DISMISSED
State v. J.A.G.
J.A.G. was accused of driving while intoxicated on or about July 4, 2019. The client was adamant that he was not intoxicated. The offense report written by the police officer wasn’t corroborated by the police officer’s body camera nor the officer’s testimony at the ALR hearing. At the ALR hearing, Javier Guzman asked the officer why he wrote in his report that J.A.G. had red bloodshot eyes, and he responded that he remembered them that way. When Guzman confronted the officer with the officer’s own body camera video that clearly showed J.A.G.’s eyes white in color and not red, the officer double-downed on his statements and testified that on July 4, 2019, they looked red. Additionally, the police officer’s report stated that J.A.G. had an odor of alcoholic beverage coming from his person, but in the video the officer only mentioned an odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle. The video showed that one of the passengers had marijuana residue on his jeans. Nobody else in J.A.G.’s vehicle was arrested on that day. Guzman preserved the audio of the ALR hearing and presented it to the assistant DA handling the criminal case. The ADA dismissed the case for insufficient evidence.