Articles Posted in DUI

Everyone knows that a 3rd offense DUI case is a felony, and is serious. The last thing anyone needs is some lawyer going on and on about it, only to ramp up his or her anxiety even more. The good news is that, if you’re facing a 3rd offense, things probably aren’t nearly as bad as you fear. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance that you can get through this relatively painlessly. This article is going to focus on the big picture, and how you can get relief from the stress of a 3rd offense DUI charge. That starts by handing the whole thing over to a good lawyer.

Specifically, this means putting the case, your worries, and all strategy concerns into your attorney’s care. This article is not going to be some thinly disguised promotional piece for our firm. Of course, we’re Michigan criminal and DUI lawyers, and in we’re in business to earn our incomes. However, what we’ll cover here applies to everyone, including people who live outside of our geographic practice area. Our criminal and DUI practice is concentrated in and limited to the Metro-Detroit area, meaning Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and the surrounding counties.

It’s a great relief to hand over a 3rd offense DUI case – and all the stress that goes with it – to a good and honest lawyer. However, a person is still going to have to put in a little work to find that person. As much as my team and I are open for business, we also realize we’re not the right lawyers for everyone. By the same token, not everyone with a 3rd offense DUI case in our local are is the right kind of client for us, either. We’ll come back to this later, because it’s an important part of how someone should approach his or her quest for the best representation.

A Michigan DUI case is a scary thing. After being arrested and released from jail, it’s normal for a person to start gathering information. People want to know what they’re facing, and what can be done about it. Everyone hopes their case can be dismissed. Sometimes, however, a person can get lost in his or her “research.” There are so many DUI websites that a person can almost drown in them. For many, there comes a point when they just want to hand everything over to a lawyer who they know will produce the best outcome possible. That’s what we’ll examine here.

Pretty much everything about a Michigan DUI case is complicated. That’s not meant to intimidate the reader, but rather set the foundation for our discussion. There is a lot to even the most “garden variety” DUI case. So much, in fact, that there is a whole subset of attorneys, like my team and I, that can honestly call themselves “DUI lawyers.” This goes beyond knowing the nuances of the law, and includes things like understanding how a specific strategy, including techniques like timing, can play a role in producing a more favorable outcome.

When all is said and done, nothing matters more in a Michigan DUI case than results. An attorney becomes a “DUI lawyer” by regularly handling DUI cases, and having a practice that concentrates upon them, like our firm. Even a brilliant legal scholar is going to have to spend years to become a real “DUI lawyer.” This is true for any practice area, really. It’s the actual experience of having dealt with real life cases thousands of times over that gives a lawyer the well of knowledge to draw from in order to know how to best handle a particular case.

As Michigan DUI lawyers, my team and I deal with every aspect of DUI cases. Often enough, to do something like get a charge dismissed, this takes us deep into the finest points of the law. Lawyers are notoriously obsessed with details because cases stand or fall based upon them. Sometimes, though, it’s important to take a step back and look at the big picture. In DUI cases, we can break this “big picture” down into 3 distinct areas: The investigative phase, the court phase, and the “after” phase. In this article, we’ll look at each of them in turn.

The investigative phase comprises the stop (and/or initial police contact), as well as the interactions that lead to the arrest, including the field sobriety tests. It also encompasses the arrest itself, any and all chemical test(s) that follow, the booking and, ultimately, the person’s release from jail. The court phase covers everything from a person’s first notice to appear all the way through the sentencing and probation. The “after” phase is about life after the case is over, meaning the consequence of a DUI conviction, or the relief of having avoided it altogether.

DUI cases begin at the investigative phase. Most initial police contact begins with a traffic stop, or something like a response to the scene of an accident. Exactly how that leads to a person being arrested is very important. Every step taken here must be carefully examined by the lawyer. Almost every DUI case that get dismissed is tossed out of court because of some problem that occurred in the investigative phase. This includes things the failure to follow proper police procedure, lack of probable cause, or problems with the breath or blood evidence.

In a recent conversation I had with someone about our law firm, I pointed out that we are more than just a collection of Michigan DUI lawyers. I explained that we’re really a “DUI team.” Beyond the 3 lawyers in our office, both of our legal assistants are heavily involved in the handling of all our cases. In fact, we call on of them our “sobriety court guru” because she manages all the logistics to get some of our 2nd and 3rd offense DUI clients into these programs. This requires all of us to work together. It also requires each of us to have specific knowledge about how all the local courts handle DUI cases.

Sometimes, we have to transfer a 2nd or even 3rd offense DUI case from one court that doesn’t have a sobriety court program to another court that does. We’ve even transferred cases across county lines. The work required for this can be complicated. Thus, experience with how different courts do things is critically important. Being a DUI “team,” though, involves a lot more than just dealing with sobriety court issues, which are only a small component of the whole DUI universe. Indeed, that term, “DUI universe,” is both accurate and instructive here. DUI cases really can be a whole world unto themselves.

This is in no small part due to the fact that every court is unique. Each has its own way of doing things. As a group, everyone in our office knows all of these idiosyncrasies. We are familiar with the different procedures required to obtain police reports and videos from the local cities. This degree of knowledge is the direct result of working together specifically on DUI cases everyday. Even though we often have different roles in that work, my team and I ultimately all pitch in and work as a team on our DUI cases.

Where a person is arrested for a DUI is one of the most important aspects of the case. This is particularly true in the Metropolitan-Detroit area (meaning Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and surrounding counties) where our firm handles criminal and DUI cases. A drunk driving arrest with the very same facts can play out much differently depending on location. Some courts (and Judges) are just plain tougher than others. In fact, there are sometimes significant differences between different Judges in the very same court.

When it comes to DUI cases, we can place every court into 1 of 3 general categories: tough, lenient, or what I call “middle of the road.” There are more that fall in the middle rather than in either the tough or lenient categories. Within that larger middle group, there is quite a bit of variation. To be clear, this article will not “rank” any of the local courts. After all, any such ranking would ultimately be nothing more than my opinion (even though it would be based on 30-plus years of extensive experience.) Whatever else, that’s the kind of subject best discussed confidentially.

Instead, this article stick to the larger point that, in DUI cases, “where” is a dominant factor. Perhaps the most significant (and disappointing) thing about this is the reality that there is nothing that can be done about it. A DUI case happens where it happens. Nobody plans to go out and get arrested for drunk driving. In a very real way, every DUI is an accident of geography. For as true as that is, however, the simple fact is that, at least for the person facing the charge, some places are better than others.