Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
As a Michigan driver’s license restoration lawyer who handled and wins about 200 cases a year, I must be able to quickly assess a situation to determine if and when a person can move forward and win his or her license back. This analysis is instinctive to me and my staff, as it should be for any office that concentrates in driver’s license restoration cases. As I was thinking about this, I realized that explaining it would make a good article, because there are 3 primary things that determine if and when a person can move forward with a license reinstatement or clearance appeal file with the Michigan Secretary of State. In this short, 2-part installment, we’ll look at each of them, and how they interact.
There is a specific, important order to the 3 conditions that that must be met in order to file and win a driver’s license appeal, and I’ll explain why as we go through them. First, and by far most important, I need to know if you have quit drinking. If not, then there’s no need to look at anything else, because you must be genuinely sober to win a license appeal. Second, I must confirm that you are legally eligible to file. The state has very specific rules about when you can proceed, and there is no getting around them. Third, you must also be able to win (or, to put it another way, “practically eligible” to win) your case. This means that beyond the sobriety and simple time requirements, you must also meet certain other criteria established by the state.
In the last article posted to the driver’s license restoration section of this blog, I outlined how my first-time win guarantee is not only good for the client, but also helps keep me in check from taking a case that won’t win. As I pointed out, I handle about 200 or so license cases each year, but, in truth, those represent less than half the inquiries I receive. Most people who contact my office – ready and willing to pay my fee, no less – aren’t completely sober. I don’t take those cases. Beyond all the ethical, moral and practical considerations (the whole point of the license appeal process is to make sure a person has honestly quit drinking and is a safe bet to never drink again), I guarantee to win every case I take, and people who are unable to prove they’ve really quit drinking simply cannot win. My guarantee ties me to each client until we’ve won, and to be blunt about it, I make my money winning these cases the first time around, not getting stuck doing “warranty” work that effectively doubles my effort while slashing my income in half. This makes it imperative that I correctly sort the winners from the losers before I jump in. Now, let’s examine how I do that.
Sure, it’s great for me to be able to boast that any potential client will only pay me once to get back on the road. Most people correctly understand that to mean that I make my money winning license appeals the first time around, not having to come back next year and do “warranty work.” This effectively removes the risk for anyone who hires me. But it’s not just the client who takes a risk in this transaction; I do, as well, because if I don’t succeed, my work load doubles, and my profit gets cut in half. The way I see it, this provides a great incentive for me to win the first time around, but to also make sure that I don’t accept a case that is not quite ready to succeed. In a sense, it keeps me honest to both my client and myself.
I point this out because it’s typical for someone charged with a drunk driving to hop on the computer, do a little research (remember, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”), see the potential legal penalties for their charge, and then start freaking out. My goal here is to explain away those completely misinformed fears. We will, of course, post the potential penalties provided by law, but I urge the reader to take them with the proverbial grain of salt and remember the difference between how they read on paper versus how they are imposed in court.
then the hearing officer spins his computer monitor around and asks why he has pictures of himself and a few of his buddies on a boat from the previous summer, and they’re all drinking and holding beers in their hands.
In order to really appreciate the influence of geography on 3rd offense drunk driving charges, we first need to sort out a few things. There is a general notion that of the 3 local counties, Oakland County is the “toughest,” Wayne the most lenient, and Macomb, somewhere in-between. There is some truth to this, but it’s not entirely accurate, particularly as it applies to 3rd offense drunk driving cases. As a DUI lawyer who specifically concentrates his representation in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne Counties, these differences are important to me every single workday. Any notion of which place is tougher versus more lenient must really account for 2 key factors that underlie every DUI case (and every criminal charge, for that matter): the prosecutor and the Judge.
For my part, I meet with every client for a first 3-hour meeting before they have their evaluation completed, and I fill out a form of my own creation called a “substance abuse evaluation checklist” that covers everything the evaluator must and should go over. This form is probably somewhat redundant when presented to an evaluator as good as mine, but it’s that attention to detail that’s part of how and why I guarantee to win every case I take. The key requirement for me to take a case is that a person must have honestly quit drinking; this sobriety requirement is non-negotiable with either me or the state. From there, everything must be done right, and I make sure it is.
The prognosis is provided within its own section of the substance use evaluation form, and the evaluator must check a box indicating that it is either “poor,” “guarded,” “fair,” “good,” or “excellent.” By rule, a license appeal must be denied if the prognosis is either “poor,” “guarded” or “fair.” In other words, you can only win if your prognosis is either “good” or “excellent.” It seems natural to think, then, that “excellent” would be the best prognosis you could get, but that’s actually not correct. In this article, I want to examine some of the more important aspects of the evaluation, including how and why a “good” prognosis is almost always better than “excellent.”
The whole counseling thing is a deep subject in its own right, but rather than go off on a multi page examination of matching a person with the right kind of counseling or treatment method, suffice it to say here that my clinical training and my practical experience as a DUI lawyer combines so that I know how to explore this subject with my client in the office, while helping and protecting him or her in the courtroom. Someone can have all the clinical education in the world, but not know how to explain and say things in a way that will persuade a Judge (that, by the way, is why I limit my practice to the courts of Oakland, Macomb and Wayne Counties – so that I get in front of the same Judges day after day and know what will work, and what won’t, in front of each). By contrast, as well-spoken as any lawyer can be, to change a Judge’s mind, you have to provide both facts and viable alternative solutions. A lawyer may be right, but you can’t merely tell a Judge something like, “that won’t work,” or “that’s not the right solution” without explaining why and offering a better idea.
Let’s get the jail stuff out of the way first, because that’s everyone’s biggest concern. There are many courts here, in the local, Detroit area where jail can be completely avoided in a 2nd offense case, and some where it may be on the table as a possibility, rather than a probability. In addition, there are also a few Judges here who will almost always hand out at least a few days to any and every second offender. With every last drop of integrity I have a human being, let me be perfectly clear about this: anyone who says anything different is either lying or not experienced enough to properly handle a 2nd offense drunk driving charge anywhere in Oakland, Macomb or Wayne Counties. In either case, you should run like hell. Here’s where a reader looking to hire a DUI lawyer needs to exercise some good consumer skills and pay attention to how things are said, because it’s easy for lawyers to dance around this question and not answer it directly, or to address it deceptively by saying something like “jail is never a certainty in a 2nd offense case.” Nothing in life is really a “certainty,” but in the immediate context of your DUI case, we’re far more interested in specifics like “yes,” “no,” “always,” “never,” “likely” and “usually.“
It’s probably fair to define a DUI lawyer by virtue of where most of his or her cases are handled. On average, I handle about 5 or 6 local DUI cases each week, along with another 6 or 7 driver’s license restoration appeals (the result of multiple DUI convictions). Most weeks, I spend more time in the district courts of Oakland County than I do in the courts of both Macomb and Wayne Counties combined. Although I would prefer to be identified by a more inclusive term like “Detroit-area DUI lawyer,” if I had to pick a description with just one locale, it would be Oakland County DUI lawyer. What’s important about that is that it means, as it should, that I know how things are done here. I know how the Judges operate, the things that will and won’t fly with each, and what kind of ideas will cause some of them to lose patience.