Why Sutter County plans to hire a full-time prosecutor for DUIs: ‘It is a serious problem’

Drunken driving cases have jammed up the Sutter County District Attorney’s office assome statewide numbers show drunken crashes are particularly common and harmful in the rural county.

“It is a serious problem in this county,” Sutter County District Attorney Jennifer Dupré told county supervisors earlier this month.

As the Thanksgiving holiday weekend looms, the forecast is for heavy traffic, as usual — AAA predicts 10.7 million will hit the road in California this year. And the California Highway Patrol knows that means more drunk drivers, announcing Monday in a news release that starting after 6 p.m. Wednesday, it will launch its annual Thanksgiving Maximum Enforcement Period.

“Thanksgiving is a time for togetherness, and our mission is to ensure everyone reaches their destinations safely,” said CHP Commissioner Sean Duryee in the news release. “We encourage everyone to prepare their vehicles for travel, leave early to account for heavy traffic, buckle up, and never drive impaired. The well-being and safety of others starts with making good decisions behind the wheel.”

Last year, the CHP said it arrested 1,047 arrests for driving under the influence during this period.

But are alcohol-related wrecks and DUIs more of a problem in Sutter County than other parts of California?

The Sutter County District Attorney’s office was recently awarded funding for a new full-time prosecutor to focus primarily on DUI cases, a misdemeanor that has taken an outsize burden of the county’s caseload.

The California Office of Traffic Safety grant of $223,000 goes toward hiring a new prosecutor to oversee alcohol- and drug-impaired driving cases through Sept. 30, 2025. It may also go toward specialized training as well as medical expert testimony.

“There’s an extreme urgency to get the grant given the statistics for drunk driving in the county of Sutter,” Dupré said.

In Sutter County, 117 people were killed or hurt in alcohol-related crashes in 2021 — the most recent year of available Office of Traffic Safety data — seventh most among California’s 58 counties. (The number does pale compared to, say, Sacramento County’s 1,392). That includes five people killed and 112 injured from 83 separate crashes, according to provisional California Highway Patrol data collected by researchers at UC Berkeley.

“That’s just crashes,” Dupré said. “That does not include regular DUIs where there is no collision. We are being overloaded with DUI cases so hiring a specialized deputy DA to prosecute DUI cases is a necessity.”

What do the numbers show?

By the Office of Traffic Safety metric cited by local officials, drunken driving in Sutter County is among the deadliest in the state. But the frequency of crashes in Sutter County, and the proportion of its crashes tied to alcohol, often falls in line with other California counties, according to the CHP data analysis.

From 2021 through 2023, the county had 227 alcohol-involved crashes, according to the CHP data, including 83 crashes in 2021, 66 in 2022 and 78 in 2023.

Those crashes mostly took place around the populated areas of Yuba City, Live Oak and the town of Sutter, although southern parts of Highway 99 also had higher concentrations.

Those crashes resulted in 16 deaths and 308 injuries. About 30% of deaths from crashes in the county during that time were alcohol-related.

The percentage of alcohol-involved crashes, relative to total crashes, in Sutter County was higher than in Sacramento County but lower than many counties farther north, and ranked near the middle of counties statewide.

When averaged from 2013 through 2022, Sutter County ranked well outside of the top 20 counties in terms of percentage of crashes involving alcohol, according to CHP data. Plumas County had the highest average at 21.9% and San Francisco ranked lowest at 7.2%. Sutter County was closer to the bottom third with 11.9%.

Total crashes in the state decreased after 2019 and remained relatively low through 2023, although the proportion of alcohol-related crashes rose during that same time, peaking at 12.3% in 2021, according to the CHP data analysis. Sutter County saw a similar trend, with its total crashes dipping but the proportion of them due to alcohol increasing.

Complicated tests and repeat offenders

DUI cases, although typically associated with alcohol, also include when someone is suspected of driving while under the influence of other substances, including illegal drugs such as fentanyl and meth, prescription drugs such as painkillers and recreational drugs such as marijuana.

Prosecuting drugged driving cases requires testing that costs more time and money than a breathalyzer used in many alcohol cases. That process typically involves getting a blood draw, shipping the sample to a lab and waiting for results.

“Being able to get those blood tests done in a timely way so we can move forward and prosecute these cases is something that’s resource intensive,” said Jeff Greeson, Sutter County chief deputy district attorney.

Depending on the nature of the crime, more thorough investigation may run through the district attorney’s office. For example, bringing charges of second-degree murder for a fatal DUI, which requires evidence of malice, may involve searches of records for past DUIs, education the suspect received warning of drunken driving dangers and other Department of Motor Vehicle records, Greeson said.

“Quite a bit of our case load and our efforts are DUIs involving injury or death,” Greeson said. “It’s obviously a threat to our community. Driving under the influence is one of the bigger dangers out there in terms of someone dying from a criminal act.”

Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Yuba City resident Adrienne Rose Maloney, 39, with second-degree murder for allegedly driving drunk in January when she crossed into the opposite lane of traffic and crashed head-on into another car, killing 53-year-old Christine Myers.

Maloney’s blood alcohol content was about 0.15%, almost twice the legal limit, at the time of the crash, according to court documents.

She had been convicted of DUI in Yolo County in October 2023, and arrested two months later for DUI in Sutter County, where she had been released from jail in the weeks leading up to the fatal crash.

She pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in September, along with felony counts of DUI of alcohol and drugs causing injury and DUI with blood alcohol level greater than 0.08% causing death or injury, according to court documents.

She remains held without bail in the Sutter County Jail.

Policing the problem

The Sutter County Sheriff’s Office also received a grant from the Office of Traffic Safety for $97,000 for drunken driving enforcement and education, including DUI checkpoints and officer training.

Most DUI arrests in the county are made by the CHP or Yuba City police, said Undersheriff Scott Smallwood. Still, he added, the sheriff’s office had a deputy who made 100 DUI arrests last year, which he said is a high number for the department.

He agreed that Sutter County has a drunken driving problem, which he said it shares with all the other counties.

“Absolutely, just like any county does because, in my opinion, when you arrest one DUI a year that’s one too many,” he said. “Anytime anybody gets behind the wheel that’s beyond the limit they put lives in danger.”

A DUI checkpoint in Sutter County, planned for last week ahead of the upcoming holiday, was canceled due to rain and may be rescheduled sometime in December.

“The extra measures we take is trying to do some of those checkpoints before the holidays hit,” Smallwood said.