San Diego DUI attorneys previously wrote how a police officer motivated by extra pay from prospective court appearances has been caught lying in his DUI arrest reports.
The drunk driving charges trumped up by the officer were shown to be fabrications by these videos.
Now a Northern California district attorney dropped 79 drunk driving cases because the DUI arresting officer falsified evidence.
Being arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) can cost a motorist thousands of dollars in court fines, insurance costs and attorneys’ fees. At least 79 accused drivers were notified last Friday that the police officer that charged them with drunk driving had likely falsified at least one piece of evidence.
Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully threw out the cases after an investigation into the conduct of Sacramento Police Officer Brandon Mullock.
Scully opened the inquiry into Mullock’s conduct after a deputy district attorney preparing a DUI case for trial watched a dashcam arrest video and noticed that the raw footage differed substantially from Mullock’s written account of the incident in a police report. The case was dropped in June.
“It is fundamental to our system of justice that prosecutors only proceed on cases where the evidence is trustworthy and was legally obtained,” Scully said in a statement. “The United States Supreme Court has said that the prosecutor should seek not simply to win a case, but to see that justice is done. The California Supreme Court has said that public prosecutors are charged with the important and solemn duty to ensure that justice and fairness remain the touchstone of our criminal justice system.
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According to Scully’s office, most of the defendants were convicted in a court of law despite Mullock’s legally unsound decision to detain the motorists, despite his misuse of preliminary alcohol screening and despite wild inaccuracies in his field interviews.
The district attorney’s office has provided each convicted motorist with documentation they can provide to insurance companies and employers to remedy some of the damage done.