Going home after an arrest in Stateline or anywhere else in Douglas County does not take the case with you. It stays in the Nevada court where it was filed, under Nevada law, and the date on your citation or release paper is a court order. If the arrest was for DUI, a second case has already started at the Nevada DMV, and whatever happens in either one gets reported to the state that issued your license.
None of that means you have to move to Tahoe until it is over. It means the first few decisions, made from wherever you live, carry more weight than they appear to: who appears on the first court date, whether the DMV hearing is requested, what you signed on the way out of the jail, and what a plea would mean at home.
I’m Theodore FitzGerald, a criminal defense lawyer in Stateline. I work from one rule: the government has to follow the law at every step, including the steps it takes against someone who lives somewhere else.
A Tahoe DUI arrest starts two cases
The criminal case is the prosecution in court: the Tahoe Justice Court for an arrest at the lake, or the East Fork Justice Court for one in the Carson Valley. A felony starts in one of those courts and moves to the Ninth Judicial District Court in Minden. The question there is whether the State can prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
The DMV case is administrative. A test result of 0.08 or more brings a 185-day revocation of your “license, permit or privilege to drive.” A refusal brings one year, or three years if your privilege was revoked for a refusal in the preceding seven years. A conviction later brings its own, separate revocation: 185 days for a first DUI within seven years, one year for a second, three years for a third. The temporary license, the hearing, and when to ask for it are on Nevada DMV License Revocation After a DUI Arrest.
What Nevada can do to an out-of-state license
Nevada controls only your privilege to drive on Nevada roads, and that privilege can be suspended or revoked “in like manner and for like cause as a driver’s license.” While it is revoked, a valid California license does not let you drive here. Driving in Nevada during a DUI-related revocation is its own crime, with 30 days to six months in jail (or 60 days to six months of residential confinement), a $500 to $1,000 fine, no probation, and another year added to the revocation.
Nevada also tells your home state. When it revokes a nonresident’s privilege, the DMV “shall forward a copy of the record” to the licensing agency where you live, and it is authorized to forward a conviction. What California does next is on How a Nevada DUI Follows You Home to California.
If you were booked into the Douglas County jail
A court has to hold a pretrial release hearing “within 48 hours after a person has been taken into custody,” in open court or by telephone or video, unless the hearing is continued for good cause or by agreement. The court may impose bail or conditions “only as it deems to be the least restrictive means necessary” to protect the community or to make sure you come back, and anything beyond a plain release on your own recognizance requires findings on the record.
Where you live matters at that hearing, and so do the facts that answer it. The court must consider “the length of residence in the community,” your employment, your family, and “any other factors concerning the person’s ties to the community or bearing on the risk that the person may willfully fail to appear.” A home, a job, a family, a record of showing up, and a lawyer already on the case are what answer a claim that someone from out of state is a flight risk. A condition that you stay in Nevada is seldom the least restrictive way to secure the appearance of someone with those ties, and it can be challenged when it is imposed.
Read the release paper before you sign it. Nevada requires every released person to sign a document stating that if you fail to appear “and [are] taken into custody outside of this State,” you waive “all rights relating to extradition proceedings.” Bail amounts, holds, and getting someone out are on Bail, Custody, and Getting Out of the Douglas County Jail; what to do in the first days is on The First 72 Hours After a Nevada Arrest.
What if I was arrested at a Stateline casino or hotel?
The state line runs along the edge of the casino corridor. An arrest on the Nevada side is prosecuted in a Douglas County court under Nevada law. The same night a few hundred feet west would be an El Dorado County case under California law. Your citation or booking paperwork names the arresting agency and the court.
Casino security is not the police. Nevada lets a gaming licensee and its employees detain a person in two situations: probable cause to believe the person violated Nevada’s gaming-crimes chapter in the establishment, or reasonable cause to believe the person committed a felony, in which case the detention is “solely for the purpose of notifying a peace officer.” Either way the detention must be reasonable in manner and length. Neither statute is a general license to hold a guest, and how you were held, by whom, and on what basis can matter to the case.
Being told to leave matters. It is a misdemeanor to remain in a building after the owner or occupant has warned you not to trespass within the previous 36 months, and an oral or written demand that a guest leave counts as that warning. A trespass warning from a casino follows you on later visits.
Your hotel room is protected. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that “a guest in a hotel room is entitled to constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures,” no less than a tenant of a house. How police entered or searched a room gets examined in every case that involves one.
Video does not last. Casino floors, garages, and entrances are generally under camera surveillance, and the footage can confirm or contradict the police report. It is also recorded over on the property’s schedule, not the court’s.
The charges that most often come out of a night in Stateline have their own pages: battery and assault, domestic battery, resisting or obstructing, theft, drug charges, and DUI.
Do I have to come back to Nevada for court?
Not for every date, and how often depends on the charge and the court. Nevada requires a defendant at arraignment, trial, and sentencing, but on an offense punishable by a year or less the court may, with your written consent, proceed in your absence, and the Douglas County courts take written requests to appear by Zoom. Both are the court’s decision, made case by case. A felony requires you in person at the main district-court stages. The details, including what happens if you miss a date and how much of a sentence can be completed at home, are on Handling a Nevada Criminal Case Without Living in Nevada.
Your job, your professional license, your immigration status
For many people who live elsewhere, the Nevada sentence is not the largest consequence. The larger one is what a conviction means at home, to an employer, a state licensing board, a security clearance, a commercial driver’s license, or an immigration status.
The Nevada Supreme Court has held that losing a professional license or a job “is not a direct consequence of a guilty plea,” because it “is the result of an action taken by a government agency or private entity,” so the court does not have to warn you about it before taking a plea. The same opinion said “it is a good practice for counsel to advise a client of all foreseeable consequences arising from a guilty plea irrespective of whether they are direct or collateral.” What has to be reported, and when, is set by the board, agency, or employer, and a dismissal, a reduction, and a conviction are different events for those purposes. The wording of a plea can matter.
For a client who is not a U.S. citizen, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that “counsel must inform her client whether his plea carries a risk of deportation.” That conversation happens before any plea.
Defending a Stateline case from home
The first conversation is about paperwork and dates: what you were given, when the first court date is, whether there was a DMV order and a temporary license, and whether you signed release conditions. Those facts set the first week’s work.
Evidence requests go out at the start, along with preservation letters to any casino, hotel, or bar whose cameras may have recorded you, so the case can be evaluated without waiting for the next court date. My office makes the Zoom arrangements where the court allows a remote appearance, and you are told well in advance which dates will need you in the courtroom. A felony, a trial, or a sentence that includes jail will usually bring you back to Nevada.
Before any plea is discussed, I want to know every license you hold, what your employer requires you to report and when, whether you hold or are applying for a clearance, and your immigration status if you are not a citizen. For a client who is not a citizen, immigration counsel is brought in first. If the case ends in a conviction, sentencing is planned around where you live.
If you are calling about a son or daughter, the person charged is the client, and the decisions in the case are theirs. How hiring works explains how a parent or other family member can pay for the defense.
You can be home before your first court date and still have the case moving. Hire me now, and I’ll get to work: the court dates, the DMV decision, and the evidence requests, handled from here. Call FitzGerald Law.