Comments About DUI Attorney Vincent Tucci from a

former DUI Prosecutor turned Defense Attorney who

Faced Tucci in trial

Also, I have the utmost respect for Mr. Tucci. One of the very few Not Guilty’s I suffered during my 5 years as a DA came at his hands.

It was only my second Jury Trial, a DUI at Southgate court. Though the JURY TRIAL was in 1999, I remember the details like it was yesterday.

It was a case I should have won. It was a .11/.12 breath with a competent and cooperative CHP officer and no obvious problems with the investigation (except for screwing up the PAS, which Vince got excluded in 402s). I was well prepared. I couldn't understand why this lawyer was taking the case to trial.

I learned more from this particular trial, I think, than any trial in which I was successful. Tucci was brilliant. After the verdict, I sat at counsel table stunned. I was rattled, shaken, and knocked off my pedestal.

I was dizzy, trying to figure out what had just happened. Tucci did have some good things to work with--statements to the cop that supported a rising defense, a TS for expired regs (and no bad driving), decent FSTs, a botched PAS that got excluded, an asshole cop who didn't go over that well with the jury, a sweet-seeming female client and a fairly defense-friendly Southgate jury. Tucci exploited every one of these.

Though Vince was terrific in the courtroom, I think his most effective work in that case occurred before the trial started.

He had crossed the cop at the APS. I don't think I ever actually realized what an APS was, let alone that my cop had testified at one...until Tucci busted out the transcript during cross-examination.

Although the cop didn't really deviate from his prior testimony, Tucci learned at the APS a fact that I didn't learn until this guy was on the stand--that this cop was a Jekyll & Hyde figure. In preparing him for trial, he struck me as a perfectly nice guy.

But when you get in his face, as Tucci did at the APS and at trial, the latent asshole quickly surfaces. More than anything the cop testified to at the APS, Tucci learned just how to press this guy's buttons. Tucci pressed these buttons at trial.

The cop turned the jury off.

Tucci also Wheelered me early on. Though it was denied, it rattled me, and chilled me from kicking several jurors that I should have kicked, and otherwise would have kicked.

I learned so much from that trial. Tucci is a great trial lawyer. And with the right dedication and preparation, you can beat the system--as his client did!

NAME INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK