Articles Posted in DUI

In part 1 of this article, we began an examination of the 2 things everyone going through a DUI will be required to do: breath and/or urine testing for drugs and alcohol, and some kind of classes, counseling or treatment. After a brief history lesson, we ended with what I consider the gold standard for DUI lawyers – that success in a DUI case is best measured by what does NOT happen to you. No matter how else you put it, the job of a DUI lawyer is to protect the client from as many consequences as possible, and that includes testing, which we’ll examine in this segment.

To really understand how and why alcohol testing is used as it is today, we have to step back in time, a little more than 20 years ago. Back then, a person facing a DUI here, in the Greater-Detroit area, was usually not specifically ordered to abstain from alcohol (or drugs) while the case was pending, as a condition of bond. Up until the mid-1990’s, nobody had even heard of, much less used, any kind of “testing,” to make sure that a person didn’t drink while waiting for his or her case to be resolved.

If, by some chance, a person was ordered to not drink while the case made its way through court (and for a long time, this was far more the exception, rather than the rule), there was really no way to verify if they were or weren’t, and about the only way a person could get caught violating it is if he or she had some kind of police contact (like an arrest for another case involving alcohol) and/or it was otherwise documented that he or she had been drinking.

This article is to help anyone facing a DUI to understand what he or she will experience going through the court system. To do this, it is most helpful to look back a bit, at how things used to be, in order to fully grasp the process today. Although there is a lot to a DUI in general, there are 2 key, “in your face” things that everyone will have to deal with: First, a “no drinking” order from the court, enforced by alcohol testing (and usually put in place right out of the gate), and second, some kind of alcohol education, counseling, or treatment, generally required as part of probation. I’ve broken this discussion into 4 installments to keep each one short and interesting.

A DUI is scary, but the truth is that things are probably not nearly as bad as the reader may fear. The Tri-County area of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties is a major metropolitan area, with a population of over 3.8 million people, and is home to 47 district courts, with over 110 Judges between them. Although each community that makes up the region has its own “vibe,” they’re all part of the larger metropolis, and things like jail overcrowding and a “big city” mindset means the courts here are more lenient than many distant, rural courts, that have plenty of jail space and fewer offenders.

I’ll repeat this throughout, but the standard we’ll use is that success in a DUI case is best measured by what does NOT happen to you. When it comes to DUI cases, what is considered “tough” today was unimaginable 20-odd years ago. Moreover, what we’d consider “lenient” today, with a few exceptions, would never have been thought of as especially “lenient” back then. In other words, today’s “normal” is very different from and much more demanding than it used to be. This is really part of a national trend toward getting “tougher” on drunk drivers. While some courts tend to pile it on ore than others, our job is to try and hold the line on that and help prevent our clients from going through anything that can be avoided.

As Michigan DUI lawyers, one of the things we frequently have to deal with are people who (understandably) “compare” their DUI to someone else’s. Often, we’ll hear things like “My friend got a DUI and he…” or “This person at work got a DUI and she…” This is usually followed by an explanation of what a great break or deal the other person got, or how bad things turned out for him or her. Of course, part and parcel of this is that people usually get a lot of things wrong as they explain another person’s drunk driving case.

Although it essentially goes without saying, I’ll say it anyway: no 2 DUI cases are alike. It is, however, human nature to look for help and understanding in the similar experiences of others. We all do this, no matter what the problem. Personally, I’ve hopped online a million times and googled some problem I was having, looking for answers for everything from replacing a kitchen faucet hose to dealing with shoulder pain while bench pressing. Replacing the kitchen faucet hose is pretty much the same in all cases, assuming you have the right model. Having shoulder pain, however, just like getting a DUI, is different for every person.

To be sure, it is possible to learn some things about your situation by listening to the experience of others, but differences between any 2 cases can be anywhere from relatively minor to absolutely huge. This makes sense when you think about it, because even if 2 people are arrested at the same intersection, by the same police officer, and their cases will be heard by the same Judge, there are about a million things that can make them different enough to render either useless as the basis for measuring the likely outcome of the other.

As a Michigan DUI lawyer, I know that an OWI charge must be based on evidence. Whether a case is solid or not depends entirely on the strength of that evidence. Just about every lawyer with a website is going to say something about evidence. Some, more than others, talk a really good game about how they’ll evaluate it, and even challenge it. While that all sounds great, I think it’s time we take a step back and briefly explain what all that really means, or at least should mean.

Perhaps the best known component of the evidence that makes up a criminal or DUI case is the police report. In a perfect world, this report would be an accurate, complete, and unbiased account of exactly what happened in any given case. However, it is impossible for an officer on the scene to NOT bring a biased perspective to the table, because the only thing he or she can do, at best, is recall what he or she observed, and observation is always a matter of perspective.

It would be no different, really, if the person arrested for the DUI was required to write a report. It doesn’t matter how honest a person arrested or the police officer may be; both parties are going to recall things a bit differently because of their different perspectives. If this wasn’t universally true, there would be no need for instant replay in football, and you’d never see a blown call in any sport. While the police report is always a key part of the evidence in any case, it is important to note that it is only one piece of a much larger puzzle.