consent hearings had just the impact of improving offi cers’ DUI testimony skills alone, it would be well worth considering.
Reasons to Consider Focusing on Implied Consent Hearings
• Sends a “tough on DUI” message to the community and counters the perception that refusing to blow means no consequences for someone arrested • Ensures that a timely penalty will be experienced by someone refusing, even if the criminal case will take a long time to be resolved • Increases leverage to work out pleas, typically with a guilty for the DUI but not pressing for the license suspension • More pleas mean less work down the line on the criminal case, a smaller case backlog, fewer jury trial spots needed, and a faster resolution, which is important because cases get less likely to end as convictions the longer they drag on • Provides valuable courtroom experience to officers It is important to note that there were discussions and preparation that went into this policy change. It took buy-in from the chief down to the officers who would have to show up for the hearings — sometimes multiple officers for one arrest if different officers were involved in various phases like the traffic stop, the Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST), and collecting the breath sample via the Datamaster instrument. Also, for an arrest stemming from a public safety checkpoint, the ranking officer at the checkpoint may be needed to testify to certain aspects of the justification for the checkpoint. Key to the change was having discussions with the administrative hearing officer on how things could be made more convenient for the arresting agency while still respecting the practices of the court. For example, there was some accommodation to grouping together an officer’s cases so they may need to appear in court on fewer dates and understanding there may need to be continuances under certain conditions while the court also clarified some things that they would not grant continuances for. This accommodation is not completely uncommon for the hearing officers as they already often try to be mindful of defense attorney’s schedules when they have multiple cases before the court. Additional training and support by the GCPD prosecutor was needed to make sure that officers were well prepared and each case was handled thoroughly. Some of the training/coaching areas were: reminding officers that the standard on administrative cases is only preponderance of evidence (50.1%) rather than “beyond reasonable doubt,” clarifying what are the limited areas of testimony that should be relevant and how to handle things if the defense tries to go outside that scope, to write quality arrest reports and be mindful of what they say because inconsistencies can be used against them in the criminal case, and also identifying those cases that perhaps should not be pursued if there were flaws in the arrest or implied consent procedures.
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