State asks court to reverse and clarify how mailing custom proves revocation notice was sent

Michelle Tuck, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Stellenbosch County, opened oral argument asking the appellate panel to “reverse the decision” below and to clarify what the state must prove to show compliance with an established mailing custom for revocation notices. "The state is asking the court to reverse the decision on Rauch appeal, reinstating the defendant's DWLS 2 conviction, and also clarifying what is necessary for the state to prove compliance with an existing mailing custom," she said.

Judges pressed the state to point to specific evidence in the record that the Department of Licensing's bulk-mail procedures were applied to Brandon Deutsch’s letter. One judge asked counsel to point to “the line where a witness says, and here's how I can tell that this process got used to send Deutsch's letters,” and later repeated, “Tell me again how we know that the process got used in Deutsch's case.” Tuck pointed to Mr. Miller’s testimony that, after the department’s September 2018 system changes, there had been no errors and argued the absence of recorded errors was a reasonable basis to infer the letter was mailed.

Tuck told the court that the district court had made credibility determinations when it accepted Miller’s testimony and that those findings constitute substantial evidence supporting the inference that the letter passed through the batch process. On the record in this argument, counsel asked the court to reverse the superior court’s ruling; no ruling appears on the record during the hearing.