Motion on DWI case cites 2 tickets
Governor’s son seeking dismissal
drunken-driving charge against William Asa Hutchinson III, the governor’s son, should be dismissed because there are two separate “charging documents” in the case, Hutchinson’s attorney wrote in a motion filed in Washington County Circuit Court.
A similar argument got Hutchinson out of a driving-while-intoxicated charge from 2016.
Hutchinson, 43, a Rogers lawyer, was arrested after an Arkansas
State Police trooper stopped him at 7:39 p.m. May 27 driving a 2017 GMC Yukon SUV south on Interstate 49 near West Fork, according to the police report.
Hutchinson pleaded guilty to the DWI charge Dec. 13 in West Fork District Court. He was sentenced to 365 days in jail, with 364 days suspended, and given credit for one day served in jail. Hutchinson also was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and $340 in court costs.
Then Hutchinson’s atThe
torney, Bill Horton, filed an appeal in Washington County Circuit Court.
Jury trials are allowed in circuit court, but not in district court.
“We didn’t want to have a trial in district court, so we pled it there,” Horton said in January.
The case is set for a jury trial May 16 in Fayetteville, but it should be dismissed before then, Horton argues in his April 12 motion.
Besides the driving-while-intoxicated count, Hutchinson was charged with speeding (88 mph in a 70 mph zone) and refusal to submit to a chemical test, but those two charges were dismissed by the district court, according to Horton.
“At the time of defendant’s arrest, the arresting officer issued and served on defendant a citation that listed all three charges against him,” Horton wrote. “The original citation, however, was not logged or filed with the district court as required by Arkansas Code Annotated 5-65-107(b), which states that ‘when a law enforcement officer issues a citation for [driving while intoxicated], the citation shall be filed with the court as soon as possible.’”
The original citation wasn’t retained by the officer nor given to the district court (with copies going to Hutchinson), as required under Arkansas Code Annotated 27-50-603(d)(3)(A), wrote Horton.
The two tickets show the three charges against Hutchinson being listed in a different sequential order. The docketed citation states that no signature is required. But the original citation requires a signature from the defendant promising to appear in court, wrote Horton.
“In response to defendant’s
discovery requests, the prosecuting attorney in this matter furnished the defendant with a separate and distinctly different citation than the original citation,” according to Horton’s motion. “The additional citation obtained through discovery has never been served on defendant but was lodged with the district court in its docketing system.”
Neither the original citation nor docketed citation is valid any longer, Horton wrote.
“The state has never proceeded upon the original citation or charging information that was served upon defendant, and the docketed citation upon which the state has proceeded against defendant was never served upon defendant,” Horton wrote.
The DWI charge should be dropped because Hutchinson never received proper notice of the charge against him, according to the motion.
“Furthermore, should this court determine that the existence of two different citations — one served and not filed, and the other filed but unserved — is merely an irregularity, the fact remains that multiple charging documents exist in the case, thus subjecting defendant to double jeopardy,” wrote Horton.
Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the Arkansas State Police, said most of the tickets issued by troopers are done so electronically through computers in the patrol cars. The system, called eCitation, began being implemented in Arkansas in 2009.
“Troopers are now able to view information about a violator, create a citation, transmit that citation to the court system, and print a copy to give to the offender, all from the patrol car,” according to the March 2013 newsletter of the Arkansas Administrative Office of the Courts. “eCitation works by allowing a trooper to see information about any violator
just by scanning their driver’s license. The trooper issues a citation, which is uploaded to the State Police server.”
Courts can then download the citation, assess fines and set the ticket up for payment, according to the article.
Sadler said the May 27 ticket given to Hutchinson was an electronic citation. Because it involves a case that is on appeal, Sadler said he couldn’t comment on why the ticket Hutchinson received was different from the one on file with the district court.
On Feb. 1, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Charles Duell refiled the two charges that had been dismissed by the district court — speeding and refusal to submit to a chemical test.
Hutchinson had another DWI charge arising from a traffic accident Jan. 24, 2016, on Interstate 49 near Fayetteville, when his 2015 Ford F150 pickup crashed into a guardrail just before 4 a.m.
A Fayetteville district judge convicted Hutchinson of driving while intoxicated, careless and prohibited driving and refusing to submit to a chemical test, but those charges were dismissed on appeal to Washington County Circuit Court because of differences in the state police citations.
The first citation marked the conditions at the time of the accident as “daylight,” despite the accident occurring at 3 a.m., and a second citation correcting the first listed the location of the incident incorrectly. The first ticket had the word “VOID” marked across it.
Chad Atwell, Hutchinson’s attorney at the time, argued that Hutchinson never received the citation actually used against him in court and that the statute of limitations on the corrected citation had passed.
Circuit Judge Mark Lindsay agreed. The case was dismissed in July 2017.