Beating a Michigan DUI Charge

Moreover, prosecutors and Judges don’t dismiss them, either, unless they have no other choice. It's our job to make that happen.

The key to getting a DUI case knocked out begins with the lawyer's mindset. 

Unfortunately, too many attorneys will merely “look over” the evidence to see if there is anything obviously wrong with it. 

Instead of just looking at the evidence, a Michigan DUI lawyer needs to really examine it, and assume there is something issue to be found, even if it’s buried in the details. 

As experienced Michigan DUI lawyers, my team and I know, from experience, that better results can only be had by presuming that there is something to be discovered at the outset of a case, and then digging for it, rather than just waiting for something to “jump out.” 

This is important, because there is no legal mechanism for anyone - from the police officer that made the arrest, to the Judge or the prosecutor assigned to the case - to simply dismiss a case for reasons like a person “can't have" a DUI on his or her record. The law doesn’t work that way. DUI cases stand or fall based entirely upon the evidence. 

Accordingly, we need to squeeze every possible bit of advantage out of it.

Two of the best and most likely places to find problems with the evidence are the traffic stop and the breath and/or blood tests. 

In order to successfully challenge a traffic stop, a DUI lawyer has to know the law, and how the Judge presiding over your case usually applies it. 

This what experience is all about.

That's precisely why we limit our DUI practice to the courts of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, or the surrounding counties. By going to the same courts, day-in and day-out, and by dealing with same people all the time, we know what will fly, what won't, and how to do things in each to get the best results.

The first step in every DUI case is to obtain the police report and other relevant evidence, like the police car dash-cam video, and any relevant body-cam video. Then, it must be reviewed - carefully.

Inevitably, every DUI case is written up in the police report in such a way as to "justify" the initial police contact and the arrest. No police officer is going to start out a police report with something like, “I decided to pull this car over for no reason…”

Accordingly, it’s our job to scrutinize every bit of the evidence beyond its mere face value. This highlights the importance for me and my team to investigate each case thoroughly, and get a copy of that police in-car video to see what really happened. 

Obtaining that video is standard practice in almost every DUI case we handle.

To challenge a breath or blood test, you have to know the underlying science of the various testing methods, and how things like a health condition (hypoglycemia, for example), can affect the results obtained. 

Being Greater-Detroit area Michigan DUI attorneys means knowing how the various local district and circuit court Judges interpret that science, and how they apply the law to it. 

This is an important part of what separates local DUI lawyers, like us, from other lawyers who who will take cases all over the state, or just "do" drinking and driving cases as part of a larger, more general practice.

We could go on endlessly about what could, might, or should be, but anyone facing a DUI is far better served by focusing on how things actually are, in the real world, where his or her case will actually be decided. 

To be sure, it’s not normal for the police to make huge mistakes legally damaging enough to render a case unable to stand up in court, but when a DUI lawyer does find something sufficient to knock out a DUI, it's almost always because he or she looked hard, and was persistent. 

In that regard, it takes a meticulous review of all of the facts and that evidence to find anything (and often enough, just that one little thing) that can be used leverage your way out of a drunk driving charge. Although most DUI cases do not get thrown out of court, my team and I almost always find something that can at least help get our client’s charge(s) reduced through plea bargain negotiations.

The real point here is that in order to have any chance of getting your drunk driving charge dismissed, we first have to look at the evidence, and know what we're looking for. Because handling DUI and DUI-related matters is what we do all day, each and every day, we know exactly how and where to do that.

Even in cases where things might first appear cut-and-dried, or otherwise hopeless, there are all kinds of things that can be done to get a DUI charge (usually written up as "OWI" or "Operating While Intoxicated") either dismissed, or at least substantially reduced.

The bottom line is that just as a sick patient looks to his or her doctor for help in getting better, so should a DUI client look to his or her attorney for help in making things better.