Arizona lobbyist Kevin DeMenna admits drug addiction following arrest

• Police found marijuana, a pipe and 348 pills in the car of an Arizona lobbyist arrested last year
• The Pinal County Attorney’s Office dropped all drug charges against Kevin DeMenna as part of an agreement and allowed him to plead to a first-time DUI offense
• Former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said the case raises several troubling questions

A prominent Arizona lobbyist was arrested last year on suspicion of drug possession and driving under the influence after police officers found marijuana, a pipe and 348 pills in his car, half of which were narcotics.

Kevin DeMenna, whose firm has represented interests ranging from health care to contracting to tourism, was allowed to plead guilty in May to a misdemeanor DUI offense after a police pursuit along Interstate 10 led to his October arrest.

DeMenna acknowledged in a recent interview with The Arizona Republic that he had been addicted to prescription drugs — a problem he said he had  for years.

DeMenna said he took morphine to suppress pain from old rodeo and other sports injuries he sustained in high school and college. He smoked marijuana to stave off nausea brought on by the narcotics, he said.

“The fact that I was stopped is because I was impaired, and I think I was at the time,” DeMenna told The Republic in an interview this month. “It hasn’t happened again. It will never happen again.”

DeMenna, 55, said his arrest and conviction prompted him to confront his addiction and to stop taking prescription narcotics cold turkey.

Arresting officers had recommended charging DeMenna with a felony narcotics violation, two felony marijuana violations and two misdemeanor DUI offenses.

But more than six months after his arrest, the Pinal County Attorney’s Office charged DeMenna with felony possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and two misdemeanor DUI offenses.

DeMenna was allowed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor DUI offense and spent two days in jail.

The charges were filed after Arizona’s most recent legislative session ended in early April, allowing DeMenna to continue representing clients without interruption during the session.

County Attorney Lando Voyles said the timing of the charge was coincidental. He said the case was handled as quickly as it could be after DeMenna’s lab results were returned in December.

He said the county doesn’t have its own crime lab and often waits weeks for tests to be processed by the state. He also said his office was experiencing a heavy backlog at the time that delayed charges.

DeMenna’s case was handled like any other criminal prosecution involving similar circumstances, Voyles said.

“I just want to make it clear that you don’t get a break for your political affiliation, for your race, your gender, your sexual orientation. You don’t get a break in Pinal County,” Voyles said. “If you’re committing a crime, you have to accept there is going to be a consequence for it. And the consequence is going to be uniform for the type of crime you commit.”

Valley lawyers say there is no standard for comparing cases. They say outcomes often depend on the experience and aggressiveness of defense attorneys and their willingness to challenge the prosecution before charges are filed.

Former longtime Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who frequently consults on issues of legal ethics and has led independent state and county investigations, said there are troubling aspects about the case.

“I just do not understand why it took so long to charge this case,” he said. “October to April is way too long. I don’t care what the backlog is.”

In addition to the delay, Romley questioned: the dropped drug charges given the amount and type of drugs involved; that DeMenna’s name was misspelled on police and court documents; and the failure to mandate drug treatment as a condition of the plea agreement.

“The public is not going to have confidence that this was handled the right way,” Romley said. “There are too many unanswered questions.”

Calls to 911

DeMenna was stopped just before noon Oct. 24, 2014, near Eloy after several motorists on Interstate 10 called 911 to report that a BMW was “all over the road and almost hitting other vehicles,” cutting off semi-trucks, driving on the left shoulder and in the median, according to police reports.

Arizona Department of Public Safety and Eloy Police Department officers followed reports of the BMW’s path on and off the interstate for 30 minutes before they were able to track down the vehicle.

The car exited Interstate 10 near Eloy and drove “erratically” through a truck stop parking lot before getting back on the freeway heading west toward Casa Grande, according to police reports.

An Eloy police officer on an overpass was the first to spot the BMW when he “saw a large plume of dust go into the air and observed a (white sedan) driving on the center emergency lane.”

The officer said the westbound car again exited Interstate 10, this time onto Jimmie Kerr Boulevard, then headed east on the frontage road. The officer said the driver stopped for about a minute at a stop sign, then pulled slowly into oncoming traffic, nearly causing a collision.

The officer got behind the BMW and attempted to stop it, but he said the driver ignored the patrol car’s lights and siren.

The BMW made a right turn onto Sunland Gin Road, idled at a railroad crossing for about 20 seconds, then pulled forward and stopped.

DPS officers arrived, identified DeMenna from his driver’s license and asked him to get out of the car. Officers said DeMenna needed to lean against his own car and then a police SUV for support.

According to the DPS report, DeMenna volunteered to take a field sobriety test and failed. His eyes could not follow objects smoothly, he swayed on his feet, had trouble raising his arms, could not walk in a straight line and his body shook when he attempted to stand without help.

Officers said they did not complete the sobriety test because they decided that it would be "too dangerous" for DeMenna to continue.

Morphine and other pills

At the scene, DeMenna denied drinking or taking drugs and volunteered that he was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an Arizona lobbyist, according to police reports.

The reports show DeMenna told officers he was returning to Phoenix from a Tucson political fundraiser featuring former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He said he was working and talking on his cellphone and that “I always use all lanes of traffic when I drive.”

He denied drinking or taking drugs and told officers three times that he was not on medication or under a doctor’s care.

When officers searched DeMenna, they reported finding a silver case in his pants pocket containing a white pill. DeMenna told officers it was MS Contin, a generic form of morphine that he had taken for pain relief.

A search of his car found a sunglasses case with a multicolored glass pipe coated in burnt residue and a plastic tube containing marijuana. Officers also reported finding pill containers with hundreds of different pills.

Those included:

• 87 MS Contin pills.
• 84 morphine pills. Morphine is a highly addictive narcotic used to treat chronic pain.
• 31 Carisoprodol pills, a muscle relaxer used for treating muscle spasms.
• 31 Levothyroxine sodium pills used for treating thyroid conditions.
• 14 Tylenol pills.

DeMenna was arrested and taken to a DPS station in Casa Grande, where he agreed to have his blood drawn for a toxicology test. In an interview there, DeMenna told officers he took the pills for back and knee injuries sustained during 10 years of rodeo competition.

When an officer asked DeMenna what was in the sunglass case, “DeMenna smiled and said, ‘Obviously, you know,’” according to the police report.

The officers suspended DeMenna’s license and impounded his vehicle. DeMenna retrieved the BMW the next day.

Grappling with addiction

DeMenna said in the interview with The Republic that his arrest is a reminder of his personal failure, and it has taken months to reconcile his addiction with his professional, family and spiritual life.

Sitting in his office a short walk from the state Capitol building, DeMenna appeared embarrassed by the police report.

“When you couple my inherent nature with the degree of impairment, what you get is the (police) report,” he said. “All of this comes down to one simple thing: That in the course of two-and-half, three years, this (addiction) had crept to a level that it had created a challenge.”

DeMenna and two of his sons own DeMenna & Associates, a lobbying and political consulting firm based in Phoenix. He has been involved in every state legislative session since 1979.

The company’s website says DeMenna led “a number of major efforts resulting in substantial changes to Arizona law.” Current clients include the Arizona Cactus League Coalition, Click Automotive and several car-rental companies, advertising agencies and health-related non-profits.

Before he was a lobbyist, DeMenna served as the chief of staff of the Arizona Senate and Senate economist, among other positions.

DeMenna said he was trying to reduce his dependence when he was arrested. If the stop had occurred six months earlier, police would have found substantially more drugs, he said.

“The events of October transformed me. I’m very pleased with where I am,” he said, adding that he hasn’t taken a single pain pill since his arrest. “This kind of medicine, if you stop taking it, you get sick. ... I still get sick every morning.”

DeMenna said he still periodically smokes marijuana to manage nausea.

Voyles said earlier this month that DeMenna “did not have a medical marijuana card” at the time of his arrest and “had nothing to show he had the authority to have it (marijuana) here in Arizona under Arizona law.”

DeMenna said any marijuana he uses today “is accessed legally.”

He acknowledges initially denying to officers he had taken any medicine or drugs. But, once the shock of the arrest wore off, he said he was up front with them about the drugs in his car.

DeMenna said he never attempted to use any political connections to influence the outcome of his case or lessen penalties.

“Not only would I not, I don’t even know how I would go about that,” he said.

Initial charges reduced

Toxicology reports showed DeMenna had more narcotics in his system than marijuana at the time of his arrest. He was charged in April with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, both felonies, and two misdemeanor DUIs.

Voyles, who has made enforcement of DUI laws a priority for his office, said DeMenna couldn’t be charged for possession of a narcotic drug because he provided a valid prescription from a doctor for the morphine.

Voyles said charges could have been filed for the amount of narcotics in the car. But he said it wouldn’t have been practical — people do hoard pills over time — and his office has to exercise discretion.

Tests showed the amount of morphine in DeMenna’s system was within therapeutic levels, Voyles said.

He said two other prescription drugs, both of which are depressants, likely caused DeMenna’s impairment.

“He was pretty impaired. Very impaired,” Voyles said. “I believe he has a serious problem.”

But Voyles said there are no tests to match the amount of drugs in a person’s system with a level of impairment.

Voyles said his office also was prohibited from charging DeMenna for the marijuana in his system because tests showed only carboxy levels, meaning he recently had ingested marijuana, but it did not cause his impairment.

“He was not driving impaired because of the marijuana,” Voyles said. “Marijuana can stay in your system for 30 days. It can stay in your hair for even longer than that.”

Arizona law changed last year to remove criminal penalties for the presence of carboxy levels of marijuana in a person’s system. The state Supreme Court said under the former law, medical-marijuana users could be prosecuted for legal conduct.

DeMenna was charged with possession of less than a gram of marijuana.

“We dropped that in place of an extra day in jail,” Voyles said. “In Arizona... (on) your first-time marijuana charge, you can’t get any jail time.”

Voyles said his office decided an extra day in jail would serve as a greater deterrent to DeMenna than a possession charge. DeMenna was allowed to plead guilty to a “non-dangerous, non repetitive” charge of a first-offense DUI in exchange for spending 48 hours in jail.

“He has no previous criminal history, so gauging whether or not he is going to reoffend at age 55 with a first-time marijuana (charge) on him,” Voyles said. “Hopefully an extra day in jail — two days in jail — is an eye-opener for him.”

DeMenna was sentenced to 18 months unsupervised probation and given a 10-day jail sentence, of which eight days were suspended. He was required to attend a Mothers Against Drunk Driving victim impact session and an alcohol screening and education program.

On June 12, DeMenna was booked into jail and his mugshot taken.

No drug counseling required

Former prosecutor Romley said the circumstances of DeMenna’s arrest, the amount of legal and illegal drugs he possessed and his inconsistent statements to police are not reflected in the plea deal.

At the least, the prosecutor should have included a requirement that DeMenna attend drug-counseling sessions, Romley said. Even if the prosecutor dropped DeMenna’s possession charge, Romley said the office easily could have included mandatory drug treatment and testing as a condition.

“A prosecutor’s No. 1 obligation is to protect the public,” Romley said. “The plea agreement does little to do that.”

Court records indicate that Pinal County prosecutors did not object to DeMenna’s attorney’s request to leave unchecked a box marked “drugs” in reports sent to the Motor Vehicle Division about the conviction.

If the box had been checked for drugs, the MVD could have required DeMenna to pass drug screening before his license was reinstated.

Voyles said he doesn’t know DeMenna and didn’t recognize his name until after being asked to comment on the case. He said there was no attempt by anyone in his office to make things easier for DeMenna.

Voyles acknowledged that DeMenna’s name was misspelled in court records with an extra space, making it more difficult to find his case in records searches. Voyles said his office copied the spelling as it appeared on police reports and that the case would be updated to reflect proper spelling.

The prosecution had its desired outcome, he said.

“I think (DeMenna) realizes he made a mistake,” Voyles said. “At the beginning, I think he wanted to try and throw police off. At the end, you saw him coming around. ... It’s quite an eye-opener for somebody who has never served any time in jail to have to serve jail time.”

David Derickson, criminal defense lawyer and retired Maricopa Superior Court judge, said good lawyers will challenge DUI cases before charges are filed.

He said defense lawyers can influence prosecutors to drop or reduce potential criminal charges based on issues they perceive with the case. For instance, a lawyer might persuade a prosecutor the court will rule that evidence was collected improperly or question the integrity of a search.

Conversations between the defense and prosecuting attorneys likely would not be referenced in any court file, Derickson said.

By contrast, “There’s a whole lot of people in the criminal justice system who (aren’t represented) until after the charges are made,” he said.

DeMenna said his arrest was life-changing. He said the criminal-justice process does not make allowances for individual circumstances. He called it inflexible and said he has a greater appreciation for anyone caught on the assembly line of any governmental process, whether it is tax issues or criminal justice.

He said spending two days in jail was one of the most difficult things he’s ever had to do.

“Because of the complete and total loss of freedom ... The loss of control over the most basic aspects of your life,” he said, adding: “This has been a cathartic experience that I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

Reach the reporter at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com.