Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
In part 1 of this article, I began addressing the question, “Do I need a lawyer for this?” The simple answer for anyone facing a misdemeanor or felony case is “yes.” We left off with a list of questions to make the point that a competent criminal attorney could answer every last one of them without a second thought. By contrast, a civil lawyer, even if he or she could answer some, would be handicapped in handling a criminal or DUI case. A layperson isn’t even in the ballpark.
We’ll resume our discussion, here in part 2, right from that point – it is just plain dumb to try and handle your own case if it’s anything more than a simple traffic ticket (and even then, a sharp lawyer can usually work out a break that would otherwise be completely unavailable to an unrepresented person). Now, before anyone thinks, “Of course you’re going to say hire a lawyer, because that’s how you make your money!” let me make 2 very important points:
First – yes, you’re right! We’re a law firm for hire; we can’t keep the doors open doing “free legal.” We help out when and where we can, but our payroll isn’t met by NOT getting hired. We make our living handling criminal, driver’s license restoration cases for people. We’re in business to make money. Of course, we’ll help out as much as we can, but even a free legal aid clinic has employees to pay and obligation to cover.
Let me clear up the easy stuff first: you may be able to do an okay job handling your own speeding ticket, or some other kind of civil infraction. However, if you’re thinking about dealing with any kind of misdemeanor (or felony) charge on your own, you could be making a serious mistake. Notice that I’m not saying you will ruin your life or wind up in jail. Those things probably won’t happen. But what if, down the road, you run into problems because of your record, or find out some consequence(s) from your case could have been avoided with a legal maneuver you didn’t even know about because you decided to play lawyer?
It’s a given that it was a hassle to have gone through all the court stuff from a DUI, including probation and testing and having had to paid fines and costs and whatever else. The problem, however, is that the frustration most people feel about having, as they say, “to jump through hoops” to win their license back, while very real, also misses the fact that after racking up multiple DUI’s, the license revocation process is every bit as much about protecting the public as it is about punishing the offender.
In this article, I want to briefly make clear that despite similarities, no 2 cases are alike, and that trying to gauge what is likely to happen in your case based upon what did, or supposedly did happen to someone else can often lead to either unfounded fear (when that “someone else” got hammered by the Judge) or unreasonable expectations (when that other person got lucky). It’s never a good idea to base one’s forecast on another person’s experience.
This really is something of a problem in a license appeal case. Every substance abuse counselor can look at the official substance use evaluation (SUE) form and figure he or she could complete it without any difficulty. In one sense, they’d be right, but not in the sense of winning a license appeal, and that’s what really matters here. Let me explain what I mean:
The first thing we should do is to clarify the name, “substance use evaluation,” because many, if not most people, call it a “substance abuse evaluation.” I’m as guilty of that as anyone, both terms are used to mean the same thing. To keep things simple, we’ll often refer to the evaluation by using the abbreviation “SUE” in this discussion.
The second consideration is the important role of the lawyer’s experience. This really cannot be overstated. In my office, we concentrate in DUI and certain criminal cases in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne Counties. Because we focus our practice on criminal charges like indecent exposure, driving on a suspended license, and embezzlement, we have handled them, quite literally, more times than we could count. There does come a point when, after having done so many of the same kinds of cases, you actually have “seen it all.”
There are, of course, many more things that go into finding the right lawyer for your case than the 3 we’ll go over here. Money is one of them. Although we won’t be examining the subject of legal fees in this article, price is a big deal for some people. Without going too deep into it, the simple fact is that is that what a person cannot afford is a limiting factor in the kind of representation he or she can have. The reality is that you’ll need to fork out more money for a better grade of lawyer
My team and I deal with the problems caused by the state’s use of this indecisive language (‘advisable”) all the time, in real hearings. One of the first things most hearing officers will ask if a person has a failed or missed rolling retest is whether or not he or she got a PBT or EtG test. If a person says “no,” then they’ll be asked, “why not?” Most often, the person will try and explain that they weren’t clear on the need to do that right away, or just had forgotten. Then they’re asked the most dreaded question of all: “didn’t you read your entire order?”
The instructions in each winning order lists the things that should be done if a person has a power loss (listed as “tamper/circumvent”), misses a test, or provides a positive breath sample. Even if it’s too late for those recommended PBT or EtG tests (see below), there may be enough time left to take other remedial action in order to challenge a violation. Whatever else, any problems are going to have to be satisfactorily explained to a hearing officer, whether at a violation hearing, or when a person files for full, unrestricted driving privileges. Much of this could be made better if the state fixed the language and placement of the interlock use directions.