Friday, October 11, 2013

Bronx man’s DWI charges reinstated

MIAMI - DECEMBER 15: A driver follows a red light with his eyes as police officers conduct a field sobriety test on him at a DUI traffic checkpoint December 15, 2006 in Miami, Florida. The city of Miami, with the help of other police departments, will be conducting saturation patrols and setting up checkpoints during the holiday period looking to apprehend drivers for impaired driving and other traffic violations. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)


Joe Raedle/Getty Images


MIAMI – DECEMBER 15: A driver follows a red light with his eyes as police officers conduct a field sobriety test on him at a DUI traffic checkpoint December 15, 2006 in Miami, Florida. The city of Miami, with the help of other police departments, will be conducting saturation patrols and setting up checkpoints during the holiday period looking to apprehend drivers for impaired driving and other traffic violations. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)



A man convicted — and then cleared — of drunken driving in the Bronx is facing up to a year in jail after an appeals court reinstated his conviction Thursday.


The Manhattan Appellate Division ruled that police did not deprive Raul Salazar, 61, of his constitutional rights in 2007 when they decided not to give him a field coordination test because he did not speak English.


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A Breathalyzer was administered on the scene after Officer John King played a tape in Spanish to give Salazar instructions on how to use the device. It showed that he was almost three times the legal limit, according to the decision by a panel of judges.


The NYPD has tapes in 10 languages, including Mandarin, Creole and Russian, to guide non-English speakers through Breathalyzer tests, said spokesman Brendan Ryan.


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A Bronx jury convicted Salazar, but Bronx Supreme Court Justice Caesar Cirigliano tossed the verdict, agreeing with the defense lawyer that the NYPD’s policy of giving the coordination test only to English speaking drivers discriminates against Hispanics who speak only Spanish.


But the appellate judges dismissed Salazar’s argument that failing to give him the coordination test deprived him of potentially favorable evidence and violated his due process rights.


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“It is the settled law of this state ‘that the police have no affirmative duty to gather or help gather evidence for an accused,’” the judges wrote.


They also said Salazar failed to cite any cases or laws that say he has a right to a pre-arrest translator.


The judges noted that Salazar was so bombed the night he was arrested, with his car half parked on a sidewalk, that he had to be helped out of the vehicle by Officer Miguel Iglesias.


At the trial, police said the NYPD gives the coordination test only to English-speaking drivers because the instructions are very complicated. The judges ruled that policy is not discriminatory because it is not ethnically based. It applies to everyone who doesn’t speak English.


“While the failure to provide interpreters in judicial or administrative proceedings may give rise to equal protection and due process claims, we note that sobriety coordination tests are merely investigative techniques,” the panel said, adding: “To require the police department to have qualified interpreters on call on a 24/7 basis would impose unrealistic and substantial financial and administrative burdens.”





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http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=15475

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