don’t have any Minutes from our last meeting, but we’ll get to that here shortly. But we’ve got a full agenda as you can see. Not only we’ve got some guest speakers this morning that are going to share some information with us and then we’ve got some legislative things we’re going to take care of. We had a couple of bills that were heard yesterday in front of the House Judiciary that we’re going to talk about, and then also talk about some new bills that have come our way that we need to take a look at. And we hope also to get to the agency liaison reports as well.
But before we do introductions I would like to start off with our customary moment of silence, and this is just to remember those people that have lost their lives from impaired drving incidents and those that have been seriously injured, and also just to remember what it is that this committee is all about.

Thank you.
Okay. Let’s start off with some introductions. Jody Vaughan is way over there to my left, so we’re going to.... Actually I think I’ll start right here with Ruth Harshfield

[Introductions proceeded, some unclear, but including:

Ruth Harshfield, Alliance for Community Traffic Safety;
Judy Vaughan, committee member;
Randy Wampler, Director, Oregon State Police Forensics;
Rachelle Wilson, Transportation Safety Division Committee Assistant;
Mike Laverty, Chair, Oregon Transportation Safety Committee;
Victor Hoffer, member, Oregon Transportation Safety Committtee;
Kathleen Dailey, Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge;
Anne Pratt; Crime Victims United, MADD;
Jerry Cooper, Transportation Safety Committee, former member, former chair; pro tem Circuit Court Judge, Multnomah County;
Lorna Kautzky;
Heather Warren Kirby, member;
Josh Marquis, District Attorney, Clatsop County;
David Webster, DPSST (Dept. of Public Safety Standards and Training) Traffic Safety Training Coordinator;
Karen Wheeler, Addictions Administrator, Addictions and Mental Health Division;
Peter Bradshaw, Addictions and Mental Health Division;
Mike Iwai, Oregon State Police;
Alison Webster, Administrative Law Judge, Office of Administrative Hearings;
David Beatty, DPSST Traffic Safety Training Coordinator

CHAIR HAYES: Alright. Thank you. Jerry Cooper, it’s always a pleasure to have you back and see you healthy again. As your former chair I know you’ve been going through some things, but glad to have you back.

COOPER: [Something about a heart valve problem.] I’m back to normal _____ and I feel good.
[some chatter]

CHAIR HAYES: Alright. Well we do have a roster going around so if you would please just go ahead and sign in so that we know who is here and attending our meeting this morning.
As far as the Chair Report, I don’t have a whole lot to talk about there other than the fact that we’ve been working on some legislative things. Part of what I was going to talk about there we’ll actually save to the legislative report. We had, as I said, the earlier two hearings yesterday on House Bill 2141 and 2142. We survived, so that’s the best part. I think we will be invited back to come back and do some more work on both of those bills, and we have some other bills that are coming up as well. But a lot going on, not only in this state but around the country when it comes to impaired driving, so a lot of things that I get a chance to work on on a national basis as far as the training curriculum and those kind of things are all coming out soon. We should see a lot more emphasis on some of the training that’s going on, not only for law enforcement but prosecutors and other folks as well. It’s a good thing.
    Item number three is our Minutes and so we do not have a quorum, so we’ll just go ahead and hold those for later on or for our next meeting.
    Let’s move to Item number four quickly, with Josh Marquis. We’ve invited Josh to come today to talk to us about some things that are going on over in the Astoria area that I think as a committee we need to be aware of this and hear what Josh has to report, and see if there’s anything that as a result of Josh’s report that this committee should be concerned about and maybe assisting him if we can. So, Mr. Marquis.

JOSH MARQUIS: Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Josh Marquis. I’ve been the District Attorney in Astoria since 1994. Those of you who have lived in Oregon for a while may recall that I got my job when my predecessor was arrested, indicted, convicted, jailed and disbarred for framing two police officers, so my standard line when I speak in other states is that people’s expectations were low and it was easy for me to exceed them. I just got reelected to my fifth term so I’m not angling for... I’m often accused.... In Astoria, if you’re not third generation, seriously, you’re considered a newcomer. The town, we’re about to celebrate our bicentennial. I’m in office almost 18 years and that makes me a newcomer, and that’s actually part of the ______.
    I was a member of this Committee from 1988 to 1992. To give you an idea of how much things have changed over the years, one of the reasons I did not reapply was we couldn’t get the legislature to even think about ______ a DUII statute back then. It was just too over the top.
In 2003 I was honored to be a DUII Prosecutor of the Year. And even though I’m an elected DA, I still try DUII cases. I’ve probably tried over 300 DUII trials in the four DA’s offices I’ve worked in since 1981 -- Eugene, Newport, Bend and for the last 17 years Astoria -- and I’ve probably personally tried at least a dozen or more vehicular homicides, manslaughters, involving DUII.
    I would not be here today just to tell you -- and I know you have a busy agenda and I promise not to take more than 10 minutes, then I’d be happy to answer any questions. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to come over here and just complain about what’s going on in Astoria, although I always appreciate people’s support in it.
What you have in front of you is a House Bill, a proposed House Bill, filed by Representative Debbie Boone, one of the two State Reps in my county, at my request. Then, right underneath it, are the statutes which it affects. Attached to that, in turn, is a packet of information which will tell you why the bill is necessary.
3025 on its face is frankly something of a housekeeping bill. It relates to 8.660 which goes to the authority of District Attorneys, and the issue is where is the authority of the Municipal Court prosecutor versus the authority of the District Attorney. The Attorney General’s office has already given me an opinion about this in terms of what would happen if push came to shove, and they believe that 8.660, which is included in here, says that the District Attorney has the authority to conduct all prosecutions for crimes, as opposed to infractions.
There are hundreds of municipal courts in the state of Oregon, the vast majority of which just do infractions. The cities make money off them, it’s fine, it’s really none of my business. Some do DUIIs. One of the reasons that this bill may seem a little odd is that I doubt if it’s going to affect very many places, if any places, directly other than Astoria, because in the vast majority of the state DUII cases have been handled one of two ways. Either in Portland or Bend, for quite some time, the cities’ jurisdictions have said, “District,” -- now Circuit Court -- “DA’s office, you take these over.” As we all know, DUII’s are expensive from a prosecution standpoint. You have overtime police officers, you have a prosecutor, you have defense attorneys, you have the jail costs, you have jury costs, etc. So for the vast majority of places they’re not -- unlike a speeding ticket -- they’re certainly not a money-maker. Now that may be obvious to you, but believe me, for some people it’s not.
In a number of other communities, some of which you are familiar with, like Eugene and Salem, there are robust city prosecutors’ offices and municipal courts that handle them, and there’s really not much controversy about them.
Let me tell you what’s going on in Astoria and why this is important.
There are five municipal courts in Clatsop County. Four of them send their DUIIs and we do their business, and it’s not a problem. Seaside, the other town that’s roughly Astoria’s size, about ten years ago decided to send DUIIs my way. Just said, “It’s too expensive, will you do them?” I said Sure. ____ numbers, etc.
Clatsop County, by the way, is in unusually good financial shape related to the rest of the state. I actually prosecute all the cases that I can, and I’m not in a position where I would need to ask my county for any more money if I were to take on the DUIIs in Astoria.
But Astoria has taken the position that they want to handle DUIIs. And they’re not a court of record. About two sessions ago I tried to cast my net too wide. I put out a bill that said that every DUII court that wanted to...every Muni court that wanted to do DUIIs needed to become a court of record. A court of record, as you probably know, means that there actually has to be a court record. You have to record everything and you have to have a lawyer as a judge. Well, there were a number of Muni courts that didn’t want to do that. That died ____. I realized, Well, my problem isn’t with, you know, 25 other Muni courts, it’s with the problem.
So you might say, What is the problem and why is he bothering us in Salem about this.
The packet you have, this packet, on top is a letter which may seem sort of …. It’s a letter written by the adult daughter of a woman who had several DUIIs pending in Municipal Court, or at least one in Municipal Court. She’d already gotten one Reckless Driving in which she’d been high on drugs. It was charged as a Reckless because the Astoria Police didn’t believe the city prosecutor would prosecute a DUII case, so they charged her with Reckless hoping that she would get something. She was represented by this well-known local defense attorney who does DUII work -- every ____ he has at least one or two -- and he got it dropped down to an infraction.
Then, on July 18th, she got arrested at 9:30, blew a .10, got a good deal -- blow and go. Left, got rearrested four hours later by the Sheriff’s office. So she got two DUIIs four hours apart.
In cases like that our office files one complaint. So I filed the complaint and wrote the Municipal Court prosecutor, saying, If you haven’t already filed, please don’t, because this is the case. Immediately got a response saying, No, this is our case, we won’t give it to you.
Then I get, out of the blue, this letter to the generic DA mailbox. It basically just says, Please, I hear you’re trying to get these cases not tried in Muni Court, please do what you can.
Janelle Voeller overdosed and died two weeks after this was written. The only silver lining, and this is very little, that she died at home. She did not get in her car and drive across the road, as has happened several times in my community, and wiped out an entire family. I have prosecuted several cases in Clatsop County where people on drugs and alcohol crossed Highway 26, usually in the summer, _____, and have killed other people.
So, you say, Okay, why this bill?
Astoria Municipal Court, the argument they make is twofold. One is that they make money off it. I’ve challenged them on this. I don’t see how you can possibly make money on DUII cases. I mean, if they did then all the other Municipal Courts would be doing DUII cases, and Justice Courts would be doing them rather than swapping them off. Although I know some Justice Courts do, most do not because _____ citations.
The real reason is frankly a little more sinister, and that has to do with personal relationships.
The Mayor is a really nice guy. Charming fellow. Talking role in the movie Free Willy. Been elected I think just to his sixth term. Mayor Van Dusen has three DUIIs. Now, he’s been reelected because he’s taken responsibility every time. When I became DA he had just gotten one. He’d gotten a diversion in ‘89 and he got a DUII. You guys will say, Why am I bringing this up. Well, because it’s part of the culture, frankly, in Astoria, and the Mayor’s really not that much different.
When I became DA, Clatsop County had triple the statewide average of DUIIs. It’s now double. I’d like to take personal credit for that except I think the real reason is that the number of State Troopers is actually less and we’re just not catching as many drunk drivers as before.
We have three Circuit judges in my county. They are professional judges. That’s what they do. They don’t have any divided allegiance. I’m the District Attorney. I don’t have any divided allegiance.
Let me tell you about the Astoria Municipal Court.
The judge is a part-time judge, a very skilled lawyer. I would recommend people to go to this guy. But on Mondays he’s the Municipal judge. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, he is one of the two primary indigent defense lawyers. We don’t have a public defender’s office. So on Monday he is judging the Astoria Police Department. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday he’s cross-examining the same police officers, sometimes on DUII cases, in Circuit Court.
The City Prosecutor, the new City Prosecutor, is an extremely talented young woman, a really good lawyer. She is the other primary indigent defense contractor. So, on Mondays she’s prosecuting DUII cases and on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday she’s defending them.
I just tell that alone to most people and they think I’m making it up. But it gets worse.
About a year ago I approached the City as calmly as possible and said, Look: I’m willing to take these cases over for free; let’s not make a big deal about this; I know you want to save face. I said, I have to go off and try this death penalty case for the third time in Bend, so when I come back we’ll talk about. I come back, I go in front of the commission, and one of the City councilors who was just voted out of office by 63% said, “This is a personal vendetta!” No, it’s a vendetta against drunk drivers.
We don’t have any staff, so I had a law clerk spend several hundred hours over the summer coming up with stats. For example, in 2008 there were roughly 300 DUIIs filed in Circuit Court of Clatsop County, which is my office. There were 80 in Muni Court. There were 17 trials, DUII trials, 13 were guilty and 4 were not guilty, for a conviction rate of about 75 percent. There were zero trials in Muni court.
There is one particular lawyer who people would go to if you got a drunk driving in Astoria. He won maybe 5 to 6 percent dispositively of his motions to suppress in front of the three Circuit judges. He won 100 percent of his motions to suppress in Municipal Court.
The other argument made by the people in the City is, Well -- ____ Mr. Roman -- this gives my client two bites of the apple, one ____ in Municipal Court _____. So the theory is that there is a bite of the apple.
That would work great except that in the 17 years I’ve been DA there have been zero appeals in Muni Court. Meaning that the prosecutor has never appealed a decision by the Muni Court judge, (a). (B), ____, I guess there’s a couple possibilities. One is the judge never makes a mistake, or (b) nobody ever gets convicted. I don’t know. They refuse to become a court of record. They bought a tape recorder which they will turn on and off occasionally, far less _____.
I’ve hard a lot of this stuff anecdotally from the police department who come over, sometimes literally in tears, going, You’ve got to do something about this.
Now, if I were politically smart, frankly I probably wouldn’t be engaged in this because all I’ve done is really tick off the country club crowd in my community. All I can say is I just got reelected for my fifth term, so I don’t really care about what parties I get invited to. But I really just can’t look at myself in the mirror and just say, Well, you know what, if you have enough money and you happen to have ____,. hopefully they will come and visit us for our beautiful town. You drive over, if you come from Washington you drive over a big bridge, from the south you drive over a little bridge. If you’re on the bridge you’re not in the City of Astoria but you’re in Clatsop County. If you get caught there you’ll be processed by the State Police or the Sheriff’s office and be treated, I think, hopefully fairly. If you get arrested by the Astoria Police Department, which by the way will do very best job they can, they’re good officers, but they’re pretty much forced to take their cases to Municipal Court where there’s a very good chance that you will never see them again.
In the 18 years I’ve been DA I’ve been involved in some controversies, _____, but I’ve never had anything where so many citizens have come up to me -- on the street, by phone, by email, I mean people I don’t know -- saying, Look, do not give up on this, this is really important.
Yesterday I visited my State Senator, Betsy Johnson, talked to her about it, just because she’s sort of my uber-advisor. She’s not on the Judiciary Committee and she’s not one of the co-sponsors, although I expect her to support it. And, more importantly, Rep. Barker, because it would be his committee it would go in front of. So, I’m expecting at some point that this bill will go before the Judiciary Committee. I would very much like to get the support of the Governor’s Committee.
What it does do . . . . Although at the moment the problem is Astoria, I’ve talked to other DAs and two things are really critical. In terms of possible cost, you’ll notice it says the District Attorney may take control ____. There’s two things that are critical about that. One is that it’s my opinion and that of the Attorney General’s office that that already is the law; that a District Attorney already has that inherent authority as the chief law officer by definition of the Oregon Constitution. So it’s not like it gives the DA more power than the DA currently has. Secondly, as I said at the beginning in terms of the counties that might want to do this, very few places -- my friend Alex Gardener in Eugene and Walt Beglau here in Salem -- they can’t...they’re not going to take over anything, because they can’t afford to. And they don’t see a problem. So in terms of there being a fiscal of any significance, it’s a ____. Any fiscal ____ all in Astoria.
Frankly, if this bill comes up for a hearing, it’s my expectation that the only people that will likely show up and oppose it will probably be supporters of the current system. Very briefly, as a reporter before I was a lawyer, I try to be …. Their argument is that this is local control, that the DA is trying to build some sort of power base. I don’t know _____ DUIIs because I’m not likely to get paid by the pound or the _____. And that there is great value in local control and that the City potentially might make money off it. My response would be even if that were true, even if they did make some money off it, it’s not worth it. I mean, it’s just not right.
And frankly also -- and this is, I forgot about this part -- there’s no accountability at all with Muni Court, or at least Muni Court the way it’s fashioned. The judges in some Muni Courts are elected. Not in Astoria, and not in a lot of places. The Municipal Court judge is appointed by the Mayor. The City Prosecutor is appointed by the Mayor. They’ve taken the position in the past that it’s not their job to review how they’re doing their job; that they’re lawyers, _____, so there’s no accountability.
The current judge -- Judge Dailey might appreciate this -- was brought up to the Commission on Judicial Fitness to raise some issues, and there is a Supreme Court decision that says Municipal Court judges are not judges for the purposes of review. Whereas Circuit Court judges are not only subject to review by the appellate courts, but if they do something wrong the Commission on Judicial Fitness _____. Muni Court judges are not. Literally no on can look over the shoulder of the judge or prosecutor. Judges and DA’s are elected and are subject to a lot of other checks and balances. There are no checks and balances in Municipal Court.
I have talked to a couple other DA’s who will go nameless at this point because the problems are not that exacerbated, but they also are concerned that there are times when -- it’s usually police officers who come to them and are concerned that a case is not getting treated the way it should be. Sometimes a DUII, not always, but usually they’re DUII cases. They think it would be nice to be able to have really no question about what the authority of the District Attorney was.
So, that’s my pitch and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.

CHAIR HAYES: I know Jerry has a comment. I can remember actually this Committee talking about this a number of years ago; in fact, it could have been when Jerry was the chair.

JERRY COOPER: [something about DUII diversions not being done right.]

CHAIR HAYES: Right. So it’s kind of been brought to our attention a number of years ago, prior to me being chair of the Committee and I think it was when Jerry was the chair. At that time it was kind of difficult for this Committee to do anything because we had no facts. We were just hearing.... We actually heard from the Astoria Police Department. That’s where the first concern came to us. It was kind of filtered by the Astoria Police Department to us. But after more facts like this.... I think you’ve done your homework, obviously, as you prepared for this. So this is one of the bills, by the way, folks, that we will be looking at as number two of the new bills that we’re going to talk about today. But before Josh has _____ here, before we get to talking about those bills later on, I think this is a great opportunity for any committee members -- I’m going to open it up to Committee members first -- for any questions or comments, and then I can open it up to the entire group.

JOSH MARQUIS: Let me just add, in here you will find..... I mean, some of the things that have happened was, one of the incidents that happened about seven or eight years ago was that there was a prominent Portland lawyer who was caught driving the wrong way down a one-way street at three in the morning ____ blitzed. He had a DUII six years earlier so this lawyer, plus the prosecutor, plus the Muni Court judge, decided they would make it easier. They would just cross out the word “ten years” and write in “six”, and then all initial it -- which is arguably Forgery 2 or something. It wasn’t.... The newspaper uncovered this. There was a mandamus filed, not by me, and I ended up being appointed as the special prosecutor who undid that.
As Chuck has said, there have been cases where the City Prosecutor -- not the current one, but the previous one -- they had a woman who had like four or five bunched in. We convicted the woman of one. The next one made her ____ Felony, and they just decided, Okay, I’m dismissing it because...not as part of any plea bargain, which is perfectly legal, but just that she got another one, I’m just dismissing it.
So we’ve had Felony DUII cases pulled out from under our feet more than once by the Municipal Court prosecutor. We then will say, Well why did you do that and then we go to the Municipal Court judge and we talk to him. II see him every day because he’s a very busy criminal defense lawyer in the same courts that I’m in every day. I say Why and they just say, Well, we do whatever we want and we don’t work for you, so have a nice day.

JUDGE DAILEY: As an aside, I thought that _____ but I do think that _____. It sounds like _____, and so in sum you’re saying that all of them are in the pocket of the Mayor. I mean this sounds like a bill to right a corruption of a Council. The Municipal Judge is subject to the Council, so unless the Council is all on the same page with him, I don’t understand.

JOSH MARQUIS: Four of the members are on the Council ____.

JUDGE DAILEY: So you want a bill that’s going to be statewide to right a Council problem.

JOSH MARQUIS: No. Well, the problem is most acute in Astoria. I don’t want to use the word “corruption” because that implies maybe some criminal malfeasance, and I don’t think that’s it. I think this is back-slapping. I think is, like I’ve been told, “This is the way we’ve always done things.”

JUDGE DAILEY: And that doesn’t ____ corruption?

JOSH MARQUIS: You can say it. I can’t. Leave it at that.
To give you an idea of how when..... There’s just been an election, Judge, and the most vociferous member of the Council, the one who said that this was a personal vendetta.... I went out.... I’m very active in the Democratic Party and I was asked to recruit a candidate to run against him. I did, a woman who had been active in the community, and she ran largely on the grounds that she wanted to bring DUIIs back to Circuit Court. She beat the incumbent by 63 to 37 percent. He is now the City Attorney. Immediately upon his defeat he was appointed City Attorney. Then she’s decided that maybe things, within two weeks of being on the Council, she decided that Well, maybe things aren’t so bad after all, why don’t we give this another year or two.
I understand and certainly am concerned about the idea that you don’t want to draft legislation to fix a problem in a community. It is simply most acute -- it’s not just acute, it’s outrageous in Astoria. But bits and pieces of this are beginning to show up in other parts of the state. I agree it’s very hard to _____, but it is very touchy and you are, by saying What are you doing, Why are you doing this, You’re calling into question at least the good judgment, and sometimes more than just the good judgment, of people making those decisions.

JUDGE DAILEY: But _____ is _____. I’m struggling with understanding how the State organizes itself this way. But, at the same time, the Municipal Judge answers to your City Council, and if the citizenry are as upset as you’re claiming they are, then there methods politically to deal with that.

JOSH MARQUIS: For example, I believe that the one candidate who ran on that in the most recent election and won by a substantial margin. I challenge the City.... Part of my problem is I have been too nice. Back in...when I started meeting with them I said, Look, why don’t you just put this on the ballot? We were early on and I found out from the County it costs nothing to put an advisory thing on the ballot that said voters of Astoria could say I think we should go to ____. They absolutely refused.
    I’ll tell you how deep it goes. I even asked the Police Chief, I said, Look, it’s the cops that are coming to me. Why don’t you take an anonymous poll of the police officers. Here’s the ballot -- I pre-printed them -- I’ll give them to you; you can control them. “No. That would cause problems with my boss,” the City Manager.
    I mean, I know what I’m describing sounds almost bizarre and if you get a chance to read some of what the Daily Astorian, the newspaper, has written, he’s been a lot tougher than I have. Absent literally recalling all of the members of the City Council -- and in fairness, they do a lot of other good things.....I mean, I don’t think Astoria is a sinkhole of corruption. Astoria’s undergone a renaissance in many ways in ten or twelve years, and many of the people on the Council who are there are responsible for a lot of good things happening. We had drug dealers all over the place in the mid-‘90s and we -- the police department and I and the judges -- just said no to all of them; we’re getting rid of them, and things changed.
It’s a limited issue and I am aware.... I am sort of at the end of my rope in the sense that, Okay, I’ve asked nicely. That didn’t work. I’ve appealed to the community. I think the community spoke. But short of some really politically radical..... I mean, you’re right. The City Council is also take the attitude variously that (a) it’s not their business; they’re not judges, they’re not lawyers. They’ve said this flat out. “We’re not going to try to oversee the position or the decisions of Municipal judge and court.” And then more recently, like within the last three weeks, they’ve said they will undergo a yearly review. I just don’t have a great deal of confidence that that review is going to happen, and I’m also not prepared to wait until somebody like Janelle Voeller gets behind the wheel of a car.

JUDGE DAILEY: It does seem like making it a court of record would help.

JOSH MARQUIS: It would.

JUDGE DAILEY: ...in terms of taking things out of the closet, so to speak.

JOSH MARQUIS: Absolutely. That would be a …. and that’s what my original intent was.

CHAIR HAYES: Anne first and then Jody I think have a questions.

ANNE: I remember when _____.

JOSH MARQUIS: Because there’s no objection to it.

WOMAN: I don’t think this is isolated to Clatsop County. The reason I say that is because I had the opportunity to teach courses, and after I teach the conference I usually get phone calls from police officers in outlying areas complaining about the city prosecutor not understanding how to handle a DUII. The city prosecutor won’t file anything below .08 no matter what the person has done. And that’s not the prosecutor’s fault, because probably they’re working in a ____. There’s no training specifically for them to go to, and judges typically don’t stay on top of the law because they don’t try that many cases in Muni Court. So, I think this is an excellent idea. A District Attorney can decide whether or not he wants to take those cases based on whether or not there are complaints from the police officers. So I think we should support it.

CHAIR HAYES: David, do you have your hand up?

DAVID WEBSTER:: Yeah. I can tell you from my trainings around the state that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction among the officers with the Astoria Police Department with the way the prosecution of DUIIs is done there. Their feeling is that they continue to arrest offenders, which is a testament to their dedication as officers, but they feel pretty certain that once the offender is arrested that the consequences just don’t happen when they get to court because they’re forced to go to their Municipal Court. And the concern that I think this committee would have is not so much that this is happening in Astoria. It’s the fact that this can happen in Astoria or it can happen anywhere in the state. And if we get to the point where officers don’t feel like prosecutions are occurring, some officers will stop enforcing DUII laws, and I think that’s my main concern for this Committee’s part in this.

CHAIR HAYES: Thank you. Teresa.

TERESA DOUGLAS: I think I can add a little bit to that because I have to go to court, to Muni Court, ______. And I can tell you ______. So it does happen around the State. It’s not just one Muni Court.

KAREN WHEELER: Just from the perspective of addiction and recovery, it doesn’t do anyone any favors when they don’t get held accountable. They really have to face accountability about the law. It also ____.

JOSH MARQUIS: I want to make clear that that letter in there is incredibly personal. When I got it, I called the woman up and I said, what you’ve written is a public record, I need to warn you, and I don’t ____. She said, No, you don’t understand; I want ____. Then, about a month ago,____, I think you ought to call her, I think ______. The newspaper was bugging me and under the public records law _______. Then she said, “No, I want this.” So one of the things that I’m handing this out and eople might think, Oh well, you got this incredibly personal thing and you’re exploiting it _____.

CHAIR HAYES: I think that’s a good point. It’s not only what Karen’s talked about as well because people, if they’re not being convicted and not being held responsible, _____ somebody that obviously needs treatment to save their life or just treatment in general, they’re escaping the system ____. We need to be thinking about that as well.
    Jerry, one last comment on this.

JERRY COOPER: Misdemeanors covers a lot more territory than DUII. It also covers shoplifting. Have you got a problem in Astoria with ______ shoplifting _____.

JOSH MARQUIS: ___ because I have to be honest. The vast majority of prosecutors in this state are not doing shoplifting cases and most lower misdemeanors are turned into infractions like that.

JERRY COOPER: Violations. In Multnomah County Muni Court.

JOSH MARQUIS: Well, they’re not alone. It’s not just Multnomah County. Marion County’s doing it, Lane County’s doing it. I’m one of the few counties that doesn’t do it just because my county _____. So, to answer your question: No, it’s generally not as much of a problem. In Astoria Muni Court virtually every -- I think for financial reasons they don’t want to spend the money on _____.

JERRY COOPER: _____ on somebody’s record.

JOSH MARQUIS: Well, an infraction conviction doesn’t mean much because (a) it’s ___ and (b) you can’t use it ____.

MAN: Social stigma, my friend. You know that. _____

CHAIR HAYES: Thank you. We’re going to be discussing this bill. It’s number two on our list of new bills today, so we will be making a decision as to how the Committee will proceed in that. Lisa?

LISA: _____. How are they handling ____?

JOSH MARQUIS: They had a diversion program, which actually I don’t think is all that much different than the one in Circuit Court. We have a huge alcohol problem on the Coast, and in fairness I think a lot of people recognize that. So I believe that those are … we’re a lot less concerned about that.
I’m very glad to hear somebody other than me saying about the Astoria police officers because frankly many of them are scared to speak up because they’re afraid that _____.

WOMAN: One quick question. I know you said you had trouble getting the numbers and getting the statistics. But to what you found, was there a difference between cases in which the defendant was represented in Muni Court and when they just went to Muni Court?

JOSH MARQUIS: Oh absolutely, yes, but you sort of expect that. If somebody is represented, they’re probably going to get better. But there was a 21% outright dismissal rate of DUIIs in 2008 Muni Court. There was a 3% dismissal rate in Circuit Court. So they were dismissing seven times as many DUIIs.

WOMAN: And in terms of convictions in Muni....

JOSH MARQUIS: It was almost impossible to tell because.... It was impossible to tell....
Thank you very much for giving me the time.

CHAIR HAYES: Alright. We will be discussing this. But just a couple things to think about too, not only from the DUII arrest standpoint over there, but maybe how are we doing as far as implied consent hearings. Do those play a part in what’s happening over there?

WOMAN: Yes, they are, and I think our statistics would not be consistent with the Muni Court’s. [laughs]

CHAIR HAYES: It would be interesting to know, whether those are actually happening or not.

WOMAN: I know. Imean, Yes, we have implied consent hearings in Astoria and in Clatsop County often, and I’m sure Mary could find statistics. But I think that they would....

CHAIR HAYES: Show that they’re happening anyway.

WOMAN: Yes.

CHAIR HAYES: Okay. Well thank you. Let’s go ahead and move on to Capt. Walker now, from Oregon State Police. You’re next on our agenda.

#####END transcript

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]