this reality caused them to take a closer look at their emphasis on how they approached implied consent hearings, especially as it became apparent that those arrested for DUI were going to have a long time before they faced any consequences with the court closings and inevitable backlog that would be waiting when they reopened. Previously, the agency’s officers did not have positive experiences with the implied consent hearings. They often lost when the accused had a defense attorney present, and they felt that the hearings went outside the scope that they should be limited to, which was sometimes was used against them in the criminal case. After discussion and planning, GCPD and their prosecutor for DUIs decided that they would begin attending all implied consent hearings and doing all the necessary preparation to make a solid case to uphold the suspension. There were a few major reasons for the change. One was that it was viewed simply as the right thing to do. Refusals should lead to license suspensions as outlined in the law, and it sends a message to the community that impaired driving offenses will be taken seriously, specifically countering the narrative that “don’t blow” is a smart tactic for those arrested that will come with no consequences. Additionally, focusing on implied consent hearings made it much more likely that someone who refused would face some sort of penalty, a license suspension, in the short-term due to the criminal case delay. Also important, it created leverage to negotiate DUI guilty pleas, meaning that some defendants would agree to plead guilty to the criminal DUI charge if the agency would not attend the implied consent hearing, sparing the individual the license suspension on the refusal. Given the difficulty of getting a DUI conviction in our state, this is an understandable approach. In some cases where the criminal case had some challenges that made getting a conviction questionable, the focus on implied consent hearings resulted in a plea with the defense where the accused received a reckless driving on the criminal side but withdrew their request to have the license suspension upheld. Even in this situation, the final outcome may have been preferable to the previous likelihood of the reckless driving plea and no license suspension. (Note: MADD’s preference would ultimately be that license suspensions are replaced with a period of driving permissions being granted but with an Ignition Interlock Device for the best results for public safety.) Another key benefit to focusing on implied consent hearings is the experience it provides law enforcement officers in courtroom testimony, especially as it may improve future testimony in criminal cases. In some areas of our state, it is very common for officers to have to prosecute their own DUI arrests. Even when they do not prosecute the case, their testimony on the traffic stop and arrest is a key part of the success of the criminal case. Even many of today’s most effective and passionate officers that make DUI arrests will say that they got “beat up” by defense attorneys in their first few cases when they had little experience in courtroom testimony. However, these early challenges often were motivating for those officers to get better in their testimony and have greater success in the future. At the same time, these same challenges certainly deter many officers from making DUI arrests to avoid similar unpleasant experiences. Implied consent hearings require somewhat similar testimony skills but have a more limited scope of what is being testified to and is generally considered to be “lower stakes” as the criminal case is not directly at risk in an implied consent hearing. If a renewed focus on implied
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