DUI Lawyer, Fort Pierce

What to Do if You have been Charged with DUI

If you have been charged with DUI you are facing an uphill battle. You need the services of a skilled Fort Pierce DUI lawyer who knows the best strategies for defending against DUI charges. There are many opportunities that could be effective for your defense if you act quickly. The longer you delay the more difficult it gets. My firm will treat you with care and respect. My associate and I bring over two decades of knowledge and experience to your defense. We know what steps to take to make sure your rights are intact and, if they are not, we will aggressively seek to have them restored and, if possible, the charges dropped.

Crafting an Effective DUI Defense

There are often circumstances, which if understood and made use of, can result in a DUI case being dismissed or result in a greatly improved outcome for you. The key is really to begin your defense as soon as possible once you have been arrested. I am available at any hour of the day or night to begin your defense. A thorough review and evaluation of the steps taken by the arresting officers can sometimes reveal sloppy or negligent work which can result in a violation of your rights. Improperly maintained equipment can make sobriety tests invalid.

Our DUI Defense Philosophy

These cases take a lot of hard work and expertise on our part to ensure you do not end up with a conviction on your criminal record. These are not cases that can just be treated like any other misdemeanor case. Due to the tough lobbying efforts of organizations like MADD, DUI has some of the stiffest penalties in the penal and transportation codes.

Whether you have refused the tests, taken the breathalyzer, or had your blood drawn by force, we know the law, and will use it to protect your rights. From your initial consultation all the way through your License Revocation Hearing and through your DUI trial, if necessary, we will be there to fight for you every step of the way.

Your criminal record will stay with you for the rest of your life, and we understand this at our firm. At a time like this you need representation that is singularly focused on protecting your rights and your record. In a situation like this, now is not the time to guess whether the lawyer you hire knows how to defend a DUI case; with this firm by your side, you know you are protected.

WE WORK HARD to uncover the truth, and use the law, to win your case!

Why you need an experienced Fort Pierce DUI Lawyer

These hearings allow a good Fort Pierce DUI lawyer to subpoena your arresting officer and question him/her under oath about why he stopped you and what he observed. This can be invaluable testimony at a future criminal trial in order to provide the jury with reasonable doubt and show your innocence.

Criminal Trial

The process often takes several months to get form your arrest, through the pre-trial process and discovery of the facts, to the actual trial by jury to determine your guilt or innocence. There are many points along the way in this process for DUI cases to be dismissed or be reduced to a less severe charge. In order to expose these hidden issues, you need a lawyer that has years of experience in digging into the facts of DUI cases and confronting the witnesses for the District Attorney. DUI are a some of the most scientific cases criminal defense lawyers defend. There is science involved in the field sobriety tests, in the breathalyzer, and in the blood draw used in no refusal cases.

Not only does your lawyer need to be a good trial lawyer, he/she needs to fully understand all of the science behind these DUI specific issues.

First Offense DUI

The typical person charged with a first offense DUI has no prior criminal history, and other than traffic tickets has no experience in the criminal court system. Most first-time DUI defendants have jobs and careers they are concerned about losing, due to a DUI conviction. Our first-time clients worry about how will they be able to drive to work if their license is suspended? This firm is here to help guide those clients through the court system and make sure the facts of their case are thoroughly examined, prepared, and presented to the court to protect our first-time DUI clients.

A first-time offender has a story to tell about who they are as a person, and what actually happened that lead to their arrest. We work hard with our clients to ensure we understand every aspect of their stories and lives so we can tell them to the District Attorney or the court when the time is right.

This firm has investigators and experts ready, when needed, to examine the facts of your case and to show why the police officer was wrong when they decided to charge you with DUI.

First-Time DUI Penalties

If you are convicted of a first-time DUI, you face up to 180 days in the county jail, a fine not to exceed $2000, and having your driver’s license suspended up to 1 year. Additionally, if you are stopped for DUI and have an open container of alcohol in your vehicle, you will face a minimum term of confinement of 6 days in the county jail.

Some other consequences of a first-time DUI conviction are that you will enter the State of Florida surcharge program and be surcharged $1000 each year for 3 years (a total of $3000). Your car insurance rates will nearly triple for your yearly premiums. You will also be required to carry an SR-22 insurance policy. Many judges will also require you to pay to have an ignition interlock machine installed on your car, which requires you to blow into a tube not only to start your car, but also to keep it running.

Felony DUI & Multiple Offenses

A second DUI is usually charged as a Class A misdemeanor and will carry double the fines and jail time as a first-time DUI.

If you have multiple previous convictions for DUI (2 or more), regardless of how long ago the convictions occurred, you face the possibility that the prosecutors will charge you with a third-degree felony DUI.

Felony DUI

If you have 2 or more prior DUI convictions, or if you are involved in an accident that causes another person’s injuries; you can be charged with a third-degree felony DUI. A felony DUI has possible punishment ranges of up to a $10,000 fine and up to 10 years confinement in a state prison.  You will also face having an ignition interlock device installed on your vehicle.

Our team will fight to prevent you from being convicted of a felony DUI and many cases the charges pleaded down. Additionally, we will also aggressively prepare your case to be presented for alternative punishments, instead of a lengthy prison sentence. Some alternate punishment options include inpatient rehabilitation programs or mandatory Antabuse prescriptions (a drug that when mixed with alcohol causes the person to become violently ill). We have also had success in having clients sentenced to wearing SCRAM alcohol monitoring ankle bracelets instead of serving time in prison.

If you caused an accident that resulted in the death of another person you could face second degree felony for intoxication manslaughter. The penalty ranges for a second-degree felony are up to a $10,000 fine and up to 20 years confinement in the state prison.

You may be charged with a state-jail felony DUI if you had a passenger under the age of 15 in your vehicle at the time you were stopped for DUI. If you are charged with a state-jail felony DUI, you face jail time from 180 days up to 2 years in a state jail facility, and up to a $10,000 fine.

DUI & Drug Use

Most of the time, DUI cases involve the ingestion of alcohol to a point causing intoxication. However, alcohol is not required for a DUI conviction. A person can be intoxicated through the use of drugs. The drugs can be either illegal drugs like cocaine or marijuana, or legal prescription drugs. Additionally, some over the counter medications can cause impairment that resembles alcohol intoxication, such as some cold medications that make you drowsy.

Under Florida law, any substance you take that could impair your mental or physical abilities while you drive is enough for the State to bring a charge of DUI. This means that anything you take that makes you sleepy, or slow to react or unable to follow instructions can result in a charge of DUI against you. If you were intoxicated as a result of taking medications that had unknown adverse effects on you, or if you took two prescriptions that you did not know would cause you to be intoxicated, we can use this information to try and get your case dismissed. Contact us today, because we need to start working on this defense now, as it takes a long time to gather all your medical records to prove these facts.

If a police officer stops you and believes you may be intoxicated by something other than alcohol, he can call for a Drug Recognition Expert to come out and give you another set of tests, or he can request you to submit to a blood draw test to determine what is in your blood system. If you refuse the blood draw, the police officer can request that a judge issue a warrant to force the draw of your blood to be tested without your consent.

How do I choose the right DUI Lawyer?

A DUI charge against you is a SERIOUS criminal charge. Whether your case is a misdemeanor or a felony, you face severe penalties in the form of jail time, fines, loss of driving rights, surcharges, fees for interlock devices and raised insurance rates to name a few.

Within a day or two of your arrest you will begin to receive solicitations in the mail for “lawyers” that know you have been arrested and want to handle your case for fees that sound too good to be true. You will get dozens of these cards in the mail. Review this blog post about what I call “Mailbox Lawyers”, it completely describes who these lawyers are, and why you should avoid them like the plague, if winning your case is the goal.

The most important thing you can do for your case is to hire an experienced DUI lawyer as early in this process as you can. The more time we have to work for you, the better prepared we will be to defend you from these DUI charges.

Once we are hired to represent you we will immediately file for a hearing on your driver’s license, and file the appropriate motions to force them to turn over all the evidence they have in the case.

We will appear on your behalf at your first criminal court appearance and every court appearance afterward. We will file motion to have the District Attorney turn over all their on-scene videos of you, any breath test results, all the breathalyzer maintenance records, any videos of your blood draw, and all records for the blood draw and testing of your blood at the crime laboratory. We will aggressively seek out every possible defense available to you.

We analyze all of the evidence we collect and make a group decision with you about how to proceed on your case. You will be involved in the defense of your case, every step of the way.