San Diego DUI criminal defense lawyers make 1118.1 motions in drunk driving cases where the officer did not see or prove the “driving” (a key element of DUI).
Always object to the “corpus”:
In People v Alvarez (2002) 27 Cal.4lh 1161, the California Supreme
Court held Cal. Const, art. I, § 28(d), abrogated the corpus delicti
rule, requiring proof that a crime was committed independent of the
defendant’s extrajudicial statements, only to the extent that the rule
prohibited the admission of such statements without such independent
proof. Section 28(d) did not abrogate that portion of the corpus delicti
rule requiring that defendant’s conviction be supported by proof
independent of his extrajudicial statements. The rule was that, before
any confession or admission could be admitted into evidence, the
prosecution needed to make a prima facie showing of the corpus delicti,
i.e., the elements of the crime. (See generally, CALJIC 2.72, People v.
Brucker (1983) 148 Cal.App.3d 230.) Alvarez however left open the
application of the sufficiency corpus rules to prelims.
Rayyis v. Superior Court (2005) 133 Cal. App. 4m 138, was the first
post-Alvarez case to address the corpus rule at prelims. In Rayyis, the
court found that there was nothing left of the admissibility portion of
the corpus rule: i.e. the DA can present your client’s confession
without ever presenting any evidence of the corpus of an offense, but
ruled that a confession alone was not sufficient to hold a def. to
answer. Thus the sufficiency aspect of the corpus rule does apply at
prelims.