Legal Question in DUI Law in California
My Son was arrested for a DUI in July. The Cop in Charge would not allow him to speak. She grabbed him threw him up against that car a spouted off "I'm tired of Fucking with you" and twisted his arm and put him on the Bus. There was no tape running to witness what she did. The other Cops involved went through his car and found a Dent Puller tool and they asked what it was for. They never read him his Miranda Rights. When they put my Son in the Jail and booked him put him with the other Prisoners. At 3AM they came down and found my Son and told him he was also being booked for a Felony on top of the DUI. When the final report was completed by this Female Cop she wrote down that my Son "hates the Cops"! She never met my Son until that night and now she makes a blanket statement that he "hates the Cops"! If he ever get's in trouble with the Law again and they read that statement they could hold that against him. The atmosphere here in Sacramento with the Sac Police is about to explode. They use Racial Profiling in almost all cases and never put a Minority Cop on the South Sacramento Beat, they are almost alway White and in this DUI checkpoint that night the Police were all White.
In view of what the Cop wrote on her report; can this be a case of Defamation of Character? This is also a reflection on me as his Father because of the way I raised him. For almost 10 years we both Bowled in the Sac Sheriff Annual Bowling Tournament and as members of SAC PD with two local Sacramento Policemen!
1 Answer from Attorneys
I am sorry to hear about this unfortunate experience your son had to endure. I will take a moment to address the Miranda rights issue because it is an area of the law that is the source of a lot of confusion.
Police are not required to read anyone their Miranda rights. There is no law or court ruling that says that an officer has to read a person Miranda rights. There is a United States Supreme Court ruling that says if an officer has someone in custody and they interrogate them, the statements of the defendant are not admissible in court unless the defendant has waived certain rights. (Those rights are the rights we common refer to as Miranda rights.)
Since the prosecutor is going to rely on blood alcohol test results and the report of the police officer, the statements of your son will not be necessary for a conviction.
As to defamation issue here again is a frustrating portion of the law. Defamation is defined under the law as a statement that is spoken or written (if it is written it is called libel, if it is spoken it is called slander). The statement must ordinarily cause people to think less of you, and it must be published or shared with others that are not privileged to hear it.
Statements in a police report by a police officer would not be defamation because they are made to people who are privileged to hear them. The classic example of this in another situation would be a day care center. If you were in front of your child's day care center and another parent approached you and said 'I heard that the lady that runs this day care center is a bad alcoholic.' That statement would be an exception under the common purpose exception to defamation.
I wish I had better news for and I hope everything works out.
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