Oregon man spends year in jail due to bad govt database

[dead0man]

link-local

Nicholas Chappelle spent nearly a year at Snake River Correctional Institution after he was arrested and convicted for driving with a suspended license.

But he never should have spent a day behind bars.

Chappelle is one of untold numbers of Oregonians stopped by police, arrested, put in jail and even wrongfully convicted based on faulty DMV information -- a breakdown in record-keeping that has existed for years but the state never fixed.

By the time a Columbia County prosecutor realized Chappelle was innocent, he had lost his job as a union ironworker and missed the birth of his son while held at the medium-security prison in eastern Oregon, far from his family in Scappoose.

Chappelle never questioned the charge, having relied on his defense lawyer, the prosecutor and state records. He even pleaded guilty to the felony.

His case highlights a major flaw in how the state Department of Transportation’s Driver & Motor Vehicle Services Division records license suspensions resulting from criminal convictions:

The DMV essentially marks suspensions as indefinite and keeps them on someone’s record forever. It has no system in place to consistently show when suspensions end.

The DMV has improperly recorded approximately 3,000 driver’s licenses in the last two decades as suspended indefinitely through either 12/31/9999 or 00/00/0000, according to data obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Well this is awful.
A modernization of this would be a worthy use of taxpayer money.

[dead0man]

Well this is awful.
A modernization of this would be a worthy use of taxpayer money.

is "give them more money" always the answer when the govt screws up?  Imagine if other entities operated that way.

The Catholic Church-sure we raped a lot of kids, give us more money and we'll fix it!
BP-sure we spilled a kajillion barrels of oil into the gulf, give us more money and we'll fix it!
The American Auto industry-sure we strangled the Golden Goose and somehow ran out of money, give us more and we'll fix it!


oh yeah, we did do the last one.  Well, we let the govt convince us it was the best thing to do and then let them do it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Well this is awful.
A modernization of this would be a worthy use of taxpayer money.

is "give them more money" always the answer when the govt screws up?  Imagine if other entities operated that way.

The Catholic Church-sure we raped a lot of kids, give us more money and we'll fix it!
BP-sure we spilled a kajillion barrels of oil into the gulf, give us more money and we'll fix it!
The American Auto industry-sure we strangled the Golden Goose and somehow ran out of money, give us more and we'll fix it!


oh yeah, we did do the last one.  Well, we let the govt convince us it was the best thing to do and then let them do it.

I was getting the impression that the existing DMV systems were kind of outdated and money would be needed to upgrade it to allow something like this to be done routinely.
That being said, I do have to personally disagree strongly with 1) this narrow of an understanding of how taxpayer money should be used, and 2) treating the government like you would any other entity. But this sort of disagreement is not what this thread is about.

[Badger]

Well this is awful.
A modernization of this would be a worthy use of taxpayer money.

is "give them more money" always the answer when the govt screws up?  Imagine if other entities operated that way.

The Catholic Church-sure we raped a lot of kids, give us more money and we'll fix it!
BP-sure we spilled a kajillion barrels of oil into the gulf, give us more money and we'll fix it!
The American Auto industry-sure we strangled the Golden Goose and somehow ran out of money, give us more and we'll fix it!


oh yeah, we did do the last one.  Well, we let the govt convince us it was the best thing to do and then let them do it.

Stop rambling. Of course the lack of proper record keeping here is due to insufficient staff in thus insufficient money. For Christ's sake trying to compare it to the Catholic sex scandal. It's cringe-worthy yellow Avatar pablum

[dead0man]

Well this is awful.
A modernization of this would be a worthy use of taxpayer money.

is "give them more money" always the answer when the govt screws up?  Imagine if other entities operated that way.

The Catholic Church-sure we raped a lot of kids, give us more money and we'll fix it!
BP-sure we spilled a kajillion barrels of oil into the gulf, give us more money and we'll fix it!
The American Auto industry-sure we strangled the Golden Goose and somehow ran out of money, give us more and we'll fix it!


oh yeah, we did do the last one.  Well, we let the govt convince us it was the best thing to do and then let them do it.

Stop rambling. Of course the lack of proper record keeping here is due to insufficient staff in thus insufficient money. For Christ's sake trying to compare it to the Catholic sex scandal. It's cringe-worthy yellow Avatar pablum

At best, it's a poor allocation of resources (another govt skill).  It's not a lack of money, Oregon has plenty of money.  It's a dumb system, set up by dumb people and implemented by people who don't care what happens to regular jerks.

The DMV has no idea how many people have been charged and prosecuted because of the erroneous records, but DMV administrator Amy Joyce acknowledges the problem has gone unaddressed for years.

It appears DMV officials learned of the lapse at some point in the past, Joyce said. But it’s not clear exactly when and it “wasn’t at a high enough level to understand the urgency” to figure out a remedy, she told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

[John Dule]

The DMV should be privatized.

[Santander]

Stop rambling. Of course the lack of proper record keeping here is due to insufficient staff in thus insufficient money. For Christ's sake trying to compare it to the Catholic sex scandal. It's cringe-worthy yellow Avatar pablum

It seems like the real problem is terribly-designed processes and management apathy rather than lack of staff. Like, it would be understandable if it was some IT issue or something, but the process was sh**t, and when they learned it was sh**t, nobody did anything about it until they got publicly humiliated.

[Santander]

The DMV should be privatized.

[Ferguson97]

The DMV should be privatized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITP93pqtdQ

I'll never get over how much I love this clip. It feels like a parody. The guy getting cheers for saying something ridiculous, Johnson getting boo'd for being reasonable, both of their deliveries, the editing. Just beautiful.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Why was his lawyer not able to fix this before he got convicted?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

The DMV should be privatized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITP93pqtdQ

I'll never get over how much I love this clip. It feels like a parody. The guy getting cheers for saying something ridiculous, Johnson getting boo'd for being reasonable, both of their deliveries, the editing. Just beautiful.

In fairness, it was Darryl Perry saying something ridiculous profoundly brilliant. I would've cheered as well.

Anyway yes, the lawyer should be disbarred.

[dead0man]

Why was his lawyer not able to fix this before he got convicted?

the guy actually believed it when they said his license was still suspended.  He was, in theory, supposed to be given paperwork when he got out of prison that he had to turn in to start the ball rolling on ending his license suspension.  Oregon prisoners have to do this because of the stupid system Oregon has set up.  He never got the paperwork or lost the paperwork, but there doesn't need to be any paperwork.

[RFK 2024]

Hot take but driving with a suspended license should not be a crime.

[muon2]

Hot take but driving with a suspended license should not be a crime.

What's the point of suspending a license then? Or what's the point of a license if you can do the licensed activity anyway? Or should driving not be licensed in the first place?

[RFK 2024]

Hot take but driving with a suspended license should not be a crime.

What's the point of suspending a license then? Or what's the point of a license if you can do the licensed activity anyway? Or should driving not be licensed in the first place?

Honestly, I'd support this.  It's so easy to get a license, and it's really more about generating a profit with the annual renewal fees than actually making sure good drivers are on the road.  The only problem with this would be that it would make it harder to keep convicted impaired drivers off the road, so it has zero chance of ever actually happening.

[muon2]

Hot take but driving with a suspended license should not be a crime.

What's the point of suspending a license then? Or what's the point of a license if you can do the licensed activity anyway? Or should driving not be licensed in the first place?

Honestly, I'd support this.  It's so easy to get a license, and it's really more about generating a profit with the annual renewal fees than actually making sure good drivers are on the road.  The only problem with this would be that it would make it harder to keep convicted impaired drivers off the road, so it has zero chance of ever actually happening.

There are two separate licenses involved here and it looks like you've equated them. One is a license for the driver that they can operate a vehicle in the state. The second is a license for a vehicle to be operated on the public ways of the state. Annual renewals are generally only for vehicles, and in many states those vehicles have to pass some sort of inspection. Drivers licenses are usually good for many years, and there are many types of activity that can cause the loss of a license, not just impairment.

As for the ease of licensing drivers, I'm all for stricter requirements to get a license. From what I've seen it's quite a bit tougher in Europe than in the US. I've been successful in getting laws on the books that punish some types of juvenile criminal activity with loss of driving privileges rather than incarceration.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Guy is deserved a massive settlement. Like 7 figures.

Also how is that a felony?

EDIT: OK article explains it, it's because he had his license suspended for assault with a car which is a category that makes driving with a suspended license a felony. However his license was suspended for five years starting in August 2016 so yeah Oregon's system is just dumb.