California courts have failed to report hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles over the past five years, allowing roadway killers to improperly keep their driver’s licenses, a CalMatters investigation has found.

Marvin Salazar was convicted in May 2023 for killing his 18-year-old friend Joseph Ramirez, who was in the passenger seat when Salazar gunned his car, lost control and slammed into a tree, court records show. Under California law, the state should have taken away Salazar’s driving privileges for at least three years.

But the Los Angeles County Superior Court didn’t report the conviction to the DMV. Two months later, the agency issued Salazar his most recent license. Since then, he’s gotten two speeding tickets and has been in another collision, records show.

“How can he keep driving?” said Gaudy Lemus, Ramirez’s mother. “We wanted consequences for him. Remove his driver’s license.”

LA court officials belatedly reported the manslaughter conviction to the DMV last month, after CalMatters discovered the failure and asked about the case. It was only then that the state sent Salazar a notice revoking his driving privileges, records show.

CalMatters uncovered the error and others like it by cross-checking convictions in vehicular manslaughter cases against motorists’ DMV records, as part of an ongoing investigation. Earlier this year, we reported that the agency routinely allows drivers with horrifying histories of dangerous driving — including fatal crashes, DUIs and numerous tickets — to continue to operate on our roadways.

But this isn’t just a DMV issue. Reporters identified about 400 cases from 2019 to 2024 in which the drivers’ convictions weren’t listed on their driving records, largely because the courts failed to report that information. The review wasn’t comprehensive; records were unavailable or incomplete in a number of counties.

In Los Angeles, about one-third of all convictions in manslaughter cases we identified were missing from drivers’ records. In Santa Clara County, it was half. We found no missing convictions in Orange County.

In response to our questions, 32 county courts so far have reported more than 275 missing convictions to the DMV. As a result, nearly 200 drivers who’ve killed have had their driving privileges suspended or revoked, updated DMV reports for these drivers show. While some already had a separate license suspension, 70 appear to have had a valid license before the agency took action in response to our reporting.

County courts, law enforcement and the DMV have a long history of poor communication that dates to the days of paper records. Today, court administrators blame the breakdowns on a mix of human error and technological bugs.

Chris Orrock, a spokesperson for the DMV, said the agency sends out revocation and suspension notices “as soon as we’re notified.”

Even without a conviction, the DMV does have the discretion to strip a driver of their license for a fatal crash. We reported earlier this year that the agency often doesn’t use that power.

But in many cases, there is no discretion. State law, for example, requires the agency to revoke a driver’s license for at least three years after a felony vehicular manslaughter conviction.

As a result of the delayed reporting by the courts, some drivers could end up losing their licenses for far less than three years. That’s because the DMV typically enforces the sanction from the date of the conviction, not the date the court communicates it to the agency.

Salazar’s current driving record shows him eligible to reapply for a license next spring — three years after his conviction but just a year after records show the state took action to revoke his driving privileges.

His attorney declined to comment on his driving record but said Salazar did everything the court required.

For Lemus, the months after her son died in Salazar’s car were a blur. The loss was haunting, coming just as the teenager had decided to pursue a career building tiny homes for the homeless.

She started having such bad panic attacks that she moved to a new city and switched jobs, unable to bear the drive to work through the intersection where the crash occurred. Her 25-year-old daughter still refuses to drive at all.

Lemus said she didn’t initially want Salazar to go to prison, “because it was an accident.” Now, she wonders whether that was a mistake.

“I don’t want another family to go through whatever we went through,” Lemus said.

A series of errors leads to reporting failures

State law has long required courts to report vehicle-related convictions to the DMV, including for speeding, DUI and vehicular manslaughter. The agency then puts the violations on a motorist’s driving record and, if necessary, suspends their license.

Last month, CalMatters reporters sent hundreds of names and case numbers to dozens of courts throughout the state and asked why convictions from vehicular manslaughter cases didn’t appear on drivers’ records. Most courts responded to questions quickly, thanked us for telling them, acknowledged the mistake and indicated that they would report the convictions to the DMV.

“They were errors on our part. I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” said Tara Leal, the court executive officer in Kern County, where we found 22 missing convictions.

In many counties, court staff simply neglected to send the information to the DMV.

Court clerks typically enter convictions into a case management system. Many courts use a system that has a tab for them to click on to transmit the information to the DMV.