Brown & Little, P.L.C. » Entries tagged with "DUI"
The Bigger Problem
There’s something called a “BAT Van” in Texas. “BAT” stands for “Breath Alcohol Testing,” and the purpose of these vans, as you might guess, is to measure whether a driver is impaired try to detect a subject’s mouth alcohol using a potentially unreliable machine made by a largely unregulated and highly secretive company and then roughly correlate that result to a subject’s blood alcohol while largely ignoring the subject’s unique and highly variable metabolism in order to convict him or her not of necessarily being impaired, but of having too much of that thing the state has so imprecisely measured in his or her blood. Those vans are pretty prevalent here in Arizona too, though we’re switching to violent, forcible blood draws in many jurisdictions and don’t have nearly as … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI
Fines
I have no problem with the idea of a court ordering someone pay restitution to a victim. Making an aggrieved party whole seems like exactly the kind of stuff a decent justice system should try to do. Probation also makes sense to me as a sentencing option. If we care about rehabilitation, services and some sort of supervision seem essential. I even understand the need for incarceration as part of the sentence in some cases. Although jail and prison terms are routinely and unfairly ordered to excess, I can see the logic in removing a dangerous person from society. I understand retribution and the idea that there may be a deterrent effect in taking away someone’s liberty. Also, when it comes to time, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Courts, DUI, Government Rants
The Makings of a Great Tragedy
I once received very wise advice to take caution when writing about things close to home. I took it to heart. Years of being told “don’t shit where you eat” didn’t sink in, I guess, but that more subtle, specific advice did. Things far away aren’t so clear, however, so they may be a different story. Circumspection be damned? If I lived in Texas, I would have had a little more background when I read this post by Murray Newman. I was skeptical about what he perceived as a double standard even reading it without context, but that by itself didn’t seem worth a post on my part. When a prosecutor gets charged and defense lawyers don’t just rant about the presumption of innocence, I … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI, Practice in General, Prosecutors
Quit Enabling Them
I’m often disappointed with other defense lawyers, but I keep it to myself. Not this time. What I’ve been seeing over and over again in city and justice courts is just too embarrassing to tolerate. I’ve written before about prosecutors offering pleas that no defendant in his or her right mind should ever accept. I’ve also written before about Arizona’s DUI drug statute. I haven’t written about how defense lawyers are enabling and even encouraging prosecutors to offer worthless pleas to defendants in drug DUI cases. A plea should give a defendant some benefit. Otherwise, there’s little if any reason not to go to trial. Prosecutors seemed to know that before, as the standard offer for a first time drug DUI in many courts used to … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI, Prosecutors
Happy National No-Phone Zone Day!
Every TV channel I saw at the gym this morning seemed to be covering the fact Oprah has declared today “National ‘No-Phone Zone’ Day.” I guess that Oprah has convinced the USDOT, the NHTSA, the GHSA, and a variety of other government entities with acronym names to join her in promoting awareness to end distracted driving. I normally wouldn’t post about something like that, as every day is stop-something day, but my head filled with thoughts as I watched part of a segment showing teenagers trying to drive a golf cart around a course marked with cones while texting. Needless to say, very few cones remained standing at the end, and the exercise supposedly demonstrated the dangers of what I’m going to call DWD, driving while distracted. I … Read entire article »
Filed under: DUI, Government Rants
Too Good to Last
You may remember an old post about whether you can get a DUI in a car that doesn’t work. The issue came down to “actual physical control.” That’s because you don’t have to drive to get a DUI in Arizona; you just have to have actual physical control of a vehicle. When Arizona’s Court of Appeals, Division Two came out with a related opinion in State v. Zaragoza, I put up another post about actual control. I was pretty negative about whether the opinion would make a difference. It turns out I was right to be negative, but for the wrong reasons. This summer, the Supreme Court of Arizona vacated the opinion of the Court of Appeals. In Zaragoza, the defendant staggered to his car and got … Read entire article »
Filed under: Arizona Cases, DUI
Arizona DUI Stupidity
Imagine you’re sitting in the comfort of your own home, enjoying a glass of fine single barrel Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. It’s about midnight, and you’re on your third or fourth when you hear the back window of your home shatter. You can hear that someone is trying to break into the house, and you run to call 911. As you frantically rush through the house, you see someone breaking in through the front window as well. You have no time to think, and not knowing what else to do, you swing open the door leading to your garage and jump in your car. You lock your doors, fire up the engine, open the automatic garage door, and speed off while calling the police. Congratulations, you … Read entire article »
Filed under: Arizona Cases, Arizona Statutes, DUI
Promises, Promises
One of the most common things I hear in initial consultations is that “attorney so-and-so said he could definitely get me X deal.” It can be a frustrating situation when the client was promised something that no defense attorney in their right mind would promise. Sometimes, it ends up being an amusing situation when the “deal” prospective clients claim they were promised really can be guaranteed. Multiple clients have said to me that local high-volume DUI firms told them, “if you hire us for your first time regular DUI, we can get the judge to suspend all but one of the ten mandatory days of jail.” That’s true. It’s a reasonable guarantee because it’s a virtual certainty, but it’s misleading for that same reason. That result has … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Ethics, Practice in General
They Were Practically Begging to Be Struck…
A lot of people have been writing about peremptory challenges lately. You can read some interesting posts here and here. In Arizona, the parties each get six peremptory challenges in felony cases not punishable by death. It’s not always easy getting a juror struck for cause, so those six “free” strikes usually feel like far too few. The problem is that most people think they can be fair even when they really can’t be. Who’s willing to admit to a room of strangers that they can’t possibly be fair and impartial? Recently, I learned that when drinking and driving might be involved, the answer is “almost everyone.” I had a trial a couple months ago where there was evidence my client drank alcohol prior to … Read entire article »
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