Judge, Dozens of Lawyers Wade Into Tangled County DUI Cases

One of the largest court battles in Ventura County history began unfolding Friday in a courtroom packed with attorneys who hoped to undermine some 300 questionable drunk-driving cases.

Looking frazzled but determined, Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren began wading through the names of accused and convicted drunk drivers whose cases are being challenged because of alleged improprieties in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Crime Lab.

Perren tried to sort out which of the three dozen attorneys packed into the courtroom’s benches and jury box represented which clients, and what it is they wanted from him.

He labored to determine which defendants would waive their rights to a speedy trial--since the larger question of tainted lab results could take months to work its way through Ventura County’s overburdened court system.

In the 90-minute hearing, the judge managed to rule on one motion--rejecting prosecutors’ efforts to keep Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury from testifying--before postponing the rest of the case until Monday.

Clearly exasperated, Perren declared, “This is just a nightmare.”

Afterward, attorneys on both sides shook their heads over what they predict will be a long, arduous fight.

“It’s kind of a zoo,” said defense attorney Dennis Kucera, representing 15 clients. “This is almost like a class-action suit. It’s a massive undertaking.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris suggested the so-called “global motions” being pressed by a team of defense lawyers were misnamed.

He quipped, “A more appropriate term might be ‘intergalactic.’ ”

The sheriff’s crime lab was thrown into disarray in November when supervisor Norm Fort, the only lab staffer qualified to oversee testing of blood-alcohol levels for county law enforcement agencies, resigned.

Crime lab commanders scrambled to get a new supervisor trained and the lab properly certified. But after granting a 90-day extension of its license, state health officials on March 19 ordered the lab to stop processing breath analyses.

Fearing that ending the breath program would provide fodder for court appeals, the lab quietly continued doing the tests and regulating breath-test machines operated by every Ventura County police agency.

It was not until May that a new supervisor was certified and installed, and by then, defense attorneys across the county had begun appealing the arrests and convictions of drunk-driving clients.

Perren’s first task will be to establish a known set of facts about the six-month window between Fort’s departure and the certification of current supervisor Dea Boehme.

That factual foundation will serve as the basis of arguments in the individual cases, which he then must sort through one by one.

Perren will face three types of cases: defendants who have already been convicted and sentenced on drunk-driving charges, those who have entered a plea and await sentencing, and those whose arrests are just entering the courts, said defense attorney Ronald Jackson.

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If Perren finds the lab was in full compliance with the law, there may be no grounds for appeal, he said.

But Perren also might rule that lab operations were flawed enough to affect the admissibility of the evidence, the outcome of the cases or the convictions and sentences themselves, Jackson said.

“Then he has to decide what the remedy is,” Jackson said.

Perren could limit the evidence in open cases, order new trials in closed ones, or throw out some cases altogether, he said.

Defense attorneys have already gained some ammunition in their fight.

On Monday, Municipal Court Judge Edward Brodie ruled in a single DUI case that the crime lab was operating under a license, but that some of its procedures and staffing violated state law.

Several attorneys have convinced the state Department of Motor Vehicles to reinstate some defendants’ driver’s licenses on the grounds that the crime lab was violating the law.

And on Aug. 11, they will try to gain more ammunition by asking Perren to excuse the district attorney from the case and call in the California attorney general’s office to take over the prosecution.

Static is already building, after Kossoris tried unsuccessfully to have Perren kill a defense subpoena for Bradbury to testify.

Kossoris accused the public defender’s office of “acting in bad faith” by asking Bradbury to testify in a pretrial hearing when it intended to use his testimony as ammunition for the trial itself.

He asked Perren to penalize the public defender’s office.

But Perren denied both motions. And Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley--whose office represents 192 of the defendants--took Kossoris to task in the courthouse hallway afterward.

She accused the district attorney’s office of keeping her investigators waiting for four hours to serve the subpoena on Bradbury when such interactions should be handled quickly as a matter of professional courtesy between agents of the court.

“It seems to me an inadequate waste of everybody’s time to stake out each other’s waiting room,” she said, before Kossoris ushered her aside to continue the discussion.

Kossoris later said he had “no personal knowledge” about the accusation. But he added, “I’m hopeful that the underlying issue can be worked out.”

At least one drunk-driving defendant, arrested at a Jan. 10 drunk-driving checkpoint, said he will be closely watching the case’s progress.

“I’m paying my fines right now, and I’m going to the drunk-driving classes,” said the 39-year-old Oxnard man, who asked not to be identified.

“I hope we will get reimbursed for the fees and also that my record will be cleared.”