UKIAH, CA., 8/27/26 — The defense argument was that Jodine Rene Burkhart, 60, had no choice. An armed property owner had caught her loading his hay, and driving off drunk was the only way out of a dangerous confrontation.
A Mendocino County jury took minutes this week to decide that explanation didn’t work.
Jurors convicted Burkhart, of Redwood Valley, of driving under the influence and of driving at a blood alcohol content of 0.08 or above, both misdemeanors, the district attorney’s office said. Her breath had tested at 0.13 and 0.12 the night of Sept. 26, 2025.
The district attorney’s weekly trial calendar lists the case as No. 25CR09151, with drunken driving as the lead charge, and sets it for a jury in Courtroom H at the Ukiah courthouse. The court’s own roster for that courtroom names Judge Charlotte Scott. The trial ran two days, the office said.
That night, Burkhart was loading hay into her pickup on someone else’s land in Redwood Valley when the armed owner confronted her, the office said. She kept insisting she had bought the hay from a homeless man. Then she overheard him on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, and she left.
Law enforcement caught up with her in Calpella not long after. She was put through field sobriety tests and a roadside breath test, and the Highway Patrol arrested her.
“Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.“
Necessity is a real defense to a DUI charge in California. A driver has to have been fleeing serious, immediate harm in an emergency they did not create.
Deputy District Attorney Carla Ocodhain told the jury Burkhart had brought the confrontation on herself. The jurors agreed.
Whether anyone charged Burkhart over the hay, the district attorney’s office didn’t say.
Most of what Mendocino County takes to a jury is drunken driving. Through June 8, the office had tried 15 cases to a jury, according to a tally it published June 15. Ten were DUIs. One defendant went to trial three times on the same misdemeanor DUI; two juries hung before a third returned a guilty verdict in May. By its own weighted count, the office won 85% of them.
Four agencies built the case, according to the district attorney’s office: the Highway Patrol, the county Sheriff’s Office, the state Department of Justice crime lab and the district attorney’s own Bureau of Investigations.
The office did not announce a sentencing date.