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For the most part, attorney Tyler Ayres practices criminal law in Draper, Utah. If you Google him, the first result reads “Utah DUI Attorney.” But recently, Ayres has grown into a de facto voice against the third-party doctrine and Utah’s drug database, a combination allowing authorities to access citizens' prescription drug histories nearly carte blanche. Ayres has represented at least a dozen people with unforeseen issues because of this arrangement. The worse abuse he’s seen involves two of his clients: Candy Holmes and Russell Smithey.
Both Holmes and Smithey have extensive criminal histories. In a recent interview, Smithey conceded that he was an intravenous drug user and has since completed a drug court program. In 2011, his partner, Holmes, was picking up her prescription at a pharmacy near their home in Vernal, Utah. Both Holmes and Smithey regularly took Oxycodone and Methadone.
Ben Murray, an officer with the Vernal City Police Department, watched this Holmes encounter with the pharmacist, according to Smithey and confirmed by deposition documents. Murray says that “she was so intoxicated that she couldn’t even get her money out.”
Smithey tells the story differently. He says Murray saw Holmes take some of the medication and get into her car to drive home. It would have taken longer than the drive home for the pills to set in, he explains. Either way, the undisputed facts are that Murray contacted dispatch and Holmes was arrested in her driveway after failing a sobriety test.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/ill-never-ask-for-another-pain-pill-again-℞-database-damage-in-utah/
[Related]: The big drug database in the sky: One firefighter’s year-long legal nightmare
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday May 14 2015, @01:53PM
1. According to both sides, Officer Murray observes Holmes acting impaired at the pharmacy.
2. Murray tells his department what he observed, presumably to watch for her if she decides to drive somewhere.
3. Holmes proceeds to drive home in her condition.
4. Another officer catches Holmes driving and gives her a sobriety test. He absolutely has probable cause to do so, because of Murray's report (as well as possibly what he observed as she was driving).
5. The sobriety test confirms that Holmes is in fact impaired. She is then arrested for driving while impaired.
Did Murray know to look in the pharmacy because of the big drug prescription database? Conceivably. But it's also quite possible he just happened to be in there at the time, and is doing his job by observing signs of potential criminal behavior. In this case, it's not even Murray versus Holmes, it's Murray and the arresting officer's evidence versus Holmes.
Ayres needs to pick a stronger test case, somebody who was not acting intoxicated or impaired in public before immediately driving home.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @02:46PM
So trusting of you. I call parallel construction on this - the police saw that she was prescribed narcotics and invent the backstory to create probable cause. How can you trust the police at all, ever, knowing that parallel construction [wikipedia.org] is not only a thing, but a thing that gets regularly used in drug cases?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Aichon on Thursday May 14 2015, @03:58PM
You should read the Ars report, since it provides additional details. Namely, after that arrest, Murray showed up at their home dozens of times over the next few months, claiming he was there as a public service to check that they had the number of pills they were supposed to have (Murray says he came over because Smithey asked him to check in; Smithey says differently). The couple would routinely come up short in their pill count, and Smithey assumed that his partner, Holmes, was still abusing, leading to all sorts of strife between the two, with divorce even being threatened.
Eventually, however, Smithey set up a camera aimed at the spot where Murray would count the pills whenever he came over, and the video revealed that Murray was actually pocketing the pills for himself. Smithey got Ayres involved, and then working with the authorities they set it up as a sting operation that eventually led to Murray's arrest. Smithey asserts that Murray was using the database to know when the prescription was getting refilled, that way he'd know when to come over for a "check in" where he could pocket more pills.
Seems like a decent test case to me, though the summary leaves out all of the interesting bits, since it only talks about the incident that started this whole ordeal, rather than talking about the ordeal itself.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday May 14 2015, @04:11PM
1. No, it is one sided. Murray and Smithey agree that Murray watched Holmes refill the prescription only. Murray and Smithey disagree on her being impaired. It is right there in the summary, you don't even have to read the article.
3. Her condition according to Murray, disputed by Smithey.
Then, if you bothered to read the article, you would know that Murray was arrested for stealing oxycodone from Holmes on a regular basis to support his own habit, and pleaded 'no contest' when charged with using the database to find out when Holmes refilled the oxycodone, and would then go to there house to 'count them to make sure she was not abusing them, for her own good' as a tactic to get his hands on them to steal some for himself.
So, it is highly likely some sort of dodgy evidence construction was going on.
Ayres may not of had the best test case, but it does not matter(in this case) now, as it has been settled out of court- taken from Ayres' hands.