Colorado Deputy's Credibility Questioned - Again
The credibility of an Adams County deputy is being investigated for the second time in approximately one year. This according to an October, 2005 report by KCNC-TV in Denver, Colorado.
Officials from the Sheriff's Department of Adams County stated that an internal investigation of Andrew Roth would begin this month. The investigation is the result of a state hearing officer expressing concern about Roth’s credibility.
The same station aired an investigation of the deputy in 2004. In the story, it showed a tape of a DUI stop, which appeared to disprove certain elements of the written report of the stop. Mark Leone, a retired Denver Police lieutenant, saw the tape, read the report, and concluded that the report was "fiction," thus calling Roth's credibility into question. "The report is completely inconsistent with the behaviors I’ve seen on tape," said Leone, who was a certified DUI officer who had extensive experience with DUI stops and arrests. "From what I’ve seen on this tape," Leone said, "probable cause did not exist for the stop or for the arrest."
A similar instance has recently occurred. A driver named Lyndsay Butterfield was pulled over by Deputy Roth, who questioned her and performed certain field sobriety tests on her. Her breath test showed a reading of .082: legally drunk.
However, during an administrative hearing with the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles, hearing officer Greg Mahoney cast doubt on Roth's procedural skills. "I don't think [Roth] administered what's known as the nystagmus test correctly," he said. Mahoney also disagreed with Roth's administration of certain aspects of the field sobriety test, and said there was a "credibility problem" with some of Roth's comments.
Butterfield's DUI lawyer, Chris Cessna, played up the value of Mahoney's findings. "If an arrest is invalid, everything that flows from it is invalid," Cessna said.
Cessna also cited the importance of credibility. "Officers have reputations among the courts [and] among the D.A.s, and an officer that accrues too many issues of credibility is going to have a very hard time having his cases prosecuted and taken to trial."
A spokesman for Adams County Sheriff Doug Darr said that the case has spawned the internal investigation because of the premium on credibility. "The issues cause us enough concern to want to look into it," said the spokesman.
The department issued neither any results of the initial investigation into Roth last year, nor any indication that they would disclose the results of this investigation.