Avoiding a DUI Charge

Ever been pulled over on a DUI charge? Yes this happens but you can beat the system with the help of a criminal defense lawyer.

Driving under the influence or DUI requires fast action on your part so that your license will not be suspended. The first thing you have to do of course is hire a lawyer so you can immediately be released from jail.

In some cases, this does not happen because you are released on your own recognizance. However, some will require you to post bail which your lawyer can take care of.

Once released, it is now time to address this issue. In some states, a DUI charge generates 2 separate cases. The first is filed with the Department of Motor Vehicles while the other is a criminal court case. When faced with this problem, you have to face these charges within ten days from the date of the arrest.

Just like any other criminal case, this begins with your arraignment. You will be asked to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty.

A DUI is a mistake that can plague you for life & make your future miserable . From super high insurance rates to trouble passing a simple employment background check, those three letters will mark you as sure as if you had them written in red ink on your forehead. Figuring out how to beat a DUI is imperative if you are to get on with your life. Luckily, there are things you can do to completely erase or seriously minimize the damage a DUI does to your driving AND criminal records.

When a charged person contacts a legal representative chances are they know very little about what happens next. Unless they have been charged before, they are typically unaware of the details which must be attended to following the arrest.

Chances are, your criminal defense lawyer will tell you to plead not guilty to these charges. This will give him or her time to review the facts of the case so your defense will be established.

There are many strategies available that your lawyer can use to you get out of a DUI and have proven to be successful.

Your lawyer may for example argue lack of probably cause for the initial stop. This means there was no reason at all to stop you and if that is the case, submit a petition to suppress any evidence that the police obtained when you were pulled over.

It is also possible to argue faulty of unreliable BAC results. The BAC stands for blood alcohol test which is used to test if the person's alcohol level has reached the maximum limit which makes him or her unsafe to drive a vehicle.

The results could be faulty if your lawyer can prove that the test was not properly administered, the equipment used was not properly maintained or you have a medical condition that may have an impact on the reliability of the test.

Another tactic is to attack the credibility of the arresting officer. If your lawyer is able to question the police officer and prove there are inconsistencies in their testimony compared with the police report they filed, you just might have a chance of getting a not guilty verdict.

But if things are not working in your favor and everything was done by the book, then your criminal defense lawyer may advise you to accept a favorable plea agreement. Doing so may get you reduced charges or sentencing concessions with the district attorney.

If you don't want to negotiate and decide to gamble in court and lose, then you can try to appeal the court's decision. If you don't, there will likely be an increase in your insurance cost, limits on employment options and you will now have a permanent record.

Hiring a criminal defense lawyer is the only way to get out of a DUI charge. After all, there are circumstances which you can argue so that you name will not be included in the criminal database system.

resource:http://society.ezinemark.com/beating-a-dui-charge-168fea8eb05.html

Precautions for DUI Arrest

First Precaution:

Buy a cologne or perfume and then put it in the glove box of your car. You should take care of one thing that the cologne or perfume needs to be much more expensive since the cheaper brands you can get at Wal-mart tend to wear off quickly and are not as much effective as the expensive perfumes are. The whole purpose behind using the cologne or perfume is to mask the scent of the alcohol in your vehicle as well as on your person.

After you have been drinking preferably use a spray bottle to apply the cologne to yourself from head to toe. Before you drive a vehicle make sure that you have sprayed the cologne around the interior of the vehicle to mask the scent in the vehicle. dui_precautions

Second Precaution:

Always make sure that you have some breath aids in your car at all times. There is no need to skimp on price here either. What you have to do is to buy some gum or mints that are fairly strong and will actually work like nu-breath or something similar to that.

These breath mints will help you in a way that they will not only mask the scent of the alcohol on your breath, but will also help to slightly slur your speech due to the sucking and chewing action. Those people who have been consuming alcohol will typically have slurred speech patterns.

So when the officer stop you to investigate he will have a problem in judging that either the slurred speech pattern is due to alcohol consumption or it is because you are sucking or chewing on a breath mint.

Third Precaution:

Before driving your car always spray the interior of your car with an air freshener. Here again I must tell you to use a more expensive air freshener then you would normally use. The air freshener should be a spray air freshener and it should not be the one of those scented pine trees that you hang from your rearview mirror.

If you use all three of the above suggestions in combination as precautions for DUI arrest it will help you to greatly reduce your chances of being arrested for DUI. If the investigating officer would have just the slightest hint of alcohol on you or in your vehicle during a routine traffic stop, it can turn into a DUI arrest. As said by Ben Franklin “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.
resource: http://www.dwiblog.org/2009/05/three-simple-precautions-to-reduce-your-chances-of-a
-dui-arrest/

What Not to Say When Pulled Over by a Cop

In what he calls an "educational video" that's widely circulated on YouTube, comedian Chris Rock offers advice on what to do when you get pulled over for a traffic violation.

"Obey the law" he says. "Stop immediately" and "stay in your car with your hands on the wheel." Finally, "if your woman is mad at you, leave her at home. There's nothing she'd like to see more than you getting your [you-know-what] kicked."

It's a dead-on spoof of a hard truth: Respect authority. If you don't, you increase the odds of a pricey ticket.

"Everything in that video is absolutely true," said Sgt. Matthew Koep of the South Plainfield, N.J., Police Department. "It's funny, but it's accurate."

Citizens who are generally law-abiding are likely to come into contact with the police only under two circumstances: If you're a crime victim or you get pulled over for a traffic violation.

Police officers are not out to make your life miserable, but to make sure you're following the rules of the road and not endangering yourself or those around you.

With a few exceptions, and an egregious traffic violation is top among them, cops aren't mandated to write tickets. Most would rather send you on your way with a friendly warning -- that can save you time and money.

But handle the situation with an aggressive or arrogant attitude and you can expect to squeeze an expensive court date into your busy schedule.


Play Nice

First rule: don't argue.

"I get this all the time," said Karen Rittorno, a nine-year veteran with the Chicago Police Department. "'What are you stopping me for? I didn't do nothing.' If they try to take charge of the traffic stop, they're not going to get out of it without a ticket," she said. "We ask the questions, not them."

Accept that the police have caught you doing something that's against the law, such as speeding or gliding through a stop sign.

"All we do is react to what people do when you pull them over," said Dennis Fanning, a homicide detective and veteran officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. "We don't instigate the stuff, but we will react to you. The situation will escalate or de-escalate depending on how that person reacts."

To argue with cops is akin to calling them idiots. Don't do that. "That's implying that I pulled you over for no reason and that bothers me," Koep said.


Keep It Honest

Don't lie, either. Cops are trained to note the human characteristics of lying, including twitching and looking to the left, and they know the right questions to ask to suss out the truth.

Fanning estimates that nine out of 10 people lie to him. "It's an attack on our intelligence," he said.

Moreover, the truth can set you free. Koep recalled an incident when he pulled a young guy over for speeding.

"He looks straight at me and says, 'You know, officer, I wasn't even paying attention. I just had the best date of my life. I just met my future bride. I'm just on cloud nine right now.'

"The guy was completely serious," Koep said. "How are you going to write that guy up after that? Who makes that kind of stuff up?"

Of course, don't use pejoratives when addressing the police, unless you're eager for a ticket. But other words may backfire, too. Rittorno works in a crime-ridden section of Chicago where the majority of people she pulls over for traffic violations don't have licenses or insurance, she said.

"So I get a lot of, 'I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean it, sweetheart,'" she said. "I hate being called 'baby' or 'sweetheart.' I'm 'officer' to you.''

The police don't like being talked over, either. "Be polite," said Chicago Officer Mike Thomas. "You have your rights as a citizen, too, but it doesn't do you any good to talk while he's talking."

Cops know that people are nervous when they get pulled over, and they expect a certain amount of jumpiness when they approach a car. Rittorno even admitted she's intimidated in the same situation. "I'm the police and I get scared if I get pulled over," she said.

But did you know they're on edge, too? You know who they are, but they don't know whether you're a good guy or a bad guy. "The only thing on his mind when he approaches you is safety," Thomas said. "You know you don't have a gun in your lap, but the officer doesn't know it."

Rittorno, for one, said she assumes everyone has a gun. "I'm always on 10," she said, referring to her high level of vigilance. "I take it down depending on their demeanor or what I see."


Stay Calm

When those headlights go on, it's best to pull the car to the right, stay in the car, turn the interior lights on if it's dark and put your hands on the steering wheel.

Don't make any quick movements, and don't turn to grab your purse or put your hands in your pocket or under your seat to retrieve your license -- until the officer instructs you to. Then, do it slowly.

Don't move to open the glove box either, until directed. And do that slowly, too. Let the police shine a light inside the box before you reach in. Many criminals hide guns in glove boxes.

"What's going to cause the situation to get worse is for the fear factor to rise in that officer," Koep said. "The officer is more likely to cut you a break as long as you can reduce that fear. …If you're friendly with me, not arguing or denying what happened, that lowers the fear factor and will make me a lot more cooperative with you."

Don't boast about who you know, either. That can infuriate cops. They consider it a veiled threat to their livelihoods. Fortunately, most municipalities have laws in place to insure that an officer is not fired or reprimanded for ticketing, say, the mayor's daughter.

Finally, never try to buy off a cop. "In those instances where they've offered me a bribe," Fanning said. "I loved making those arrests."

Jennifer Waters is a MarketWatch reporter, based in Chicago.

Beer Distributors Say NO to Prop 19

SOLUTION

The California Beer and Beverage Distributors have given the “No on Proposition 19” campaign a $10,000 contribution according to The Marijuana Policy Project.

How ironic it is to have alcohol makers teaming up with law enforcement groups to oppose marijuana legalization. This $10,000 goes with $30,000 from the California Police Chiefs Association and $20,500 from the California Narcotics Officers’ Association.

“Unless the beer distributors in California have suddenly developed a philosophical opposition to the use of intoxicating substances, the motivation behind this contribution is clear,” said Steve Fox, Director of Government Relations at MPP. “Plain and simple, the alcohol industry is trying to kill the competition. They know that marijuana is less addictive, less toxic and less likely to be associated with violent behavior than alcohol. So they don’t want adults to have the option of using marijuana legally instead of alcohol. Their mission is to drive people to drink.”

These are the people we are up against. The beer distributors don’t care how many of their consumers die of liver disease or crash their car.

“Members of law enforcement have argued against Proposition 19 by asserting, ‘We have enough problems with alcohol, we don’t need to add another intoxicating substance to the mix,’ implying that marijuana is just as bad as alcohol,” Steve Fox continued. “But the truth is that a legal marijuana market would not add another dangerous intoxicant to the mix; rather it would provide adults with a less harmful legal alternative to alcohol.”

When contacted by us, Allen St. Pierre – Executive Director of NORML – had the following to say:

“NORML is both interested and disturbed by the recent donation of $10,000 to the ‘Say No on Prop 19′ campaign, which seeks to maintain the many decade-old prohibition laws, thereby trying to protect some of their market share and profits that they know they’ll partially lose to a legal and taxed cannabis market.

In some ways what they’re doing is both parochial and logical, but bad for society, public health and consumers on the whole.”

Some cannabis activists are so disgusted with the alcohol lobby that they take their protests a step further.

“I have been so outraged by the role of the alcohol industry in funding Prohibition and opposing legalization, that I took an oath, ten years ago, to not buy or consume alcohol until cannabis is legalized,” Steve Kubby – Director of The American Medical Marijuana Association – told The 420 Times. This may seem like a small protest to some, but hitting the alcohol distributors in the profit margin is where it will hurt them the most. After all, if you make a product like alcohol you are pretty immune to public censure; but without money contributions to anti-cannabis groups becomes much harder.

Retired CA Judge and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition spokesman Jim Gray says the alcohol companies are being smart. “It was a really wise thing to do from a merchandising standpoint to reaffirm the distinction between a legal and an illegal drug,” he said. “They are protecting their own economic self interest.” This is obviously the right of any business. It is up to us to show them that it is not in their economic self interest to alienate cannabis users.

California Proposition 19 has many enemies, some with major political clout, and some with deep pockets. But the days of their propaganda are over. It is a new time, and the truth can no longer be contained. Cannabis is a safer alternative to alcohol, and the alcohol companies know it.
resource:  http://the420times.com/2010/09/beer-distributors-contribute-to-anti-prop-19-campaign/