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Notable Case Studies Involving Successful Resolution Of Traffic Violations

Interviewer: Are there any particular cases that you've decided was one of your more favorite victories that you were involved with in a traffic case.

Acacia Law Group Lawyer: I would say I have 2 favorite victories. I'll start with the criminal case. This is a DUI, and this was a team effort, by the way - with another attorney, for argument - but I drafted the motion, and it's one of those I talked about your constitutional rights. I think I mentioned earlier about the anonymous tip. This is a situation where a person should be charged at extreme DUI - and if we went over that - but, if you blow above a .15, not only are you charged DUI, but you're charged at extreme DUI, which has more jail time, and enhanced sentences and penalties. And then, I believe this one was even above .20, which is basically the super-extreme DUI, which is even the worst penalty

The Supreme Court in Arizona has Ruled that Along With An Anonymous Tip, there Must Be Some Verifying Evidence Before the Stop Can Occur

However, in this situation, the only evidence was somebody called in and said they thought a person was going to drive, and described a car, license plate, and just described this driver's characteristics. So, I looked at that, looked at the police report, and the police report stated that an officer just came into the garage, essentially assumed this had to be the person. They saw the white car, looked like it might be the driver, blocked her so that she couldn't even start the car to exit the garage. Stopped her, demanded her to exit the vehicle, and then, basically, then verified the license plate. After reading all that, I'm like, "Hey, this seems a little funny, here. They acted too soon." Sure enough, I looked up the case on here, it's that the supreme court in Arizona has ruled that with anonymous tips, there at least has to be some verifying evidence before the stop can occur.

Challenging the Validity of a Traffic Stop Can be a Viable Defense for a Traffic Violation

So, it can't just basically be on nothing. I turned around and said, if it turns out that the officer would have let the person drive a little bit, or then verified license plate and then pulled over, it would have been a harder motion. In this case, though, yeah, I found the technicalities. He didn't do that. So, again, made it myself, I drafted the motion, then an attorney at our firm argued it and basically showed how the officer testified that he opened his car door and blocked the person, which was quite dangerous, actually, and the judge agreed with that. On that basis, we were able to get this charge - which was above a .20 - dismissed, just because of the fact that, there was no reason to believe that this was the right person at the time and that was not a valid stop. I would say that was one of my favorite victories in Arizona because I wanted to negotiate.  I talked to the prosecutor, I went, "You know what, you want to offer me a reckless, or something that's not a DUI, I will take it." But, you know what, they really thought they were going to win this and wouldn't negotiate, and then it turns out they were wrong. I really enjoyed that victory.

Challenging the Jurisdiction of a Traffic Stop is Also a Viable Defense for a Traffic Violation

The other one, my semi-favorite one that I did with traffic - and I'm actually, I'm going up there again on one of my cases the October 27th on the same issue; I'm hoping to get the same result - is on the jurisdiction issues, is that up near the Utah border, there's a little city called Colorado City, but anyone in the Arizona Strip, is that there's a port of entry that's located in Utah, but it's for Arizona.  Whatever the reason, they don't have the port of entry in Arizona, so what the officers are doing is, they're basically citing the drivers in Utah, but then saying, "Oh, there was a sign back in Arizona that said you had to pull over." They're trying to get around that fact and say, "Oh, you broke an Arizona rule for failure to obey a sign." Every time I go up there, I'm like, "Why do you have jurisdiction, why does that matter if ... Yeah, there was a sign back there, but he didn't do anything wrong until he was in Utah." This is one of those things, those jurisdiction issues comes up, and it's just, playing with technicalities are a lot of fun, so that's just, for commercial driver traffic tickets, that's my favorite one. That's still ongoing, by the way, for that one, because that issue comes up a lot.