Prominent Seattle lawyer and TV legal analyst Anne Bremner has been charged with drunken driving, according to court records, despite her claims that she suffered a head injury in a hit-and-run accident and was mistakenly arrested.
On June 4, Bremner, 52, was stopped in Kenmore after driving on three flat tires. She was returning from a dinner party at a judge's home in Seattle. The charge was filed Wednesday in King County District Court in Shoreline. Her arraignment is set for Sept. 1.
Bremner, a partner at Stafford Frey Cooper who often represents police officers accused of misconduct, has been fighting the release of the police report stemming from her arrest after it was requested under open records laws by several local media outlets, including seattlepi.com.
King County Superior Court Judge Laura Inveen ruled last week that most of the records should be made public.
The judge, however, immediately stayed that decision as Bremner's attorney announced an appeal of the decision.
Bremner claims police failed to respond to two 911 calls some time before her midnight arrest in Kenmore and, in a statement submitted to the court on her behalf by her doctor, alleged that she was manhandled by the sheriff's deputy. In a complaint filed under the name "Jane Doe," her lawyer argued she would suffer "substantial and irreparable harm to her personal and professional reputation if the unsubstantiated DUI allegations" were made public.
Her lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.
Bremner frequently appears as a legal analyst on several television networks.
She has been one of the most vocal advocates for Amanda Knox, the University of Washington student convicted of killing her roommate in Perugia, Italy. Knox's attorneys are appealing.
Bremner appeared as a TV legal commentator about several criminal cases with a national profile, including the Laci Peterson murder and Michael Jackson child molestation trial, and she maintains a virtual library of her TV appearances on her website.
She previously contributed to seattlepi.com's City Brights section of bloggers. Seattlepi.com recently ended its relationship with her to avoid any conflict of interest.
To support their contention that Bremner suffered a head injury, her attorneys in the filed a statement by local psychiatrist Dr. Philip Lindsay.
Lindsay wrote in court documents that Bremner had been the "victim of a hit and run driver at 50 mph and had suffered a concussion," and argued that the deputy who stopped her in Kenmore "rushed to judgment."
"She was mistakenly arrested for DUI based solely upon the symptoms of traumatic brain injury," Lindsay wrote the court.
Attorneys for the county called the doctor's statements "grossly misleading" and contended Bremner never reported a hit-and-run crash or head injury until well after her arrest.
Bremner's defense investigator interviewed the dinner party host, Rosselle Pekelis, a former state Supreme Court justice and former King County Superior Court judge. Pekelis, her husband, and others reported no issues with Bremner regarding her balance, coordination or thought process and speech, before she left, according to summaries of their statements.
By Scott Gutierrez, SeattlePI.com
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