How to Strategically Fight a DUI Charge in Michigan

By Jeffrey Randa

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Drunk Driving , DUI , DUI 1st offense , DUI 2nd offense

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Published on Aug 21, 2023

A Michigan DUI case will NOT dismiss itself

The only way to beat a DUI charge is to challenge the evidence. This must always be done as part of an intelligent defense strategy. A week before this article was updated, my team and I were able to successfully challenge the evidence in a third (3rd) offense OWI case and get the whole thing thrown out of court precisely because we carefully examined the evidence, and came up with a plan to challenge it.

To do less is basically surrendering in advance.

It is a time-proven fact that to beat a criminal or DUI charge, the defense lawyer must have a plan. At its most basic, a plan is a strategy that accounts for all the facts and evidence of the case. Being a Michigan DUI lawyer actually means being a DUI defense lawyer.

Properly defending a DUI charge often means fighting some aspect or aspects of it, but a scattershot approach to fighting everything, just for the sake of fighting (and getting paid), is not any kind of strategy or plan. Instead, we need to fight those things that can be soundly challenged. Judges know which lawyers actually fight for their clients as opposed to those that fight everything – just for a payday.

Unfortunately, a person already stressed out about a pending DUI case doesn’t know any of this, and usually has nothing to go on other than what he or she finds on the internet, or a recommendation from a friend or family member. The best thing a person can do is to be a wise consumer and compare lawyers. The goal of “looking around” is to seek real information, and not merely sift through a lot of self-praise or curated testimonials.

There is a lot that goes into a DUI case, but at the end of the day, we return to the simple truth that the goal is to either get the charge dismissed completely, or if that can’t be done, then to avoid as many of the legal penalties and negative consequences as possible.

Ultimately, success in a DUI case is best measured by what does NOT happen to you.

The first thing that any lawyer must do to move toward that goal is obtain the evidence. It is impossible to come up with any kind of plan of defense until the every last bit of the evidence has been carefully reviewed. Only then can it be determined if any of the evidence was improperly obtained or analyzed, and if there is a sound legal basis to challenge it.

The kinds of things that can be successfully challenged in a DUI case are often not obvious, and are only found after a methodical review. This is an important point, because while many lawyers will go over the evidence to see if anything “jumps out,” that’s not good enough. Instead, as the saying goes, everything has be put “under the microscope.”

That’s how we find things that can be challenged. Fighting, merely for the sake of fighting, and just flailing around blindly, hoping to “hit” on something is NOT any kind of strategy. Remember, the client is paying for all of that.

Beyond throwing money down the drain, there is an even bigger cost to an unfocused, shotgun approach of just fighting everything – the lawyer’s credibility. As noted above, judges know which lawyers come prepared, and make solid arguments, and  who just make a lot of noise (and charge their client’s for it), all for show.

Soon enough, a lawyer who just “fights everything” will exhaust the court’s patience and cause him or her to NOT be taken seriously – although he or she will be getting paid all along.

To be sure, just about everything in a case can be “challenged” in some way or other, but what matters is whether or not there is any genuine legal issue to debate. Beyond the financial interests of the lawyer, who does that serve?

The proper way to fight a DUI charge is to do so intelligently. A lawyer must follow the age-old advice to “pick your battles.” The proper balance lies between having a defeatist mindset and only challenging the evidence if something jumps out and that shotgun approach of fighting everything.

Our firm would never do that.

Instead, my team and I dig hard in order to discover something that can be used to beat a case, and by doing that, even if there is no such fatal flaw with the evidence, we often find lots of other little things that can be used to drive a better deal.

In other words, even though most DUI charges are legally solid enough to not dismissed outright, there are plenty of small things, that, while themselves not significant enough to get a case knocked out, can be used to drive a much better outcome than if we merely looked at the evidence and waited for something to “jump out.”

Because we are Michigan DUI lawyers and handle OWI (Operating While Intoxicated, the actual legal term for what everyone just calls “DUI”) cases all day, every day, we bring the experience of having examined thousands of police report reports and dash-cam (and now, body-cam) videos from drunk driving arrests. We know what to look for.

A lawyer with a broader practice and who simply “does” DUI cases will just have never have the opportunity to analyze a fraction of evidence that my team and I have examined In that context, any lawyer who doesn’t concentrate in DUI cases simply won’t have the depth of experience to know what to look for, or, for that matter, what he or she is missing when they do look.

The key, of course, is to find things that can be used for the client’s advantage. At the end of the day, a DUI lawyer should challenge those things that have a reasonable chance of making a difference in the outcome of the case, and not just “fight” for the sake of fighting (and getting paid).

That’s how to properly fight a DUI charge.

On the lawyer’s part, this requires a proper combination of experience, integrity, and skill.

For the potential client, it means being a good consumer and comparing attorneys to find an honest lawyer who will tell him or her not just what they want to hear, but what they need to hear, and with whom he or she can work effectively.