Zachary katz trial

This is a common tactic as there are many things that can go wrong legally and procedurally with blood alcohol testing. Please leave this field empty. Consent is not a requirement of purchase. Click to call. Supreme Court gave Katz a glimmer of hope, ruling in an unrelated case that blood draws require warrants.

The native of Long Island, New York, spent his free time writing a novel and working for small firms in industries unrelated to his previous career path, which had been the intersection of medicine and business.

He also sought medical help for an odd medical condition that was eventually diagnosed as a form of epilepsy. And the seizures that Katz claimed to suffer from his condition became the main argument used by the defense in a trial that lasted nearly a month and included four days of deliberation by the jury before they returned a guilty verdict. What was this medical condition? He testified that the episodes usually began with a tingling sensation in his limbs, tightness in his chest, the smell of burning rubber, and, perhaps most strangely, the sound of classical music.

Often, Katz testified, the end result would be that he blacked out. From to the year of the accident, Katz testified, the episodes occurred at least a few times a year. After one particularly extreme episode, Katz decided to seek psychological help.

He was diagnosed with extreme anxiety and began a regimen of prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. He was taking the medication the night of October 4, , before the accident. Katz claimed that on October 4, , a Friday, he drove as planned from his dorm room at Stanford to the Castro District in San Francisco to meet a friend. Katz parked his car, met the friend, and went to a bar called The Mix around 10 p. The defendant's illegal act caused bodily injury to [victim].

When he drove, the defendant's blood alcohol level was 0. The defendant's illegal act caused bodily injury to another person. All three instructions stated the People must prove the defendant engaged in an illegal act or misdemeanor before finding defendant guilty of each charged offense.

As such, each instruction further specified that the People alleged the defendant committed the following act or misdemeanor: "driving a vehicle upon a highway to the left of an intermittent barrier or a dividing section which separates two or more opposing lanes of traffic"—wrong-way driving. Defendant contends the trial court incorrectly responded to the jury's request for clarification about his unconsciousness defense because it repeated and referred the jury to the instructions already provided.

He takes issue with the court's alleged failure to clearly identify the "act" during which he was required to be conscious, an element the jury needed to assess the viability of his unconsciousness defense. According to the defendant, the only "correct" answer was "unconsciousness occurring only during the wrong way driving was a defense to that offense and therefore would be a defense to the charged offenses. Moore 44 Cal. We disagree. At the outset, defendant forfeited this claim on appeal.

The trial court's response was made after consulting with counsel, and the record does not reflect any objection, thus indicating an agreement with the proposed response. See People v. Ross Cal. Although defendant frames his claim as a challenge to the "correctness" of the trial court's response, he does not identify any actual error.

Substantively, his claim involves a modification rather than a "correction" of the trial court's response to the jurors. By failing to request any allegedly crucial clarifying language from the trial court, which it had no sua sponte duty to provide, defendant cannot raise this claim now. Lang 49 Cal. Even overlooking the defendant's failure to object or to request clarifying language, he is no more successful on the merits. People v. Hodges Cal.

Errors under section are reviewed for an abuse of that discretion. Moore, supra, 44 Cal. Here, the trial court acted well within its discretion by directing the jury to review complete and correct instructions on defendant's charged offenses and defense.

Mathson Cal. The court next advised the jury to review the instructions for defendant's three charged offenses by stating, "The act or acts required for any specific charged crime or lesser crime is set forth in the instruction for that specific crime. This too was a correct statement of the law. See, e. Nicolas 8 Cal. Wagstaffe said the amount will be determined by the probation department. Before remanding Katz into custody, Davis allowed his family to spend about 10 minutes with him, Wagstaffe said.

News Crime and Public Safety. Former Stanford grad student sentenced in fatal DUI crash Judge orders Zachary Katz to serve nearly 5 years in prison, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution.