Attorney Jacob Braunstein just scored a major legal victory for defendants charged with DUII in the State of Oregon. Earlier this year, the Hood River County District Attorney’s Office began charging individuals arrested for DUII with multiple charges of DUII arising from the same incident and arrest. The Hood River County District Attorney’s Office was pushing a new legal theory to try to justify charging an individual with multiple charges of DUII just because the individual in question temporarily stopped his or her vehicle on the side of a road or in a parking lot before continuing on.
The District Attorney’s Office argued that stopping one’s vehicle for really any amount of time was a “sufficient pause” to justify charging two or more DUII charges despite the individual being stopped and arrested only once. In the case at issue, Jacob’s client had stopped his vehicle for only 3 to 5 minutes in a parking lot, where he spoke with one person, before continuing to drive away. The defendant was stopped and arrested a short time later and the District Attorney’s Office charged him with one count of DUII for driving prior to stopping in the parking lot and one count of DUII for driving after that 3 to 5 minute stop in the parking lot.
After several months of legal briefs and contested hearings, the Court ruled in favor of Attorney Jacob Braunstein and his client, holding that the State could not lawfully charge multiple counts of DUII arising from the same incident. In a groundbreaking written opinion (the first in Oregon to specifically deal with this issue), the Court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss the unjustified additional charge of DUII.
Why is this case so important? In most of the cases in which the District Attorney’s Office was pushing this new legal theory, the defendant was eligible for the DUII Diversion program, but for the additional DUII charge being filed in their case. Under the DUII Diversion laws in Oregon, a person may be eligible for diversion so long as they have no other DUII charges pending against them. By charging a person with multiple DUII’s, the District Attorney’s Office was trying to prevent individuals with no other criminal history from entering into the DUII Diversion Program to earn dismissal of the DUII. Instead, the District Attorney’s Office was seeking to sentence these individuals with no prior criminal history to more than 30 days in jail and 3 year license revocations.
A win for the prosecution would have been catastrophic for the future of DUII laws and procedure in Oregon. Thanks to the tireless work of Attorney Jacob Braunstein, the DUII Diversion program remains an option for these individuals, and yet another attempt by the prosecution to get around Oregon’s DUII Diversion laws has failed.