Without a doubt, one of the most confusing aspects of a California DUI case is how the DUI arrest and conviction affects a person’s driving privileges. When does it take effect? How long does it last? Am I eligible for a restricted license? What complicates matters further is that whenever a person is arrested for a DUI, there is the possibility of two separate license suspensions.
To help understand the suspension process, it makes sense to discuss it chronologically.
When a person is arrested in California on suspicion of a first-time DUI, the arresting officer usually takes their license. In return, the officer provides the driver with a “pink slip.” The pink slip is a temporary license which allows the person to drive temporarily.
When the officer gives the pink slip to the driver, the officer should also advise the driver that they have only 10 days to contact the DMV to request a hearing and request a “stay” of the suspension pending the outcome of the hearing. If the hearing is not requested, the driver’s license will automatically be suspended for four months through the DMV’s “administrative per se” action after 10 days.
If the hearing is requested, the DMV will set the hearing date anywhere from a month two several months from the date of arrest. Assuming that the stay was also requested, the driver will be able to drive pending the outcome of the hearing.
The purpose of the DMV hearing is to determine 1.) whether the officer had reasonable cause to believe the driver was driving under the influence, 2.) whether the driver was lawfully arrested, and 3.) whether the driver had a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or higher.
Prior to the hearing date, the DMV will send the driver or their attorney a packet of information which contains the evidence that the DMV is using to make the determinations in the previous paragraph. As if disproving those determinations wasn’t difficult enough, even with a lawyer to argue on the driver’s behalf at the hearing, the hearings are unfairly one-sided against the driver.
Since the DMV is not a court, the standard of proof needed to suspend a person’s license is much lower than what is needed to convict a person of a crime in criminal court. A prosecutor in a criminal case must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the driver was either 0.08 percent blood alcohol content or “under the influence.” A DMV hearing officer must only prove more likely than not that the driver was either a 0.08 percent blood alcohol content or that they refused the chemical test.
The DMV hearing officer, who is a DMV employee, runs the hearing. The hearing officer can object to the driver’s evidence and rule on his or her own objection. Finally, the hearing officer decides if he or she wins. And they almost always do. In this sense, the hearing officer acts as both the prosecutor and the judge.
Hearsay statements, which are generally excluded from court cases because the person making the statement cannot be cross examined, are admissible in DMV hearings. Most of the time, arresting officers are absent from DMV hearings. If a driver wishes to cross examine the arresting officer who wrote the report, he or she must subpoena the officer at his own cost. This includes paying for the officer’s salary for the time that they attend the hearing.
Lastly, the DMV hearing officer, who, like a judge, determines the outcome of the DMV hearing is merely a DMV employee with no background in law. In fact, according to the DMV’s employment eligibility requirements, a hearing officer does not even need to have a college degree.
Suffice it to say, a majority of DMV hearings are lost, thus triggering the four-month “APS” suspension.
If, however, the DMV hearing is won, the driver will save themselves from the four-month “APS” suspension, but they will still face a court-triggered suspension if they are convicted of a DUI in the criminal action against them.
You can read any number of my previous posts on the inner workings of DUI criminal court case. This post is about the license suspension and how the criminal DUI case affects driving privileges. As such I will not go into the details of the DUI criminal case.
If, after all is said and done in the DUI criminal case, the driver pleads guilty (or no contest) or is convicted after trial, the court will notify the DMV that the driver has been convicted of the DUI. When the DMV becomes aware of the DUI conviction, a six-month “mandatory action” suspension will become effective. The driver, however, will get credit against the six-month mandatory action suspension for any time spent on the four-month APS suspension.
For example, a driver is arrested in January and loses the DMV hearing in February. The driver serves the four-month suspension and gets their license back in June. Then in July, the driver is convicted of a DUI, thus triggering the six-month suspension. Since the driver already served the four-month suspension, they will only need to serve another two months.
As you can see, the license suspension is no simple process, and I haven’t even begun to discuss cases that are not your run-of-the-mill first-time DUI cases.
Without going into too much detail, here are some basics for other, slightly more complicated scenarios:
A second-time DUI carries a one-year APS suspension and the mandatory action suspension is two years. A third-time DUI carries a one-year APS suspension and a three-year mandatory action suspension. A driver who refuses the mandatory chemical test following a DUI arrest faces a one-year APS suspension and the driver can face additional criminal penalties.
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