Ken Stover, Nevada DUI Attorney (Interview Transcript):

 

Rich Jacobs of myDUIAttorney.org sits down with Ken Stover, a former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney out of Reno, Nevada. A must read for anyone facing a DUI charge in Nevada.

 

RJ: What made you choose to focus on DUI cases and why do you practice this area of law?

KS: As a prosecutor, it’s the number one committed offence in the United States so quite clearly I had a lot of DUI prosecution experience. What I learned in that is that the law enforcement officers don’t always understand how to get it done, so on the defense side of things it seemed an opportunity for me to go in and challenge how they were doing what they were doing, and it’s been very successful.

 

J: How many cases have you handled and in how many years?

 

KS: I left prosecution in 2000 and have 15 year’s experience on both sides of the aisle, it’s been ten year’s in defense. You asked me this before so I took a look at it, and the conservative estimate is over 2000.

 

RJ: Do you have any typical DUI circumstance? Do you have more first time offenders, more men than women, more older people or younger people?

 

KS: Demographically, because we’re Reno, Nevada we get a lot of visitors to our area. I would say a few more men than women although I would say that the women are a little bit more discriminated against because of the manner and method in which the breath machines work. 60% of them are first-timers where the typical situation is that they had an extra glass of wine for dinner and they just don’t realize how close that .08 limit can be.

 

RJ: So what percentage of clients have high BACs versus being close to at that limit?

 

KS: I would probably surprise you to tell you that I prosecuted a .54. To give you an idea, a .30 is toxicologically comatose, although people can get above a .30 if they have a lot of practice. .40 is toxicologically dead, so I prosecuted someone who was at a .54, and I defended a young lady who was at a .62, and you wouldn’t be surprised to know that she was in a coma for three weeks before she could even be released from the hospital after that event. But those are very rare. You see things that are triple the legal limit, that happens, and I would say 20% of my cases are above the .18 level.

 

RJ: What percentage of cases have gone to trial versus been able to be settled out of court beforehand?

 

KS: You always want to try your case first in front of the prosecutor. If you’re in front of the judge, the prosecutor didn’t agree with you. It’s always better to get the prosecutor to agree with you. In Nevada, the law says if the prosecutor believes that they can prove the case, they have to go forward with trial. So if you get the prosecutor to believe that they can’t prove the case, and you get a negotiation to what we typically call a “wet careless” or a “wet reckless”. At times, we can sometimes even get a dismissal but a careless or a reckless is certainly something we’d consider a success when you are being charged with a DUI and the implications of being convicted of that.

 

RJ: What would you say is unique about DUI laws in your particular county?

 

KS: Actually I would say in our particular state. Comparatively, I understand that other states have the right to a jury trial for a misdemeanor DUI. Here in Nevada, that wouldn’t be true. They afford you a jury trial only when you are faced with a felony. Misdemeanor DUIs are first and second offence DUIs. We also have drug driving laws that are different to other states, for example, we have zero tolerance when it comes to marijuana and driving, and so those are very challenging cases at times because people who were not at all impaired, but sometimes have higher than the per se limits, about two nanograms in your blood for THC, 5 nanograms for the metabolide. Now 5 nanograms is such a low amount that somebody may have smoked a weekend before and still may have that limit in their system, those can be challenging cases because the officer probably didn’t develop any probable cause to believe that the person was impaired, yet somehow got to the blood, so there’s going to be a lot of serious questions there. And the irony of that is that we also have heroin limits, LSD limits and PCP limits that are so abysmally high that they would actually kill a human being if you took those levels. So the irony I think is in our state, where we allow gambling and prostitution and drinking 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we don’t allow anyone to consume marijuana and drive on our highways, but yet we’re willing to say that you can drive heroin, and LSD and PCP and drive on our highways all you want. The law is as Shakespeare once said, “the law’s an ass”.

 

RJ: Very interesting, that’s certainly something unique to your area. What tips do you have for someone who has been drinking and has just been pulled over?

 

KS: I would think that the best thing that people can do is easy. Leave your keys at home.

 

RJ: Would a judge treat someone differently based on how far above the limit they were, e.g a .09 versus a .15, or .20?

 

KS: In our state, we have a .18 level, where the legislature said if you’re above a .18, then you have to be evaluated to determine what kind of alcohol problem you have and then the judge will take specific measures to have you address it, so if you’re a .17, they’re going to treat you differently to if you’re a .19, but if you’re a .05 versus .09, no, probably not too differently.

 

RJ: What percentage of success have you had in getting charges reduced and minimizing damages? How often can you do at least something?

 

KS: I’m able to reduce the charges from DUI to careless or reckless about 50% of the time. You have a 50-50 shot if you call me.

 

RJ: Is it better to take a case to trial, or settle out of court?

 

KS: Well what I tell my clients is, if you get offered something better than what you could get at trial, you need to consider the offer. And if you’re offered something much better than what you could get at trial, then you need to be real cognizant of that offer. You want to avoid trial if the damages could be great.

 

RJ: So what have you learned about people’s behavior and their reaction through being prosecuted through these thousands of cases?

 

KS: Fear. Most of them have never been arrested. They get the blues and the reds over a traffic ticket, and that’s already an adrenaline laden experience, now you are being asked to step out of the car, you already know there’s going to be those issues, because you know you’ve consumed alcohol and so the fear just sets in, the handcuffs, the worry, the loss of freedom, the clink of the jail door, those people don’t go through that. They need to understand clearly that almost in every instance that they’re not going to go back to that. In felony situations that may not always be true, but in misdemeanor situations, more often than not it is. You’re not going to go back to jail. And they really have an awful time with that.

 

RJ: Do you feel that the current DUI punishments are too harsh, are they too lax, and why?

 

KS: I think you would have to ask me which law. I think it’s too lax when you’re allowing anyone to consume heroin and drive on our roads, if you’re going to have a zero tolerance policy, please have it for heroin, LSD and PCP, I don’t want those people driving on our highways, they shouldn’t even be out of their house, they shouldn’t be using these drugs. But that’s a different matter altogether. We have a law here that says if you get a third time DUI, anytime in your life, not just in a seven year period that most people are aware of, anytime you get a third one, you go to prison for 15 years. I think that’s incredibly harsh. If it’s been 20 years since you’ve had a third-time DUI and you get pulled over for a .08 and they’re telling you you’re facing 15 years, there’s something unreasonable about that given comparative sentences given to people that commit crimes that violate people. Now, I know they say that DUI as a whole, harms 16, 17,000 people every year, to the point that they’re dead, I understand that, but comparatively speaking when we’re talking about the number of murders and the number of rapes, or even the number of people that die negligently in our hospitals every year – that number by the way happens to be 90,000 – we don’t impose any punishment on those doctors criminally, we impose 10-12 years on average on murderers who haven’t committed murder in the first degree, and rapists get out in 12 years as well. But if you ever drive drunk again, 15 years. It just doesn’t make sense. And that’s harsh, unrealistic and it’s also very expensive.

 

RJ: What do you see as the future of DUI law in terms of punishments?

 

KS: More harsh punishments. The lobbyists are getting their way because they think being tough on crime is a necessary way for an assembly person or a senator to get elected. And they didn’t consider at all in 1997 the numbers I’m talking about in terms of heroin and PCP, they didn’t even consider the marijuana really, they just accepted the numbers that the prosecutors gave them, and it’s been that way for 13 years. So, the punishments have gone up but the reasonableness has never been there, it’s sad. You can try to tell an assembly person what the problem is but unless you’re a lobbyist like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers they’re not going to listen, and Mothers Against Drunk Drivers isn’t going to tell you these things. And I’ve told MADD exactly what I feel about heroin and LSD and PCP and they haven’t taken those concerns to the legislature so there’s a bit of hypocrisy there, they’ve got mud on their face.

 

RJ: What’s the ballpark cost to someone for their DUI defence from start to finish?

 

KS: Misdemeanor DUIs locally will be $1500 and that includes the DMV hearing that’d I’d necessarily use to ask those questions that I want the answers to. I don’t get all my answers from the police reports, I need to understand what this police officer did and how he did it, clearly by how he was trained to do it. And if he wasn’t trained properly, then he probably didn’t do it properly, and there may be a lot of defensible issues in the DUI itself.

 

If it’s a felony, it runs $3500 to start the case, if we went to jury trial, it would be much more than that. And if we’re dealing with felony death cases, it would be much higher than that. That would depend on the individual circumstances.

 

RJ: What makes your firm and you unique in providing DUI defense compared to others?

 

KS: My experience, my intellect. I’m on the state bar faculty. I teach DUI to prosecutors, to police officers to defense attorneys. We’ve been invited to teach judges. There are 6 of us, and I’m unique in the fact that I’ve had more DUI marijuana death cases than any other attorney in the state of Nevada. I had an unfortunate situation in 2003, and people became very aware of my abilities and were referred to me, and those are very difficult situations because you’re dealing with someone who’s not impaired, but they are being charged with causing the death of another person. I’ve handled all too many of those, and I will continue to do so.

 

RJ: Is there a personal statement you’d like to make to anyone reading this interview that’s considering hiring you?

 

KS: If you’re looking for an attorney for DUI. Make multiple calls, talk to multiple people, and get multiple opinions. Five attorneys should give you five opinions. Choose that person you feel is most qualified to represent your interests and that you can communicate with. Because communication is one of the biggest tools to being an effective lawyer, I wouldn’t just say “pick me” unless you can compare me to others.

 

Watch Ken Stover's Interview HERE >>