Legal Rights
Your Rights
A Drunk Driving charge is one of the most complicated of all criminal charges and taking on the defense of a client in this arena requires extensive experience and continuing legal education. If you were charged with Driving Under the Influence in Californian, you’ve already seen that the criminal system is not for you.
Your 1st Right is to be represented in your case by competent legal counsel. Your obligation to yourself is to be represented by exceptional legal counsel! This is not a glorified traffic ticket. Depending upon the offense, prior offense, injury or accident, you face the possibility of losing your license for 30-360 days and have it restricted for 90 to 720+ days, you face the possibility of serving jail time (anywhere from 2 days to one year for a misdemeanor and a year or more in state prison for a felony), you face extensive fines (over $2,200), you will likely have to pay for and attend a DUI Offenders School (3 to 9 to 18 months), submit to up to 3-5 years of court probation, you may be order to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, and you may face the most expensive result of all, increased insurance rates that can amount to thousands of dollars a year for the next 3-7 years! And, this is just for a first offense where there wasn’t an accident or injury.
Your 2nd Right is to collect and challenge all of the evidence that can be used against you. You need an attorney that will carefully review the police reports for errors, omissions, and inconsistencies. Your attorney must subpoena the maintenance and calibration records of the breath test machines used in your case as well as the training records of the officer that administered the test to you. If you took a blood test, then a split sample of that blood needs to be obtained and tested by an independent lab for presence of presence of preservative and anti-coagulant otherwise the sample may be contaminated. This is only the beginning of what a good defense attorney will seek to discover in your case.
Your 3rd Right is to confront the evidence and testimony of witnesses who will testify against you. In particular, the Cop who gave you those ridiculous Field Sobriety Tests and wrote up that report that said he stopped you because you were weaving or some other fabricated excuse. This is the states primary witness against you an experienced DUI attorney will get several shots at him/her that can lead to inconsistent statements, lies, or fabricated evidence. These are the kind of challenges that lead to dismissed cases and won cases at trial!
Your 4th Right is the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. The California Supreme Court suggested that the appropriate test for Fourth Amendment violations is whether a person has exhibited a reasonable expectation of privacy and, if so, whether that expectation has been violated by an unreasonable governmental intrusion. In other words, while you were driving your car, did Law Enforcement have a legitimate right to pull you over, detain you on the side of the road and did they have probable cause to arrest you. Again, an experienced defense attorney will make the appropriate challenges and seek to have your case dismissed for violations of your 4th Amendment Right against unreasonable searches and seizures!
Your 5th Right is to receive an Administrative hearing at the DMV, only if you request it in writing within 10 days of your arrest. The APS (Administrative Per Se) hearing is fraught with unfair rules and bureaucratic procedure handled in most cases by incompetent, undertrained, and overworked employees of the DMV. This hearing gives your attorney the opportunity to challenge the stop, the tests, the arrest, the advisement of the consequences of a refusal, and whether or not the defendant was actually driving the vehicle. Importantly, this hearing gives your attorney the chance to cross-examine the officer on an unlimited number of issues at a time when the officer doesn’t have the benefit of a prosecuting attorney to protect him/her from rigorous challenges to his statements.
Unfortunately, we all think that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Not in the case of a DUI. Make sure you have legal representation that will insure your Rights are Preserved. Remember, an arrest is not a conviction.
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Legal Challenges That Work
If you have been arrested in California for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, you have undergone a very repulsive and confounding episode. DUI911 is here to help you understand some of the issues involved in DUI cases, and to inform you that although you are charged with a criminal offense, you do have options and defenses available.
Our firm has experienced enough case work and won enough victories in court to enable us to seek those challenges specific to your case that will lead to the best result possible under the circumstances. Some of those Legal Challenges include, but are not in any way limited to the following:
1. Where you actually driving the vehicle at a time when your blood alcohol was over the legal limit?
2. Did the arresting officer actually observe you commit a violation of the Vehicle Code?
3. Had you ingested substances other than alcohol that would have caused your BAC level to be elevated? This could include paint fumes or medication prescribed by your doctor.
4. Do you have a medical condition, such as Acid Reflux, that tainted the breath test and overstated your actual BAC?
5. Did the officer actually have a legitimate reason to pull you over?
6. Did the officer detain for too long of a period before arresting you?
7. Was the alcohol test given to you after too long of a period after being stopped?
8. Were the instructions given to you by the officer for the Field Sobriety Tests too confusing?
9. Was the equipment used to test your BAC properly calibrated or maintained?
10. Was the Breath Test administered according to the manufacturers specifications?
11. Was the Breath Test administered according to requirements of the Health and Safety Code?
12. Where the requirements of Title 17 of the California Code of Regulations strictly followed?
13. Was the blood test properly administered?
14. Was a sufficient amount of blood drawn and was it drawn by an appropriately licensed technician?
15. Where you denied a choice of blood or breath test?
These Legal Challenges are most often utilized in motions and hearings that could lead to your charge being either dismissed or greatly reduced to a non-alcohol related violation. And, even if we are not able to prevail in these challenges, we will have taken all the necessary steps to fully prepare your case for trial. Each and every step that chips away at the prosecution’s case will give us greater leverage to prevail in front of a jury of your peers.
Plea Bargains
Two of the most common plea bargains offered by prosecutors are the “Wet” and “Dry” Reckless Pleas. Here, the defendant agrees to plead guilty or nolo contendre to an amended charge for dismissal of the § 23152 (a) and/or § 23152 (b) charge of Driving Under the Influence. These two options have the following advantages:
Wet Reckless Plea: In this case, you still have a conviction for driving that involves alcohol and therefore it will be used as a prior offense should you be arrested for another DUI within 10 years. The benefits of this plea have been watered down over the years and today your only benefit may be that the drinking/driving program may be avoided by order of the court even though you may be subject to an order for this program from the DMV. The other advantage may be that if this is a second DUI, then the plea bargain will avoid the enhancements that come with a second offense, and this can clearly be an advantage. Enhancements may include mandatory jail time, increased fines, longer probationary periods, and the use of an ignition interlock devices.
Dry Reckless Plea: This is usually never offered or negotiated in a case that a district attorney feels he/she can easily win at trail. Therefore, to accept such a plea would be admitting defeat where a citizen actually has an incredibly strong case that is more easily won at trial. This plea may be offered at an early stage in the proceedings of a case that the DA might actually drop when defense counsel announces, “ready for trial your honor”. The Dry Reckless would amount to accepting two points on your driving record and it is not an infraction, but rather a misdemeanor on your record.