Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
As Michigan driver’s license restoration lawyers, my team and I handle well over 200 driver’s license appeal matters every year. The substance use evaluation (often mistakenly called a “substance abuse evaluation”) is a required part of every restoration and clearance case, and having literally worked with thousands of them, we know what makes an evaluation good, and what kind of information it should (and should not) contain. In this article, we’ll look at the absolutely critical role of the substance use evaluation (SUE) in license appeal cases.
A lot of people who ultimately hire us do so after having either lost a “do-it-yourself” appeal, or after having lost with some lawyer who didn’t specifically concentrate in this area of the law, like our firm does. We guarantee to win every case we take, but in order to do that, we also make sure that we only accept cases that can be made into winners. Accordingly, one of the first things we do when anyone calls us after having previously lost is to carefully screen him or her, and, if his or her case seems promising, then obtain and review the Secretary of State’s order denying their case.
Very often, those orders cite the evaluation that was filed as a key reason for the losing decision. The simple fact is that a good evaluation is necessary in order to win To be sure, there is a lot that goes into a proper SUE. Among other things, it must always be accurate, complete, favorable, and, of course, legally sufficient. It’s basically a requirement that the evaluator not only has experience doing them for driver’s license appeal cases, but has also worked closely with driver’s license restoration lawyers in order to know exactly what to include within the document.
License penalties for DUI convictions are set by law, and there is a whole, broad scheme of what happens as the result of every kind of DUI conviction. If that’s not enough, there is another entire panorama of other license sanctions that can, and sometimes must be imposed in addition to and on top of any DUI license penalty. Each one of these runs on its own line, like parallel but separate tracks, except when they cross, and then one takes priority over the other. The “why” and “how” of all of this can get confusing, but with a little patience, it can be untangled, as we’re about to do now.
Put another way, a person can’t just “buy” a license. In Michigan, the restoration of driving privileges is earned. A lot of people mistakenly think that not having been in any trouble for a long time, or not having had a license for many years is important. To be clear, none of those things matter at all. The only thing that will win a license appeal is proof that a person has quit drinking – meaning that he or she has been completely alcohol-free for a legally sufficient period of time – and that he or she has the ability and commitment to remain alcohol-free for life, meaning permanently.
This goes well beyond the difference between a regular DUI charge (technically, the offense is called “OWI,” or “Operating While Intoxicated,” the actual legal term in Michigan for what everyone just refers to as “DUI”), and the more serious “super-drunk” or “High BAC” charge of Operating While Intoxicated with a BAC of .17 or more. Ever since the introduction of chemical testing, a person’s BAC result has been viewed as the measure of how drunk he or she was at the time of his or her arrest. Of course, a lower BAC result is always better, because, no matter what, it just never looks good to have been really, really drunk.
There is an irony here, though, because anyone who even thinks of celebrating the new year with a toast of alcohol is miles away from being able to win back his or her license. It’s a simple fact that people who don’t drink are exactly zero risk to drive while intoxicated. Accordingly, the whole goal of the process required by the Michigan Secretary of State is to make sure that anyone who ever does get back on the road won’t drive drunk again, and that’s done by only restoring driver’s licenses for those people who do NOT drink at all.
Ultimately, every person who has lost his or her license after racking up multiple DUI’s is going to have to decide what is more important in life: continuing to drink, or a life without alcohol, and being able to do things like drive again. Once a person has had his or her driver’s license revoked for drunk driving, he or she can’t have both. By law, a person can’t win a license appeal unless he or she has been completely abstinent from alcohol and drugs for a “legally sufficient” period of time (more on that later) and can also demonstrate the ability and commitment to remain clean and sober for life.
To call the law completely “settled” regarding cell-phone tips may be a bit of an overstatement, but as it stands now, there is little doubt that the police can pull someone over based upon such information if it is otherwise sufficiently reliable. This piece won’t examine the subtle nuances of the law, as any discussion of the technical legalities goes well beyond its scope. It is a critical for a DUI lawyer to carefully examine all the evidence, and to make sure that, when a client gets pulled over, whether because the police observed something or as the result of a cell-phone tip, there was a sufficient legal basis and that analysis must always be done in each and every case.
Most of the time, when someone contacts our firm and wonders why they lost their case, it’s because he or she didn’t adequately prove their sobriety, and often enough, that kind of proof is rather obviously missing – at least to those of us who do license appeals for a living. What’s more, this is true even if the person really IS sober. Remember, while being sober is the main requirement in a license appeal case, really being able to prove that sobriety by what the law defines as “clear and convincing evidence” is the key to actually winning it. Accordingly, any kind of “close call” simply isn’t good enough to win.
While the answer is a definite “maybe,” what’s even more important is the reality that, in the overwhelming majority of cases that are denied, something did, indeed, go wrong with how the case was prepared, handled, and/or presented. We’ll break down who can “appeal” a loss, and how, later in this article, but for now, what’s more important is to take a step back and recognize that, with very few exceptions, a driver’s license appeal case gets denied because it simply wasn’t good enough to win. Very few losing decisions are ever overturned in court.
Essentially, this all means that a person has honestly quit drinking and is a safe bet to never drink again. To be clear, the abstinence/sobriety requirement also means a person can’t use drugs, and that included recreational marijuana. As Michigan driver’s license restoration lawyers, our job begins with us screening potential clients to make sure they really have quit drinking (and using drugs) for good. Because our firm guarantees to win every case we take, we need to make sure we don’t undertake representation for someone who is anything less than truly sober, or otherwise unable to succeed.