arizona supreme court

Arizona Supreme Court Compromises on Scottsdale DUI Evidence

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that blood-alcohol tests from the Scottsdale crime lab will not be excluded as evidence in Scottsdale DUI cases.

Due to inconsistent error reports, the Court released an opinion in late April ruling that tests from the headspace gas chromatograph machine are valid to use in DUI cases.

While the machine did produce some faulty test results, results were not always inaccurate, therefore leading the justices to determine that evidence couldn’t be dismissed from all DUI cases. Instead, a judge will decide if the evidence is inherently unreliable, in which case the tests wouldn’t be considered.

However, in more difficult cases, a judge may not be able to determine whether the evidence is inherently unreliable, and it will be up to jurors to decide if the tests can be used as credible evidence.

This means that not every Scottsdale DUI case can dismiss BAC tests from the machine, but defense attorneys can present the flaws of the lab and the machine to the jury, regardless of whether their clients’ tests were erroneous.

In July 2013, the Scottsdale crime lab was the center of controversy when news broke that the equipment used to test blood alcohol levels of those arrested on suspicion of DUI was outdated and defective, resulting in mislabelled and inaccurate data for as many as 50 percent of samples.

The machine is longer in operation, and the Scottsdale DUI cases can proceed in court under this new ruling.

Debra Milke’s Murder Case Dismissed After 25 Years

The case against Debra Milke, who spent more than 20 years on death row for the murder of her four-year-old son, has been dismissed by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.

Milke was convicted of murder in 1990 for accompanying two men into the desert and shooting her son in the head. These charges were overturned by a federal court in 2013 due to an issue with the detective at the time, Armando Saldate, who reportedly had several incidents of misconduct.

Saldate claimed that Milke confessed to murdering her son during an interview, but there were no witnesses at the time, and the proposed confession was never recorded. He declared in March 2014 that he would not testify in Milke’s retrial.

As a result, Milke’s defense filed to dismiss her case with prejudice so that she could not be tried again by prosecutors, and it was successfully dismissed during a brief hearing in Phoenix on Monday, March 23.

“I always believed this day would come I just didn’t think it would take 25 years, 3 months and 14 days to rectify such a blatant miscarriage of justice,” Milke said.

Milke has maintained her innocence and denied ever telling Saldate she was involved in the murder of her son.

The two men who were convicted in her son’s murder remain on death row and did not testify against her in the past.

Although prosecutors recently bid for a retrial, the Arizona Supreme Court’s rejected this request, and Milke’s attorneys said her case is over now besides a few small matters, like meeting with her probation officer and removing her monitoring bracelet.

Arizona Supreme Court Overturns Vague Marijuana DUI Laws

In April, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that drivers with traces of marijuana found in the body after a drug test can not receive DUI charges if the existing chemical compounds do not cause impairment.

This overturned the Court of Appeals decision from last year that gave prosecutors the right to charge marijuana users with DUIs without proof that they were physically impaired at the time of arrest.

Attention to this issue was brought to the higher court when an Arizona man was pulled over by police for speeding and unsafe lane changes. He admitted to smoking marijuana the night before and consented to a drug test where marijuana metabolites were later detected.

Chemical compounds left in the man’s body from previous marijuana intake were carboxy-tetrahydrocannabinol, or carboxy-THC, a non-impairing metabolite of marijuana that can remain in the body for up to 30 days after marijuana use, the Huffington Post reports.

The man was charged with two counts of DUI for driving while impaired and for driving with drugs in his system although the marijuana metabolites were non-impairing, the Arizona Department of Health Services said.

His case was appealed and the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the Arizona DUI law,A.R.S. 28-1381 that says it is unlawful to operate a vehicle while there is marijuana and its metabolite in the body, is too ambiguous because it does not distinguish between the different marijuana metabolites.

“We do not believe that the legislature contemplated penalizing the presence of a metabolite that is not impairing,” the court said of the DUI offense according to the AZDHS Medical Marijuana Program newsletter.

With states like Colorado and Washington, where recreational marijuana is legal, and 23 other states including DC that have legalized medicinal marijuana, including Arizona in 2010, legislation concerning DUI charges and how they should be applied to marijuana users are topics worth discussion.

For example, the Arizona Supreme Court ruling affects the 40,000 medical marijuana users in Arizona and out of state visitors who use marijuana by protecting them from wrongful DUI charges, the Arizona Capitol Times said.

Now, medical marijuana users in Arizona can drive without their legal actions being criminalized by law enforcement, however it is always important to understand your DUI laws and rights.

The Arizona DUI defense attorneys at Corso Law Group do everything in their power to protect defendants and advocate for their rights. They have the experience and expertise to deal with DUI charges in Arizona and will fight to get the charges dismissed.

New Arizona Supreme Court Rule Change Holds Prosecutors to Higher Standard

According to an Arizona Supreme Court enactment updating Ethical Rule 3.8, prosecutors are required to turn over to defense attorneys any evidence showing the possible innocence of a convicted person, and prosecutors must take it upon themselves to get the conviction reversed if they find “clear and convincing evidence” proving the defendant’s innocence, the Arizona Republic reports.

The role of the prosecutor is to represent all citizens, “and therefore they, like judges, are held to higher standard and should help remedy any errors that result from our sometimes imperfect system of justice,” Supreme Court and Chief Rebecca White Berch wrote in an email to the Republic.

Berch said that Ethical Rule 3.8 supports the notion that it is the duty of prosecutors to act as “ministers of justice” who work to represent all citizens fairly rather than seek convictions at all costs; however, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and other attorneys are rejecting the new rule.

A statement made under Montgomery’s name claims that the change is unnecessary.

“We have no real-world examples of prosecutors discovering evidence of the nature that would trigger a duty under this rule,” because “prosecutors in Arizona already fully embrace their roles as ministers of justice when (it) comes to righting wrongful convictions,” the Republic reports.

Montgomery’s objection cited that prosecutors were already reexamining their convictions. An example in his file said that his office was recently working to drop charges against people pleading guilty to “huffing,” the act of intentionally inhaling vapors as a way to get high, because the law had been misinterpreted.

Although this may be true in regards to those specific cases, the Republic reported a case that challenges the perception that prosecutors are diligent when it comes to turning over exculpatory evidence.

Henry Hall was sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of Ted Lindberry who was killed due to a blow to the head by Hall and dumped in the desert, according to testimony made by a jailhouse informant who claimed Hall had described the events to him.

In 2001 Hall’s conviction was overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court due to juror misconduct, and Lindberry’s remains, which weren’t found at the time of Hall’s conviction, were discovered in a location differing from the informant’s testimony with an intact skull.

Despite the promising new evidence, a series of unfavorable events followed for Hall. Lindberry’s remains were promptly returned to his family and cremated, but Hall’s defense attorney didn’t know about the discovery of the body and the condition of the skull until about a year after the cremation, according to court documents, making the exculpatory evidence virtually useless.

During retrial, prosecutors wanted to use the informant’s original testimony, but Superior Court Judge Roland Steinle didn’t allow it because the information was proved false and the informant had died. Steinle did allow the defense to inform the jury of the situation with the discovered evidence as punishment to prosecutors for not previously disclosing such crucial information, but that didn’t necessarily help Hall or the defense.

Prosecutors were not satisfied with the idea of losing a conviction and took the case to the Arizona Court of Appeals, still insisting on using the original, false testimony. The appeal and a request by the defense to dismiss the case for prosecutorial misconduct were denied in 2011.

There’s no guaranteeing that Hall’s conviction would have been overturned if Rule 3.8 existed at the time, but the muddled situation wouldn’t have been an issue because prosecutors would have known how to properly and fairly proceed with the new evidence.

Hall, having already spent 13 years in prison, was offered by prosecutors a plea to second-degree murder and a prison sentence of another 16 years.

Citizens rely on those in power to fight for justice under all circumstances, and although it’s a complicated and controversial process, amendments to the system and additional ethical rules and improvements like Rule 3.8 will help law enforcement, prosecutors and others work more transparently in the future.

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