They were convicted of killing with their cars. No one told the California DMV

By Lauren Hepler and Robert Lewis CalMatters California courts have failed to summary hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the state s Department of Motor Vehicles over the past five years allowing roadway killers to improperly keep their driver s licenses a CalMatters probe has detected Marvin Salazar was convicted in May for killing his -year-old friend Joseph Ramirez who was in the visitor seat when Salazar gunned his car lost control and slammed into a tree court records show Under California law the state should have taken away Salazar s driving privileges for at least three years RELATED License to Kill How the California DMV allows dangerous drivers to stay on the road But the Los Angeles County Superior Court didn t review the conviction to the DMV Two months later the agency issued Salazar his bulk new license Since then he s gotten two speeding tickets and has been in another collision records show How can he keep driving noted Gaudy Lemus Ramirez s mother We yearned consequences for him Remove his driver s license LA court authorities belatedly disclosed the manslaughter conviction to the DMV last month after CalMatters discovered the failure and questioned about the event It was only then that the state sent Salazar a notice revoking his driving privileges records show A Scannable LivingTag QR code on Joseph Ramirez s headstone in Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters CalMatters uncovered the error and others like it by cross-checking convictions in vehicular manslaughter cases against motorists DMV records as part of an ongoing inspection Earlier this year we broadcasted that the agency routinely allows drivers with horrifying histories of dangerous driving including fatal crashes DUIs and numerous tickets to continue to operate on our roadways Related Articles Autonomous carriage company Waymo cleared to operate in San Jose DMV offices in the Bay Area extend hours for REAL ID applicants Bay Area airports remain calm as REAL ID deadline to fly arrives Homeland Measure chief says travelers with no Real ID can fly for now but with likely extra attempts How can you tell if you have a Real ID California license But this isn t just a DMV issue Reporters identified about cases from to in which the drivers convictions weren t listed on their driving records largely because the courts failed to description that information The review wasn t comprehensive records were unavailable or incomplete in a number of counties In Los Angeles about one-third of all convictions in manslaughter cases we identified were missing from drivers records In Santa Clara County it was half We revealed no missing convictions in Orange County In response to our questions county courts so far have published more than missing convictions to the DMV As a effect nearly drivers who ve killed have had their driving privileges suspended or revoked updated DMV reports for these drivers show While chosen already had a separate license suspension appear to have had a valid license before the agency took action in response to our reporting County courts law enforcement and the DMV have a long history of poor communication that dates to the days of paper records Nowadays court administrators blame the breakdowns on a mix of human error and technological bugs Chris Orrock a spokesperson for the DMV declared the agency sends out revocation and suspension notices as soon as we re notified Even without a conviction the DMV does have the discretion to strip a driver of their license for a fatal crash We announced earlier this year that the agency often doesn t use that power But in a great number of cases there is no discretion State law for example requires the agency to revoke a driver s license for at least three years after a felony vehicular manslaughter conviction As a aftermath of the delayed reporting by the courts particular drivers could end up losing their licenses for far less than three years That s because the DMV typically enforces the sanction from the date of the conviction not the date the court communicates it to the agency Salazar s current driving record shows him eligible to reapply for a license next spring three years after his conviction but just a year after records show the state took action to revoke his driving privileges His attorney declined to comment on his driving record but declared Salazar did everything the court required Gaudy Lemus mother of Joseph Ramirez visits his grave at Eternal Valley Memorial Park Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters For Lemus the months after her son died in Salazar s car were a blur The loss was haunting coming just as the teenager had decided to pursue a career building tiny homes for the homeless She started having such bad panic attacks that she moved to a new city and switched jobs unable to bear the drive to work through the intersection where the crash occurred Her -year-old daughter still refuses to drive at all Lemus explained she didn t initially want Salazar to go to prison because it was an accident Now she wonders whether that was a mistake I don t want another family to go through whatever we went through Lemus mentioned A series of errors leads to reporting failures State law has long required courts to assessment vehicle-related convictions to the DMV including for speeding DUI and vehicular manslaughter The agency then puts the violations on a motorist s driving record and if necessary suspends their license Last month CalMatters reporters sent hundreds of names and circumstance numbers to dozens of courts throughout the state and solicited why convictions from vehicular manslaughter cases didn t appear on drivers records The majority courts responded to questions speedily thanked us for telling them acknowledged the mistake and indicated that they would account the convictions to the DMV They were errors on our part I m not going to sugarcoat it explained Tara Leal the court executive officer in Kern County where we determined missing convictions In numerous counties court staff only neglected to send the information to the DMV Court clerks typically enter convictions into a occurrence management system Various courts use a system that has a tab for them to click on to transmit the information to the DMV Wagon code violations like speeding tickets and DUIs clearly need to go to the DMV court leaders noted But majority penal code violations including offenses like robbery and assault do not Vehicular manslaughter is a penal code violation Heather Pugh the Yuba County Superior Court executive officer substantiated that her court should have communicated conviction information to the DMV for eight cases CalMatters flagged To address that we will reach out to the DMV to provide training to our staff on reporting requirements she reported Additionally we have instituted manual reviews of reportable non-vehicle code convictions to ensure they have been properly stated Similarly Fresno County s director of court operations Vidal Fernandez acknowledged the element of human error in his court not reporting a half-dozen convictions in latest years After realizing the challenge he explained staff checked further back to identified an additional cases and sent those convictions to the DMV as well Other counties have their computers essentially programmed to send conviction information to the DMV when clerks update the disposition information on a scenario in theory taking human error out of the equation But in response to questions from CalMatters particular administrators discovered that the programs were missing certain codes and had failed to function as intended Ultimately it s our responsibility revealed Jake Chatters the court executive officer in Placer County where a coding issue kept the court s system from reporting two manslaughter cases In other courts convictions were apparently published but there was particular mistake in the information sent like an incorrect birth date or a missing digit in a license number and the DMV kicked the record back with an error message Administrators mentioned clerks are supposed to fix any errors and resubmit the information to the DMV but in several cases that didn t happen The aftermath of the patchwork process is that even convictions from chosen of the the majority high-profile traffic deaths in up-to-date years were missing from drivers records A deadly street race that grabbed international attention Ricardo Aguilar was racing his Dodge Challenger Hellcat in South Los Angeles one December afternoon in according to the Los Angeles Times when he struck and killed a pedestrian Arian Rahbar a -year-old USC novice and aspiring therapeutic researcher Rahbar s father Sam summarized the void left by his only child Without Arian life as we know it has ceased to exist he reported a judge The story made global headlines amid a spike in traffic deaths in Los Angeles and other California cities Aguilar was convicted of felony vehicular manslaughter in court records show But until a sparse weeks ago that was never reflected in his state driving record In the section of his DMV review where collisions and traffic violations are supposed to show up there was instead this message NONE TO REVIEW His driver s license was still listed as valid A digital copy of a California Department of Motor Vehicles driver record for Ricardo Aguilar His status is marked VALID with no violations or convictions shared Image via The California Department of Motor Vehicles It was only in May after CalMatters inquired the LA court for an explanation that authorities stated his and more than other convictions to the DMV as required Aguilar s license is now listed as revoked Aguilar s attorney did not respond to requests for comment Rahbar s friend and former high school tennis teammate Ashwin Yedavalli was saddened and frustrated all over again to learn about the court error that allowed Rahbar s killer to keep his license Yedavalli now lives in Long Beach and still stops by the crash scene when he s nearby He helped organize a tennis tournament in his friend s memory and he commented it s unfair that the legal system failed to deliver on fundamental consequences for his death It s basically been brushed off Yedavalli noted What about Arian s life and legacy A decades-long failure to communicate This is not a new trouble In the early s the California DMV was so concerned about getting timely and accurate reports from courts and law enforcement that it produced an educational video called The Traffic Citation Trail Frank Zolin the agency s director at the time sat behind a desk wearing a crisp suit and chunky glasses his silver hair swept to the side to deliver the film s key message We cannot achieve traffic safety without effective teamwork between local law enforcement the courts and DMV The film goes on to tell the fictionalized story of a reckless young driver who is able to avoid a license suspension because a ticket wasn t disclosed to the DMV In an early scene the young man rushes to the mailbox to intercept a letter from the agency before his parents can see it They described me four tickets means bye-bye license There s only three tickets here the driver says in surprise as he reads a warning letter from the state The one I got more than a month ago isn t even here It s party time tonight In a tragic real-life twist the actor who played the motorist was killed by a drunken driver more than a decade later And communication continued to be an issue Robert Bullock worked at the DMV for more than three decades In that time he revealed drivers would sometimes come in wanting to know whether they could renew their license despite a conviction We d pull up the record and it wasn t there noted Bullock who retired in He stated he would tell them The court has screwed up and you kind of got a freebie Device has of module improved from the era of grainy s videos Back then police drove boxy sedans and held walkie-talkies the size of bricks DMV clerks picked through mounds of paper forms copying information into clunky gray computers with white text on black screens In the modern day at courthouses equipped with online records and modern digital tools specific administrators mentioned they re upgrading to a new affair management system that should ensure conviction reporting is automated Others noted they re going to do more training and manual checks to make sure the information is sent to the DMV In Los Angeles one of the nation s biggest county court systems where we sent a list of convictions that appeared to be missing from driver records administrators declined an interview request Instead they emailed a message from Rob Oftring the court s chief communications and external affairs officer The Court continues to work expeditiously to identify techniques to ensure the accomplished electronic transmittal of all abstract of judgments to the DMV from its scenario management systems This includes additional manual checks to identify in advance technical issues that prevent an abstract from being sent to the DMV This also includes ensuring all criminal courthouse locations timely process their queues for transmittal and additional mandatory training for court staff A trail of disappointment For someone like Angie Brey who s had to confront a system that often treats deadly crashes as accidents rather than crimes the promises of change sound hollow She lost her partner and the father of her son Gregory Turnage on Mother s Day in That s when wealth manager Timothy Hamano drove onto a sidewalk and hit the -year-old Turnage according to records prosecutors filed in court Hamano had been drinking beer on the golf class and a bloody mary at lunch in San Francisco before the crash his wife later explained police Hamano pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run early last year He received virtually no time behind bars after getting credit for wearing an ankle monitor at home while the matter was open The conviction should have prompted the state to revoke Hamano s license but the Alameda County court didn t summary it Gregory Turnage with his son Photo courtesy of Angie Brey They essentially let him get away with murder in our minds Brey revealed The fact that they didn t even take away his license is just mind-blowing A spokesperson Paul Rosynsky declared the Alameda court reports hundreds of criminal convictions to the DMV every month but he acknowledged that staff had missed sending two for manslaughter in latest years including the Hamano scenario Hamano s license appears to have been valid as of late as May when DMV records show he got in another collision The records don t detail who was at fault or the severity The agency sent Hamano a notice on May that his driving privileges were revoked following CalMatters inquiries Hamano s attorney Colin Cooper reported his client is traumatized by what he did and will never forgive himself Hamano didn t drive while the event was open and drove afterward only because he had a valid license and insurance Cooper explained Hamano stopped driving after getting the revocation letter from the DMV he noted Brey commented holding drivers accountable for death is the least the state can do She announced she worries every day when their son has to cross a busy intersection to get to school that history will repeat itself If somebody can come up on the sidewalk and kill my partner she commented it just makes me really scared for my son Court research by Robert Lewis Lauren Hepler Anat Rubin Sergio Olmos Cayla Mihalovich Ese Olumhense Ko Bragg Andrew Donohue and Jenna Peterson