Astoria Rejects DUII Takeover

Daily Astorian:

Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicants cases will stay in Astoria Municipal Court.

That decision was made at Monday night's City Council meeting. Members unanimously passed a lengthy resolution indicating there had been no persuasive evidence that the cases handled in circuit court would result in a higher prosecution rate or greater justice...

District Attorney Josh Marquis was in attendance and disagreed...

"We went through the district attorney's report and there were just a number or errors," Van Dusen said afterward. "There's always a silver lining to a report like this. It forced us as a City Council and city staff to scrub municipal court and just scour it and see if there are any problems."

In all of the evidence brought forth by the report, Van Dusen added, only two cases in nine years had been mishandled. And although it may be uncomfortable to do business such as this in a public setting, that is the way the City Council handles business. Van Dusen said they will move on from here.

Councilor Blair Henningsgaard, who is an attorney, weighed in during the meeting.

"Personally, I've said many times that I don't particularly care where these cases are prosecuted. My interest is in doing what's best for the city and for the citizens," said Henningsgaard. "Mr. Marquis' report and the evidence that we have heard indicates to me that the DUIIs are being handled as well in municipal court as they are in circuit court ... It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to move them."

LaMear, who was in favor of moving the court cases before the presentation was given earlier this month,. echoed those remarks.

"What we were given was so full of holes that we couldn't gather any real information, and the statistics were not correct when you looked at the whole thing because cases that were used to put those statistics together were incorrect," she said.

Marquis admitted the report had "definitely some errors," but said no matter if his law student intern who put the report together had spent the entire summer on the report or if Marquis had put the report together himself, City Prosecutor Mary Ann Murk and Judge Kris Kaino would still have found mistakes.

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