Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
This article is going to examine what happens to your driver’s license as the result any 1st offense Michigan DUI conviction. Here, we’ll be focusing specifically on 1st offense cases, and we’ll look at what happens among the various and different first offense charges. Unlike many of the longer, 2-part articles found on this blog, we’ll keep this piece to one installment for simplicity’s sake. Although this subject can get complex, we’re going to boil it down to something simple and easy to understand.
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.
First, let’s reiterate that our target subject is 1st offense DUI cases. For as much as there is to DUI license sanctions in general, by limiting our inquiry only to 1st offenses and skipping over 2nd and 3rd offense cases, we will cut out more half of the confusion. Toward the end of this installment, we’ll look at how another, fairly common relevant license sanction interacts with DUI license penalties, but will forego any analysis of those issues for now in order to keep things straightforward.
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.
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.
If by “fighting,” someone means NOT rolling over and NOT being spineless, then that’s correct. Unfortunately, for as many lawyers as there are who will charge endless fees to fight everything they can, there are plenty of others who are very much the opposite, and will plead out just about every case they get. Such lawyers “sell out” their clients just as much as the “fight everything” operations fleece theirs. When you think about it logically, it’s obvious that neither choice, by itself, is the right one, and that the best approach is a kind of compromise, falling somewhere in the middle.
We closed out the previous installment by discussing the critical importance of the mandatory alcohol screening, something that is part of the larger PSI (Pre-Sentence Investigation) process. The end result of the PSI is a sentencing recommendation, written by the probation officer, and sent to the Judge, advising him or her exactly what kind of sentence to impose. This matters because, in the real world, every Judge follows this recommendation VERY closely, if not to the very letter. In that sense the recommendation is really a blueprint for what’s going to happen.
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.
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.