Criminal Law Review

2004 saw nearly 100,000 drunk-driving arrests in the state of Texas-basically, one for every 230 Texas residents. Although operating a vehicle while under the influence is certainly a grave offense, everyone deserves legal defense under the law, and no one should pay time or money for a crime they didn’t commit.

Although the legal limit in Texas is 0.08 BAC (blood alcohol content), drivers can still be pulled over for DWI even if their BAC falls within the legal limit if their driving appears to be impaired by drugs or alcohol. In the event that you find yourself pulled over for driving while intoxicated, the roadside breath test is voluntary, and it is never in your best interest to submit to a roadside breathalyzer test; if you submitted to the breath test, however, fret not-there are several legitimate defenses that can be used to impugn the results of a roadside breath test.

The same goes for breath, blood, or alcohol tests after booking. Never submit to an alcohol test of any kind until you’ve spoken with an attorney qualified to mount a DWI defense in the state of Texas.

The most important thing to remember is this: never, ever admit to guilt or discuss the case until you’ve spoken with a qualified DWI attorney. The primary aim of a DWI defense attorney is to get the charges dropped; if that proves impossible, the secondary goal is to find a way for you to retain your driver’s license-your lifeline to gainful employment. Both of these goals can be jeopardized by admitting guilt, submitting to alcohol test, or spending time discussing the charges with arresting or booking officers.

A drunken driving arrest or DUI case can be challenging, especially if you plan to win in California. When handling and taking a new client’s drunk driving case, it is important to have a thorough understanding of both the criminal court case and the Department of Motor Vehicles APS (administrative per se) cases.

The current system in the Bay Area and all over California has a long line of convictions and the list is growing as the counties pocketbook finds more and more budget cuts. Defense counsel, either public or private can go to work for you and stop the political crime of DUI cases charged daily.

In 1990, California lowered her limit from 0.10% to 0.08%, knowing that it would “catch” many more people in the web than previously under the higher alcohol content limit. Let’s look for a minute, in simple argument, to what 0.08% really looks like to the layperson. This small amount of alcohol means that it cannot be seen with the naked eye. A mathematician would say that it is 8/100’s of One Percent of a person blood is some form of ethyl alcohol.

There are naturally more and more DUI Drunken driving cases each year, no wonder and naturally the number of people looking for a defense lawyer locally is growing each day. People need a good defense and they are looking for help in fighting their case. I even recently met a man who was in a Drunken Driving Education Program, ordered by the court for his DUI, which involved prescription drugs, which he had to take for his health, and involved NO alcohol at all.

This man had to take 18 weeks of a course to keep his already restricted drivers license and keep driving his children to school. For someone who never drank alcohol due to his medical condition and had obvious problems, counsel would have been his best option. He had decided against it and had paid the price dearly.

It is the duty of your defense attorney to counsel or maintain those actions, proceedings, or defenses only as appear to him as legal or just, except the defense of a person charged with a public offense. It is very righteous and self liberating for anyone to defend their case and make the Government prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Currently, it is estimated that approximately 1/3 of the over 170,000 California DUI Cases every year have very legitimate and authentic scientific and legal issues and defenses. Having a defense lawyer to fight for you and find these defenses is critical to your future and future decisions in court. Each DUI triggers two separate cases that every good DUI Lawyer is well voiced in. The first is the Criminal Court Case and the second being the DMV case involving your driver’s license.

As a licensed minister, motivational speaker, and author of several books continuously in the public eye I take my reputation pretty seriously. While temporarily transitioning professionally after just getting married, I sought to take a job as a public school teacher at a local high school. I was immediately hired.

After completing orientation at the local county school board, I was ready begin the following Monday. That is until I received a phone call from the personnel investigator requesting that I appear before him at the local school board for a face to face interview before I commenced work.

Not knowing what this was about, I felt all weekend a bit nervous, like I was going to the principal’s office back in high school. The suspense was eating at me as the investigator refused to talk about the matter over the telephone. To comply with his request, I made the hour-and-a-half drive to the local county school board and appeared to answer his questions.

After the initial greeting and giving my driver’s license to the investigator, he began questioning me. Curiously, he asked if I had ever been to Parkridge, Illinois. I couldn’t say I had, nor had I ever heard about the place (which I was later told was a small suburb of 30,000 people outside of Chicago).

Later I learned that someone bearing my same name and nearly my same birthday (assuming it wasn’t identity theft, which I had experienced with a credit card the last time I stayed in Chicago when passing through for a day) had been arrested for a sex offense.

Knowing assuredly it wasn’t me, I immediately went home and visited the State of Illinois’ website and navigated to the sex offender link. Upon typing in my name, I found three males all who were sex offenders. Thankfully there pictures were also visible, further verifying they were not me. Of course that was a relief.

I immediately phoned the Parkridge Police Department and informed them, asking them to clear my good name. I also printed out the description of these three men along with their photographs and faxed them along with my driver’s license and passport to the Parkridge Police. Detective Ware told me “this is ridiculous” commenting on the fact our images didn’t match, neither our fingerprints.

Yet the FBI file was showing me whenever my social security number was being pulled up. The moral of the story is if you have a common name, or a name that someone else also bears; you may be unpleasantly surprised to find crimes on your criminal FBI report. It was then I realized why for over 2 years whenever Homeland Security and the U.S. Government ran background checks on me for high level governmental jobs, it was taking so long.

Thankfully I now am working through this and correcting the inaccuracies on record.

For God sake before you judge a person, do some thorough research and know the facts. Unfortunately investigator Chandler who did my background check for Homeland Security in 2007 told me that most likely few agencies or employers will be diligently enough to actually check and verify the records, and tend to believe whatever they pull up.

Hence it is worth you knowing what is on your record and quickly correcting it if there are any inaccuracies whatsoever.