What to expect after a DUI arrest.
If you've been charged with Driving Under the Influence, you are probably overwhelmed and you probably have a lot of questions and are experiencing a lot of emotions.
If you are stopped by police and you are suspected of DUI, that arrest can have lifelong consequences that you may not be aware of. As your blood alcohol concentration rises or as the number of DUI arrests increase, the consequences will also increase.
Do you need to submit to blood or breath testing at roadside?
In Arizona, if you are placed under arrest by an officer under suspicion of DUI, you are subject to a law called Admin per Se. By driving in the state of Arizona, you are implicitly giving consent to law enforcement to take your blood or breath once they have reason to believe that you are Driving Under the Influence of drugs or alcohol and have already placed you under arrest.
If you refuse to submit to a blood or breath sample after you've been placed under arrest, police will revoke your license to drive in the state of Arizona for an entire year. Worse, they'll still go and apply for a warrant from a judge or a magistrate in the middle of the night. Not only will you lose your license, but they will also get a warrant and get your blood or breath sample anyway. So, once you are under arrest, you should agree to the Admin per Se blood draw to avoid losing your driving privilege for an entire year.
Three major concerns following a DUI arrest.
The vehicle,
the license, and
the DUI charges.
Vehicle Impound
If police suspect that you are Driving Under the Influence of alcohol to an extreme degree at a .15 blood alcohol concentration or more, they are required to impound your vehicle for 30 days.
In very limited circumstances, you can get your car out early. In other cases, you have to wait the entire 30 days before you can get your car out of impound. You'll have to pay special fees, storage fees, and show paperwork to get your car out of the impound at the end of that period.
License Suspension
License suspension following a DUI arrest be really confusing because the motor vehicle division can take your license to drive before you've been found guilty of a DUI. This is because the Arizona Department of Transportation has a completely different procedure and court system than the criminal justice system.
Once you're arrested for DUI and the officer gets your blood or breath post-arrest, the officer files paperwork with the Motor Vehicle Division. Your license is typically suspended effective 15 days from the DUI arrest for an entire 90 days. You cannot get your license back until you've done a mandatory alcohol screening at a provider approved by the motor vehicle division.
If you, or an attorney acting on your behalf desire to contest the license suspension, you can request a hearing. This stops the license suspension from happening until you can get a hearing date. There are some pros and cons to requesting an MVD Hearing. It's important that you discuss the pros and cons of requesting a hearing with an attorney.
Criminal DUI charges
The most serious concern that most people have when charged with a DUI are the criminal charges that they are facing.
Unlike most misdemeanor charges in the state of Arizona, if you are charged with a DUI And convicted of DUI, jail time is required. There are substantial fees and other collateral consequences, so it is important to have an attorney evaluate the facts and circumstances surrounding your arrest to see if your charges can be dismissed, reduced, or whether you should go to trial.
Your first court date is a criminal arraignment. At this hearing, the entire purpose is for you to plead guilty or not guilty. At this hearing, it is only appropriate to plead not guilty because you don't know what evidence the police collected against you and whether or not there is sufficient evidence to convict you of Driving Under the Influence. An attorney should evaluate the arrest to determine whether there are any legal issues that might result in suppression of evidence or dismissal of the charges altogether. You are innocent until proven guilty. So at this hearing, you plead not guilty and you wait to see what evidence the government has against you.
Whether you hire an attorney in advance of the arraignment or whether you go to the arraignment and plead not guilty on your own, the next hearing is called a case management conference. At this hearing, you see the judge, the prosecutor, and your defense attorney. You meet together in the courtroom to talk about where you're at in the case.
The judge will ask the defense attorney if there is anything that is missing in order to adequately evaluate the legal and factual issues in the case. Nine times out of ten, we end up asking for more time so that we can review the disclosure and discuss options with our clients.
The attorney’s role in representation.
An experienced attorney will get the police reports and other disclosure from the government. They will compare the evidence against you with the Constitution of the United States and the State of Arizona as well as the laws surrounding DUI and/or other charges that you're facing, the rules of evidence, and the case law that interprets all of these statutes.
Your attorney will look to answer two questions.
First, did the government do everything right? Did they follow the 4th and 5th Amendment as well as other provisions of the U. S. And Arizona Constitution? If they do not “follow the rules” then your attorney can file a Motion to Dismiss or a Motion to Suppress certain evidence. That makes it harder for the government to prove the charges against you.
Second, your attorney is going to look at the facts alleged in the police report and compare them to the laws of the state of Arizona that you're charged with. The attorney is going to look and see whether there is enough evidence as well as the strength integrity of that evidence and advise you whether there is sufficient evidence to be found guilty by a judge or a jury. (In Arizona, because of mandatory jail time associated with DUI, those accused of DUI are entitled to a jury trial).
Continuous risk assessment.
Your attorney will talk with you about the consequences. How much jail time are you facing? How much are the fines going to be? What will you save by taking a plea versus going to trial? What is the risk assessment? How much do you have to lose? What are the potential chances of you winning If you go to trial? It is always up to you to decide whether to go to trial or whether to resolve the case with a non trial disposition.
This risk assessment should happen throughout the case. So, throughout the criminal representation, your attorney should be talking to you and telling you the state of the evidence, and allowing you to make decisions about how your case should proceed. The attorney will take your input to determine what type of outcome you might be comfortable with to see if they can negotiate with the prosecutor or whether going to trial is an appropriate outcome.
Going to Trial
One thing to keep in mind is that going to trial can take a really long time. There is a lot that has to happen before your attorney can adequately represent you at a trial. For example, once you decide to go to trial, your attorney will need to talk with and interview each and every witness that the government is going to bring to trial to testify against you.
This is the opportunity to really figure out what happened at roadside by asking the police officer specific questions about field sobriety testing. This is one of the reasons why it is important that you hire an experienced DUI Attorney— there is a lot of technical expertise that the police officers, prosecutors, and only experience DUI attorneys know about. An experienced DUI defense attorney will pick apart the field sobriety testing, the driving, and encourage the jury to look at you as an individual. An experienced DUI attorney will understand the chemical test and how to explain potential issues to the jury. They will look at the chain of custody, how the testing was done, and whether those test results are reliable. Approaching trial, it is your attorney's job to chip away at the state's evidence.
At any point during this pretrial process, a judge can completely dismiss the case. A judge can suppress evidence in the case or they can limit the use of evidence at your trial. In addition, the prosecutor has the authority to make those same decisions about whether to dismiss the prosecution, offer a better non trial disposition, or proceed to trial.
Many times, If an experienced defense attorney is able to chip away enough evidence, the prosecution and the defendant are able to reach an agreement that makes everyone happy. If the case is not dismissed or if a non-trial disposition is not reached, then the case will eventually go to trial.
Sentencing
If you are convicted, the next stage will be a sentencing hearing where you will be sentenced by a judge rather than a jury. An experienced criminal Defense attorney will present mitigation to the judge in hopes that they give you the least punishment that they possibly can. Likewise, the attorney can help you to make sure that you get all of those requirements filed with the court to show that you're in compliance after a conviction.
