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Scott Patrick Semrau's Legal Cases (3)

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Criminal defense

State of Georgia vs. J.H.

N/A

OUTCOME: Not guilty

The police officer originally only pulled our client over for failing to maintain his lane. The officer completed this stop with a written warning; however, he then asked our client for permission to s ... earch his car. After our client refused, the officer informed him that he had a K-9 that could detect narcotics who was going to do a quick exterior sniff. The K-9 gave positive alerts, so the officer informed our client he was going to perform a search of the vehicle. During the search, the police officer located a backpack in the trunk containing three vacuum sealed bags comprising of 2.6 pounds of marijuana. While the Defendant’s vehicle was properly stopped, the continued detention and search of his car were unlawful. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. An officer is legally allowed to ask questions that are related or unrelated to a traffic stop and request consent to conduct a search; however, once the purpose of a traffic stop has been completed, any continued detention amounts to a second detention. For this second detention to be legal, the officer must have a reasonable articulable suspicion of other illegal activity besides the traffic violation. Articulable suspicion requires a particularized basis for suspecting that the citizen is involved in criminal activity. This suspicion must be more than a mere hunch. In this case, if the Defendant had been super nervous or if his statements didn’t make sense, or maybe if there were some drug related objects in the car—like rolling papers or a maybe even a “legalize it!” bumper sticker. Those would be legitimate reasons to suspect drug activity. The State prosecutor tried to claim that the officer had reasonable articulable suspicion due to the Defendant’s “extreme nervousness” and “vague responses” to questions about his destination. The State claimed that the Defendant’s nervousness never decreased, but rather increased after being questioned about the presence of illegal contraband in his vehicle. While nervousness alone does not give reasonable suspicion, a reasonable suspicion may arise where nervousness is accompanied by additional indicators. The State claimed that the nervousness was accompanied by vague responses to questions posed by law enforcement. If this were true, the continued detention might have been justified; however, after watching the video of the Defendant’s stop, the Judge found that the Defendant did not appear to be overly nervous, or give any vague responses. Therefore, the police officer had no reasonable suspicion of criminal activity that justified the detaining the defendant after the completion of the traffic stop, and the Motion to Suppress was granted! Police report is located on our website: http://semraulawfirm.com/blog

Criminal defense

The State of Georgia v. A.R.F.

N/A

OUTCOME: Not guilty

The responding officer did not turn the case over to an Investigator, but instead took the arrest warrant himself. He did not seek or obtain a statement from my client. Nor did he take photographs or ... recorded statements. Looking from the police officer’s perspective, this case does appear to be a routine, if not also a very serious, domestic violence case. After listening to the female complainant’s (I’ll call her Ms. A-) quick identification of my client, her very compelling story and her broken nose and 20+ stitches, I suspect the Officer thought there wasn’t much to investigate. But there are two sides to every story and considering the severity of the charges, the Officer should have sought a statement from our client. The defendant’s cell phone records from that evening perfectly corroborated our client’s version of the facts. Unfortunately, our defense did not cast our client in a favorable light, but we still told his story which was really pretty simple: It was New Year’s Eve, his wife was out of town and he went to a party and then went to Fulton Industrial Blvd. to hire a prostitute. He picked up the woman, and she directed him to a hotel room near Six-Flags. After being in the room for a few moments, they got into a disagreement over money. She left and that was the last time he saw her. We did not deny that she was injured, but our theory was that she must have been injured after she left our client. We speculated that her “pimp” beat her up after she returned without drugs or money. Thus, we presented the case to the jury as though there were two competing and very different stories of what happened that night—a classic “he said, she said.” We asked the jury to pick the story that made sense and was best corroborated by the evidence. Our defense consisted mostly of impeaching Ms. A-‘s testimony and corroborating our client’s story. To do that, we had to present evidence that Ms. A- was a lying prostitute with a motivation to lie. Step one, we collected her criminal history and learned that she was in fact on probation for drug offenses at the time of this incident. Additionally, we learned that a special condition of her probation banned her from the entire area around Fulton Industrial Boulevard. So we knew she had a motive to lie about being on Fulton Industrial because telling the truth meant she was violating her probation. She couldn’t admit to engaging in prostitution and she couldn’t admit that she was on Fulton Industrial Boulevard. Also, she needed an explanation for needing medical attention. We also pulled all police records relating to her name and address for the last 10 years. We found lots of people that she had treated poorly and a little investigation work revealed that she had recently gotten into an argument with her sister and had taken a tire-iron to her sister’s car (who also just happened to be a police officer). Georgia Law allows character witnesses so we subpoenaed the sister to trial and asked her under oath whether her sister was trustworthy. Her answer: “no I wouldn’t believe her under oath.” Now we had a viable defense: Drug dealing prostitute lies to protect herself—not even her own sister would trust her. Our client testified that he met the woman and then called her later in the night to arrange a meeting. The phone records completely corroborated his testimony. Probably the best evidence for the defense was the complete absence of any testimony from the hotel staff that there was blood in the room or even in the hallway. Nurse Practitioner testified that head wounds produce a tremendous amount of blood, but there was no evidence of any blood other than at the front desk. By the woman’s testimony, there should have been lots of blood in the room and in the hallway leading to the front desk. The jury deliberated for five hours before acquitting our client of all charges.

DUI and DWI

DUI 3 Not Guilty Verdicts

N/A

OUTCOME: Not guilty

Our client failed the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmous Test (HGN), the Walk and Turn Test and the One Leg Stand Test. These three tests are the “holy trinity” of standardized DUI field sobriety tests. Off ... icers are taught to do these tests in every case. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Counsel, a person who fails all three tests can be accurately classified as a drunk driver over 90% of the time. Unfortunately, the police cruiser video proved that the officer accurately recorded his observations in the police report. Added to our burden was a prior DUI conviction that the client had just five years previously. A bad police report is not the end of the case because we never accept a police report as “the truth.” Even if the police report contains accurate facts, the officer may have left out many important facts that suggest innocence, and the Officer’s conclusions may not be the only rational conclusion. In this case, as it turned out, the truth was actually in the police report. Our client had told us that he smoked pot and consumed alcohol, but he smoked a very small amount several hours before driving and the beer he was drinking was a very low alcohol “light” beer. He sincerely believed that he was a safe driver. He also told us that he was so nervous, that he was unable to complete the tests properly. With that in mind, look at the Officer’s written narrative, and you will see that the Officer specifically noted that our client’s “hands and legs appeared to be shaking.” He attributed this to marijuana or drug use. However, look on the Driver Impairment Form and you will also see that the client also performed the Romberg Test. My opinion of the Romberg Test is that it is complete BS, but according to the police, a person under the influence of marijuana should not be able to pass this test—but according to this police report, our client had a perfect score on the Romberg Test! So now you’re probably getting the idea– our defense was that the police officer only saw what he was expecting to see, and that DUI arrests had become so routine for him, that he failed to see the obvious: that our client was a perfectly sober, and also a very nervous driver. The complete inconsistency between the Romberg test and the conclusion of marijuana intoxication was our opening. From that opening we were able to demonstrate consistencies between our theory of nervousness and all the circumstantial evidence of intoxication. For example, the client did not have slurred speech but he did stutter and his knees were so wobbly that he couldn’t stand on one leg. Thus, the facts initially pointing to intoxication were in fact proof of nervousness, not drunkenness. One big problem for us was that the client’s failure on the HGN test was inconsistent with our Defense because the HGN test should not be affected by nervousness. However, we filed a pre-trial motion to exclude the HGN test based on the Officer’s improper administration of the test and the Judge granted the motion and excluded the HGN test from trial (very cool judge!). The client testified at trial that he believed he was sober and his poor field sobriety performance was a result of a life-long case of shaky knees caused by nervousness (imagine your 8th grade class presentations). The Jury deliberated for about four hours. Apparently they were not deadlocked on the DUI, but rather on whether to convict for Failure to Maintain Lane! We very much enjoyed hearing all three “not guilty” verdicts!