How can a speeding ticket be worse than killing someone with your car in California

from Robert Lewis and Lauren HeplerCalMatters

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In California you can kill someone with your car and not even have a point on your license.

This is due to a criminal justice reform law passed in 2020 allowing judges to effectively strike a felony case out of existence. It protects people charged with “low-level” crimes from the stigma of having a conviction on their record, something that can limit employment and housing opportunities.

but an ongoing CalMatters investigation found that the new felony diversion program also had an unintended consequence: It allowed some people charged with vehicular manslaughter to keep the case off their driving records.

This means you can get more penalties for a speeding ticket than for running someone over.

Alison Lyman first heard about the crime from a Sacramento County prosecutor. In April, her 23-year-old son Connor Lopez was riding his motorcycle in Elk Grove when an oncoming car made a left turn and collided with him.

Lopez, a piano teacher, died on the road. The district attorney’s office charged the driver, Harjeet Kaur, with vehicular manslaughter — alleging that her failure to yield to oncoming traffic caused the fatal crash, court records show.

Then the prosecutor told Lyman to brace himself: The case could be expunged from Kaur’s file and sealed from view if Kaur asked for a diversion and a judge granted it.

“I’m 43 and I’m going to have to live the rest of my life without my son. But there’s not going to be a record of that for her?” Lyman said.

It’s part of Lyman’s larger anger and frustration with the way the system handled her son’s death. She said she spoke with police and one of the officers continued to refer to the case as “low-level.”

“She took my son’s life, but that’s how they’re looked at — down low,” Lyman said.

Diversion programs have been around for decades across the country. Essentially, they allow a judge to stay the case and order the defendant to comply with certain requirements for a certain period of time – such as going to rehab or doing community service. If the defendant successfully completes the conditions, his case is dismissed. Some diversion programs focus on certain types of defendants, such as military veterans or people with mental health issues. The prosecutor often had to agree to a diversion.

But the 2020 law allows California judges to order diversion for nearly all misdemeanors, with few, if any, requirements for defendants to meet, and over the objection of a prosecutor. Five years later, court records show that defense attorneys routinely seek diversion not only for crimes like shoplifting and drug possession, but also in cases where someone has died.

Rochelle Beardsley, Sacramento County Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney, said it’s like telling a victim’s family that their loved one’s life means nothing.

“It’s unfair to people who have already suffered a lot,” she said.

CalMatters identified about three dozen drivers who avoided a manslaughter conviction through the wrongful-divergence law.

The actual number could be much higher because such cases are often sealed and purged from searchable district court databases. CalMatters was able to identify cases in which diversion from visiting courthouses across the state. In some cases, the files were not sealed because the defendant had not yet completed the terms of the diversion program and the case was still active. In other cases, we found cases where the diversion was successfully completed but the records were still visible in the court databases.

Vehicular homicide can be charged as a misdemeanor or misdemeanor, depending on the circumstances. Prosecutors usually charge a misdemeanor if the driver was not intoxicated or driving in an extremely dangerous manner — such as speeding.

In court, prosecutors and victims’ families often make emotional pleas for justice in arguments against releasing the drivers. Sometimes the judges listen and deny a diversion. When they don’t, there is a clear practical impact: the defendant maintains a clean driving record. This is because a misdemeanor is not considered a conviction and only offenses for which a driver has been convicted are listed on a person’s DMV record.

This means that the law not only allows defendants to escape criminal sanctions. This may allow them to avoid DMV penalties as well. Manslaughter usually counts as two points on a driver’s record and can lead to higher insurance premiums, driving school and even license suspension if the driver racks up extra points for things like speeding or running a red light.

Of the three dozen drivers we identified who received a diversion, there was no indication of manslaughter on any of their driving records. (Some of the records show the driver was involved in a collision. But DMV records released by the agency do not reveal who was at fault or the severity of the crash.) Most currently have a valid license. Nearly a third of the drivers received a traffic ticket or were involved in another collision after the fatal crash, their DMV records show.

This includes a young man in Los Angeles who fell asleep at the wheel and ran over a bicyclist. He received a red-light ticket just months after a judge granted a diversion and a speeding ticket this summer, shortly after his case was dismissed. In Alameda County, a driver involved in a fatal 2022 crash that killed his passenger received a speeding ticket just two months before a judge granted a diversion. In Butte County, a driver involved in a fatal crash in 2020 received two traffic tickets last year, shortly before a judge granted him a diversion, and then immediately received a speeding ticket.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel Lowenthal helped craft the 2020 legislation. He said he was “very protective of the diversion” because he’s seen it work so well and that it might be appropriate in some vehicular manslaughter cases.

“Could the court see fit to deflect so they don’t lose their jobs and suffer the draconian collateral consequences? Potentially,” Lowenthal said.

However, he said, it would be fair for the state to ensure that the diversion still ends up on the driver’s DMV record.

Kaur, the woman charged in the death of Connor Lopez, was arraigned Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court. Since this is a felony, she did not have to appear. After the brief proceedings, her lawyer Hendrik Crowell declined to comment. At this early stage in the legal process, there is no indication that Kaur’s lawyer will even seek a diversion. Still, Alison Liman is already meeting with lawmakers and hopes to eliminate the possibility of such an outcome.

For now, she goes to the site of her son’s death every Wednesday with her mother and sister and sometimes her daughter, she said. They stand on the side of the road and hold signs with Lopez’s photo, urging drivers to be safe.

“If there were any consequences, maybe — maybe — people would think about responsibility when they get behind the wheel of a car,” Lyman said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.