Disputing a Drug Accusation in DUI Treatment Court

Attorney Answer

Being held back from graduation is not the same as being violated, and that distinction decides what protections you have — the treatment court statute gives you no hearing right for a program sanction, but if the court moves to revoke you, formal rules do apply.

42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 916, titled "Treatment courts," authorizes courts of common pleas and the Philadelphia Municipal Court to establish problem-solving courts — expressly including veterans courts, drug courts, mental health courts and driving under the influence courts — in which defendants are admitted to a court-supervised individualized treatment program. What the section does not do is spell out due process procedures for sanctioning a participant. That is the honest reason an accusation from a probation officer can extend your time in the program without anything resembling a trial.

Where formal protections do attach is revocation. Pa. R. Crim. P. 708, "Violation of Probation, Intermediate Punishment, or Parole: Hearing and Disposition," requires that a written request for revocation be filed with the clerk of courts, and that before revocation there be a hearing held as speedily as possible at which you are present and represented by counsel, and a finding of record that you violated a condition.

I want to be precise, because this is where people get misled. Rule 708 governs revocation proceedings. Whether comparable protections should extend to a treatment court sanction short of revocation is an argument your lawyer can make; it is not established law, and you should not plan around it as though it were.

What that leaves you is this: the lab result is your best asset, and the place to use it is on the record in front of the judge, not in an argument with a probation officer.

What you can do

1. Get the lab report in writing — a certified copy directly from the laboratory, not a verbal summary from anyone. 2. Find out whether the accusation rests on a presumptive screening test or a confirmed laboratory test, and get the paperwork for both. They are not the same thing and screens produce false positives. 3. Ask for the chain-of-custody documentation and the cutoff levels used. 4. Ask, in writing, for the specific basis of the accusation: the date of the sample, who collected it, and what it showed. 5. Ask to have the dispute placed on the record at your next status hearing, through counsel. If you do not have a lawyer, ask the court for one. 6. If a written request for revocation is ever filed, insist on what Pa. R. Crim. P. 708 requires — a prompt hearing, your presence, counsel, and a finding of record. 7. Keep complying with every condition in the meantime, and keep a dated file of every test, call, appointment and missed connection, including the call you made from a different number and the phone records that prove it. 8. Do not sign anything acknowledging use that you did not commit, no matter who asks or how the request is framed.