Legal News

LB Obit: DUI Lawyer Richard Essen, the ?King of the Pretrial Motion?

By Ashby Jones

A “Remembrances” column appearing in the WSJ on Tuesday proves that you don’t have to be Marty Lipton, Bill Lerach or some other high-flier to be considered a legal pioneer.

The piece, a fascinating little read, focuses on Richard Essen, who died late last month at the age of 70. According to the piece, he helped develop the legal specialty of providing accused drunk drivers with vigorous and complex defenses.

“He was one of the first attorneys to recognize the need for aggressive defense for people charged with drunk driving,” says Patrick Barone, a Michigan lawyer and editor of the legal publication DWI Journal.

According to the WSJ piece, thanks in part to a federal initiative in 1983 that encouraged states to adopt a more stringent approach to drunk driving, laws were tightened, mandating jail time and license suspensions for first offenses.

Essen, a Miami-based defense attorney, developed strategies for defending against the new laws by filing reams of pretrial motions challenging police conduct and the accuracy of breathalyzers.

“He was the king of the pretrial motions,” says William Head, an Atlanta, attorney who specializes in DUI law.

The tales from the story paint a portrait of an aggressive and unapologetic advocate. In one 1983 case, Essen defended a driver who flipped his car after a night of beer-drinking, killing a passenger. The driver’s blood alcohol level was 0.13%. But Essen succeeded in having the charges thrown out when he showed that the nurse who had drawn the driver’s blood had an expired nurse’s license.

In another case, reports the WSJ, he raised doubts that a police officer could distinguish the smell of alcohol from that of a client’s medication. In yet another, he successfully argued that a client was coerced because police wouldn’t let him go to the bathroom until he submitted to a test of coordination.

As a result, perhaps not surprisingly, Essen got blistered by drunk-driving awareness groups. Candy Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving once accused Essen of “trying to undo everything we’re working for.”

Stephen Talpins, a former chief prosecutor in the Dade County DUI division, says that in response to such challenges, Dade County changed its procedures for handling DUI cases, including beefing up training and bringing in updated breathalyzers. “Guys like him forced us to elevate what we were doing to a much higher level,” says Talpins.

Photo: Miami Herald Media Company

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 08, 2009 (boomark / email).