When Sheriff Mark Pazin's brother showed up to court in March to be sentenced for a drunken- driving arrest last year, a judge told him he had to pay a fine and take a class.
Richard Pazin didn't have to spend any more time in jail because he had already been locked up for 48 hours after his arrest, the judge said.

Or had he?

It turns out that despite a policy to almost always bring DUI offenders to jail -- or at least fingerprint and photograph them -- after they are arrested, Merced police decided to forego that procedure with Pazin, the Sun-Star has learned.

Instead, police reports show, an officer called the sheriff on a December night and told him to pick up his intoxicated brother who had been caught driving away from Sir James Steakhouse and Lounge in east Merced around midnight.

Court records show Richard Pazin's blood alcohol level was above 0.20 -- much higher than the 0.08 legal limit.

The 46-year-old Pazin, who is a manager at the Merced-based oil distributor Myers & Pazin Inc., did not serve a minute of his supposed 48-hour sentence, according to jail records. In fact, he was never booked.

But when Pazin was brought before Merced County Commissioner Ralph Cook, the judge assumed Pazin had done his time just like every other DUI offender. Cook said he never checked to see if there was any record of Pazin serving his 48 hours in jail, so he gave him "credit for time served" and told Pazin he was a free man.

When told earlier this week that Pazin escaped jail time, the court's presiding judge, Frank Dougherty, said he was surprised Pazin slipped through and said he will tell the sheriff's brother he still has to do time.

"We just assume law enforcement does their job, but that didn't happen in this case," he said.

Dougherty sent a letter to Richard Pazin on Monday telling him to show up to court on Friday where he'll be ordered to serve 48 hours in jail.

The letter reads in part: "In nearly 17 years as a judge here in Merced County I have not come across a DUI case where the subject was not booked into jail."

But Dougherty also included a mea culpa in his letter: "As the presiding judge, I take full responsibility for the court's failure to order the subject of this DUI complaint to serve jail time."

Richard Pazin did not return calls or e-mails this week. He issued a brief statement through his attorney that said he would comply with Dougherty's demands.

"All I can tell you is that I made an error in judgment," the statement reads. "I went before Commissioner Cook and started the penalty process of my mistake. Evidently there was an error with the court system. I will now do what is asked and put this episode behind me."

Cook and Dougherty said they will now start checking jail records before giving DUI offenders credit for time served.

"Believe me, I will look from now on," Cook said. "It's something I just assumed."

But the judges say the error is not entirely the court's fault. They said that their understanding of police policies were that all DUI offenders are brought to jail.

Sgt. Curt Gorman, who was the supervising sergeant on duty the night Richard Pazin was arrested, said he instructed officers to call Sheriff Pazin to pick up his brother instead of taking Richard Pazin downtown. He said he feared that if Pazin was jailed he would be harmed by inmates who were mad at the sheriff.

But asked why he didn't try to ensure Pazin's safety by asking the jail to put him in a private cell at either of the county's two jails, Gorman replied: "I probably could have done that, but at the time I didn't do that. That's second-guessing myself. I've gotta make decisions."

Gorman added, "It just seemed like it was the best thing to do at the time."

The sergeant said he couldn't think of any other time he has told officers to not bring DUI offenders to jail for reasons other than a medical emergency.

Most DUI offenders jailed

Sheriff Pazin said that when he was awakened in the middle of the night by a police officer asking him to pick up his brother, he didn't question why the police weren't going to have Richard Pazin booked and jailed.

He said that while it was somewhat of an "anomaly" that his brother was not jailed, it was not unheard of for police to simply cite and release DUI offenders.

In fact, Fresno police routinely let drunken drivers go after they are given a citation, Pazin said.

A Fresno sergeant said Pazin is correct. In an effort to cut down on booking fees and jail overcrowding, the city's police department did not jail the majority of DUI offenders last year.

But in Merced -- as in many other jurisdictions -- the practice is much different.

A spokesman for the Merced Police Department said the department's policy leaves open the possibility for DUI offenders to not be jailed, but few are actually let go.

"Generally speaking, in the case of DUIs, it is not our policy to just cite and release," spokesman David Carlin said. "But it has been done in the past."

But the only other instance Carlin could point to where that had occurred was a DUI offender who was arrested in October 2005 and was let go because she had crashed her car and needed to be sent to the hospital.

All this raises the question: Why was Pazin not jailed?

Sergeant regrets giving sheriff's brother a pass

Gorman says he doesn't have a good answer to that question.

He says he now wonders whether he made the right call by telling officers to not bring Pazin to jail.

Gorman said that at the time of the arrest, he believed that any special arrangements the jail would have had to make to accommodate the sheriff's brother -- such as moving around inmates who could harm Richard Pazin -- weren't worth putting Pazin in jail for "a few hours."

But Gorman said he didn't call the jail to see if a private cell was readily available. Gorman also said he didn't consider another commonly used option: ask the jail to simply book Pazin and get his fingerprints and mug shot -- but not put him in a cell.

That booking information would have been sent to the state Department of Justice, said David LaBahn, who heads the California District Attorney's Association.

In this case, Richard Pazin's arrest file will be "incomplete" and without a photo and fingerprint -- leaving open the possibility that his 2005 DUI conviction could be challenged if he was caught driving drunk again, LaBahn said.

Gorman now says he would have handled the situation differently.

"In hindsight, I could have done a couple other things," he said.

But Gorman denies giving Richard Pazin a free pass because he is the sheriff's brother.

"I wasn't doing him any favors," he said. "I don't work for the sheriff."

Sheriff Pazin said he didn't try to interfere with his brother's arrest. He also said he was not involved with his brother's court proceedings.

"I was sure I kept my distance to avoid any appearance of involvement," Pazin said. "... Everything was done by the numbers as far as I know."

Pazin dismissed as "opinion" Judge Dougherty's statement that he had never come across a DUI offender who wasn't jailed.

"I guess that's his opinion," he said. "That's a nice opinion. I wish he had shared that with me."

But Dougherty said the police were at least partly to blame for the Richard Pazin fiasco.

"We presume that law enforcement would do their job correctly," he said.




San Diego DUI Specialist Rick Mueller is the Top-Rated San Diego County Drunk Driving, DUI & DMV Defense attorney with over 22 years of experience.





San Diego DUI Specialist Rick Mueller is the Top-Rated San Diego County Drunk Driving, DUI & DMV Defense attorney with over 22 years of experience. http://www.sandiegoduihelp.com






Known as the "DMV Guru," Rick Mueller dedicates 100% of his law practice to aggressively defending those accused of driving under the influence of alcohol. He has successfully saved the driving privileges of many clients in the past year alone.
http://www.sandiegoduicom.com/




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