OC District Attorney funding for DUI Drug cases

OC District Attorney funding for DUI Drug cases

A press release from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA) from yesterday (11/16/2017) indicates that the office received money from two grants from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) for a DUI Training and Vertical Prosecution Program. The OC District Attorney funding for DUI Drug cases is to fight drug DUI cases all over Orange County.

The OC DA’s office was given $672,500 for the Alcohol and Drug Impaired Driver Vertical Prosecution Program and $594,600 for the California Traffic Safety Resource Program Training Network.

OCDA has been working with OTS Traffic Safety grants and funding to fight driving under the influence of drugs (DUID) cases specifically since 2011.

With the decriminalization of marijuana, California expects to see a rise in the number of drug-impaired driving cases that will be investigated and prosecuted by law enforcement.

In Orange County, the crime lab reported a 40 percent increase in drug-impaired driving submissions from 2015 to 2016.

In 2011, OCDA developed a new system to prosecute DUI drug cases.  That involved a multi-agency collaborative DUID prosecution, investigation and toxicology model which has served as the innovative foundation for the development of a statewide DUID program.

In October 2016, OCDA expanded their training role to the Southern California region, serving as the lead agency in prosecution and law enforcement training.

This includes the delivery of live training, roundtables, training videos, and legal updates.

In 2017, OCDA began to develop a California statewide training program through its administration of the Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutor (TSRP) and training program.

As part of this process, OCDA has begun to align law enforcement and prosecution agencies throughout the state to create a massive statewide training, resource, and education network. This new responsibility offers agencies throughout the state the opportunity to share expertise in the area of traffic safety as the OCDA works in partnership to proactively investigate and prosecute traffic-related crimes, increasing public safety in all jurisdictions throughout California.

As part of this grant opportunity, OCDA maintains eight vertical DUI-Drug prosecutors assigned throughout the county.

These deputy district attorneys review, file and prosecute all drug-impaired driving cases. Collectively in the 2017 grant year, OCDA prosecutors reviewed 1,060 DUID cases and charged 925 of them. Many of those cases are still pending, but in the 2017 grant year, our vertical prosecutors obtained 522 convictions on DUID vertical prosecution cases.

This year, the eight prosecutors assigned to the program are Deputy District Attorneys Mina Said and Alyssa Staudinger of Central Justice Center, David McMurrin and Dalia Wahab of West Justice Center, Lauren Boyd and Vincent Marinaccio of Harbor Justice Center, and Erin Henry and Stephen Ladsous of North Justice Center.

The Orange County District Attorney’s office realizes that the unique nature of driving under the influence of drug cases, which are rapidly rising in number, requires unique education, training, and handling, hence the specific, specially trained drug DUI prosecutors.  Drug DUI cases also benefit from someone specially educated in Drug DUI handling, like our Orange County DUI Attorney.

Contact our firm for a consultation regarding a drug DUI case today.