Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
The end result of almost every Michigan DUI case that goes into the court system (and doesn’t get thrown out) almost alway includes a term of probation. As Michigan DUI lawyers, dealing with probation is an everyday part of our jobs. Most people have a general understanding of probation (“if you don’t screw up, then everything will be okay”), but there’s a lot more to it than that. If you’re facing a drunk driving charge, then you should know what’s likely in store for you. In this 2-part article, we’ll examine how probation works in Michigan DUI cases.
Let’s begin with this simple fact: It is overwhelmingly likely that anyone convicted of a Michigan OWI (DUI) offense will be placed on some kind of probation. Contrary to the marketing hype found on some legal websites, the real truth is that more than 98% of all DUI charges brought in Michigan do NOT get dismissed or tossed out of court. Of course, the goal in every case is to get it “knocked out,” but that outcome is the exception, not the rule. In the real world, it boils down to this: If you’re facing a drunk driving charge, then you’re pretty much facing a term of probation, as well.
To put this in perspective, some readers may be old enough to remember hearing about someone convicted of drunk driving who got nothing more than a fine. That may have been possible many years ago, when people could still smoke on airplanes and there were video rental stores in every neighborhood, but a lot has changed since then. The days of only having to pay a fine and costs for a DUI charge are long gone, and everyone who goes though the process is going to have to do something more, although it doesn’t have to be anything that’s truly awful.
Like so many of my other articles, this one was inspired by a real life case involving a client arrested for DUI in about the toughest jurisdiction here in the Greater-Detroit area. I often write about the importance of location in criminal and DUI cases, because it does directly impact how a case will play out, but the underlying truth is that what really makes one location easier or tougher than another are the prosecutors and Judges who work there. Certain courts are just “tougher” than others, but that tends to follow a kind of general continuum, with the more lenient courts being clustered around each other, and vice-versa.
Until the Coronavirus pandemic hit, about the only time anyone ever had blood taken was if he or she refused to provide a breath test, and the police had to get a warrant for a blood draw. In fact, when someone contacted us and indicated that his or her blood was taken, it pretty much always meant that he or she had refused a breath test. That’s no longer true, and, as of this writing, blood tests are every bit as common, if not MORE common, than breath tests following a DUI arrest, at least here in the Greater-Detroit area, where my team and I concentrate our drinking and driving practice.
There are 2 important things about money and legal services worth noting, and they’re like opposite sides of the same coin: First – you will never get what you don’t pay for when you hire a lawyer. Experienced, skilled and talented lawyers will never compete to be the most “affordable.” The better class of anything is never cheap. Second, it is an unfortunate fact that too many attorneys charge far more than their representation is worth. It’s much easier to wind up paying too much for an average, mediocre lawyer than to get any kind of “deal” for top-notch legal services.
The gold standard is really this: Success in a DUI case is best measured by what does NOT happen to you. In the real world, everyone’s first concern following a drunk driving arrest is not going to jail, followed closely by not losing their job, and not losing their driver’s license. Obviously, there are no rewards for getting a DUI – only potential negative consequences. In that sense, less is definitely more. Nobody is happy about to find themselves facing a DUI charge, and what they worry about most is not getting hammered with all kinds of legal penalties.
This may sound like a bunch of “touchy-feely” sales-person nonsense, but it’s not, at least for those people inclined to think about the big picture. Of course, everyone’s primary concern is about what is going to happen to them, and making sure they stay out of jail. While that’s understandable, the simple fact is that jail can be completely avoided in the overwhelming majority of 1st offense DUI cases, and in most 2nd offense cases, as well. Once a person realizes this, he or she can then concentrate on those things that will or may happen, and how the DUI will ultimately affect his or her life.
Having handled separate DUI cases for some of the very same, repeat clients over the span of 30-plus years while learning and observing their life stories has created an archive of connections and understanding that can only come from such a long investment of time. To be sure, 10 years is nothing to sneeze at, but to be able to look back over a period of more than 3 decades and see how how a DUI (or multiple DUI’s) happened, and then how that did (and did not) affect a person’s life, provides an incredible depth of perspective unmatched by anything less.
Apparently, there is a lot money to be made by scaring someone facing a DUI with all the maximum, worst-case potential legal penalties that can be imposed, and then positioning one’s self as being uniquely able to save him or her from them, or otherwise able to get the whole case dismissed outright, as if it’s that easy. If scaring people didn’t work, then so many of the online legal operations wouldn’t do it. As consumers, we are constantly exposed to all kinds of BS sales tactics, like ads for money-making schemes, miracle weight-loss programs, and an endless stream of medications that promise miraculous results.
Obviously, the first goal in any DUI case is to find some way to get out of it, but drunk driving charges don’t dismiss themselves. Instead, a lawyer has to work every angle to discover something that can be leveraged to either get the charges knocked out of court, or used to in order to force a better outcome. That’s not a bunch of meaningless talk, either, at least when real effort is actually put into a case. As one of my favorite lyrics observes, “Good work is the key to good fortune; winners take that praise – losers seldom take that blame.”
It is said that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” so I’m kind of flattered, in a sense, that other lawyers use my blog posts for their ideas. However, I do put a lot of effort into the analysis that goes into some of these installments, and I wonder if I should be mad at the fact that most of the copy-cat versions that I ran across edited much of that out, and thereby really amount to little more than “cheap knock-off” versions, or whether I’d be even madder if someone did try to pass off my analysis and reasoning as his or her own.