Maryland DUI Attorney Blog

http://www.mdattorney.com/lawyer-attorney-1300822.htmlAs a Baltimore Maryland DUI/DWI Attorney, I regularly see defendants who are improperly represented in Maryland District Courts by attorneys who do not specialize in the representation of people charged with criminal and serious traffic offenses. I blog about this issue fairly often because it troubles me greatly when I see attorneys who do not specialize in criminal and serious traffic offenses, make mistakes (also known as malpractice) that no specialist would ever make. Sometimes these mistakes go without consequence. Sometimes they cost their client's dearly. I was recently retained in a case where the latter scenario played out. (To research a Maryland attorney's qualifications in a particular area of the law and/or jurisdiction go to the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Web Site at http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp)

The client was charged with a DWI/DUI about a year ago. This charge represented his first Maryland DWI/DUI offense. Prior to this situation, he had been represented by an attorney in a divorce case. He had never had the need for an attorney prior to his divorce, so this attorney was the only one that he knew. So when he was again in need of an attorney he did what most people in his situation would have. He called his divorce attorney. This attorney, of course, told him that in addition to being a divorce attorney, he was also a criminal/serious traffic attorney and was "more than qualified" to handle this case. While this statement was not an outright falsehood, ( according to Maryland Judiciary Case Search, this attorney handles roughly 20-25 criminal/ serious traffic cases per year) he is hardly a specialist.

Continue reading "DUI/DWI Defendant Faces Long Jail Sentence on Violation of Probation: Was He Properly Represented By a Truly Qualified Attorney" »

As a Maryland DUI/DWI Attorney/lawyer I represent many individuals who are charged with DUI or DWI while they are on probation for another crime. That person may be on probation for a prior Maryland DUI or DWI case or they may be on probation for a criminal case. The latter situation was what I was confronted with in Baltimore County Circuit Court last week. In this case my client was on probation for domestic violence and was facing up to six years in prision if he were to violate his probation. There is no easier way to violate one's probation than to receive a subsequent conviction, even for a serious traffic matter (generally speaking court's will not violate probation for non-jailable traffic offenses such as speeding). In this case the stakes were even higher than normal because the client was very much on the domestic violence team's radar and they were chomping at the bit to request a violation of probation if he were to be convicted of the DUI and had let me know that they intended to seek the entire 6 year sentence on the violation. Needless to say, a plea bargain was not an option in this case.

Actually the case went back much further than last week and had in fact been postponed a number of times. I will get into the procedural background of the case shortly but first the facts: My client was driving his brand new Cadillac Escalade in Baltimore County one day last year. While admittedly driving approximately 50 mph in a 40mph zone my client claims he was clipped from behind by a as he began to negotiate a curve. According to my client, the car was tailgating him and when my client slowed down slightly to take the curve the car struck his rear bumper. This impact caused my client to lose control of the vehicle and strike telephone pole totalling the vehicle.

Continue reading "Drug Recognition Expert DUI Defendant Successfully Defended in Baltimore County While on Probation" »

http://www.mdattorney.com/lawyer-attorney-1301140.htmlhttp://www.mdattorney.com/lawyer-attorney-1301140.htmlSome of the most difficult Maryland DUI/DWI cases that Maryland DUI/DWI Attorneys are called upon to handle are cases in which the offender has prior convictions for Driving Under the Influence or Driving While Impaired. These people are known as "repeat offenders" and are, as one would expect, generally treated far more harshly than people charged for the first time. State's Attorney's typically seek jail terms for people with one or more prior convictions and file enhanced penalties which allow for sentences of up to 3 years instead of just 1 year which is the maximum penalty if the State has not filed the enhanced penalties. This week I kept an offender with four prior convictions out of jail in spite of the fact that the State had a virtually bullet proof case against him. I will explain momentarily but first a few general observations about representing repeat offenders in Maryland.

Continue reading "Fifth Time DUI/DWI Repeat Offender Successfully Defended" »

http://www.mdattorney.com/lawyer-attorney-1300822.htmlAs a Maryland DUI/DWI Attorney I have become very accustomed to analyzing a client's performance on the standardized field sobriety tests (at least the police officer's version of that performance) to determine its legal significance. There are two reasons why police officers request that people suspected of DUI or DWI request the suspect to the perform the standardized field sobriety tests which are the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus Test (HGN), the Walk and Turn and the One Leg Stand. There are certainly other tests that police officers asks suspect to perform in these situations such as alphabet, counting and finger dexterity tests but the three listed above are the standardized tests recommended by the NTSB.

The primary reason that police officers ask suspects to perform these tests is to allow the officer to develop probable cause to arrest the suspect or at least take him or her into custody and charge them accordingly. The reason for this is that the smell of alcohol alone is not generally considered to be enough to establish probable cause. The police officer will typically run the suspect through the tests and based on his assessment of the person's performance, either take the person into custody or release him.

Continue reading "Standardized Field Sobriety Tests: Why do Police Officers Request People Who Are Suspected of DUI/DWI To Perform Them?" »

As a Maryland DUI/DWI Attorney I am often retained for representation by offenders who have been charged and or convicted repeatedly in the past. An offender with a prior history of multiple DUI/DWI convictions presents an entirely different problem than that which faces the average first or even second offender. As I have discussed repeatedly here in this blog, even first and second offenses present the potential for incarceration these days, but if the case handled correctly this result can usually be avoided.

Offenders with two or more prior convictions, however, face almost certain incarceration if convicted in any jurisdiction in the state. As any experienced Maryland DUI/DWI lawyer will tell you, Harford County is among the strictest (if not the strictest) jurisdictions in Maryland for these types of cases which makes the risk even greater than if the offender were charged elsewhere.

Continue reading "Fourth DUI/DWI Offender Successfully Defended in Harford County" »

To be a successful Maryland DUI/DWI Attorney, it is necessary to have a thorough knowledge of what constitutes a legal or illegal stop of a motor vehicle by the police. Very often, the only plausible way to defend a DUI/DWI in Maryland is to attack the basis for the stop. The reason for this is that over the last decade or so the State Legislature has passed laws that make most DUI/DWI cases, in the words of former CIA Director George Tenant, "a slam dunk" for the prosecutor, once the prosecutor establishes that the police lawfully stopped the defendant.

This is especially true if the defendant took the breathalyzer and registered a reading of .08 or greater. This is because in Maryland, a person who is proven to have been operating a motor vehicle while having a blood alcohol content of .08 or greater is "per se" guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol. Even if the defendant didn't take the breathalyzer, however, most police officers write thorough enough reports detailing their observations of the defendant's performance on the field sobriety tests and conduct throughout the booking process, for the State to secure a conviction at least as to driving while impaired if not to driving while under the influence. We successfully defended a case in Howard County last month that presented this exact situation. Here are the facts:

Continue reading "Howard County DUI/DWI Case Successfully Defended" »

As a Maryland DUI/DWI Attorney who is in court on a daily basis, I am in a position fairly regularly to witness attorneys handling DUI/DWI cases who are clearly not qualified to do so. I am also regularly surprised that the clients that I meet with rarely ask me about my experience and background to determine my qualifications before agreeing to hire me. As a regular part of my initial consultation, I volunteer the information that I am a former Assistant State's Attorney and that I am a 100% full time Maryland Criminal Attorney, but again, people rarely ask me these basic questions. This is a serious mistake that can have very serious consequences.

By way of example, and I could offer many others, I was in Baltimore County District Court recently when I witnessed the shocking mishandling of a DUI/DWI case. The client was a second offender so the stakes were a little higher than for a first offender but the case was still very manageable if handled correctly. The attorney that handled the case, whom I will not name, was an attorney whom I know to be primarily a domestic and civil attorney. I watched in disbelief as he mishandled the case from beginning to end.

Continue reading "Is my DUI/DWI Attorney Really Qualified to Represent Me?" »

A number of bills intended to curb drunk driving are being proposed today to a Maryland Senate Committee. Backed by Governor O'Malley, police, prosecutors and highway safety advocates, a number of these bills-if passed-will change the landscape of drunk driving prosecutions in Maryland.

The most significant bill is one that imposes criminal penalties on adults who provide alcohol to minors. If passed, the teen drinking bill would elevate the penalty for supplying alcohol to minors from a civil offense to a criminal offense. Parents, siblings and religious exemptions will apply.

Additional laws being proposed include probation before judgement eligibility. Currently, a convicted drunk driver is not eligible for a PBJ for a second offense if the first DUI conviction occurred within 5 years. The new proposed law would raise the PBJ eligibility requirements to ten years.

Drunk driving defense attorneys may also have to tangle with a proposal that will impose a mandatory one-year driver's license suspense if any part of the drunk driving article is violated for a second time. Currently, lessor included offenses such as driving while impaired (DWI), when grouped with a DUI conviction, do not trigger the one year suspension.

Other related bills, as reported by a Baltimore Sun article, do not appear to be of relative significance to DUI lawyers or the public.

As a Former Maryland DUI/DWI Prosecutor, I represent people charged with DUI/DWI at their bail review hearings on a regular basis. Many people don't realize that at a bail review hearing the judge can raise the bail, not just lower it. This is why it is so important for a person who is charged with DUI/DWI to immediately contact an aggressive and experienced DUI/DWI Attorney.
Case in point: I was hired by a man who was charged in Baltimore City with his first DUI/DWI offense. After being arrested and charged he was taken to the Court Commissioner for his initial appearance. In spite of the fact that this arrest constituted his first DUI/DWI offense and that he had strong ties to the community, to include having a family, a steady job and owning his home, the Court Commissioner set his bail at a very high $27,000. The client rightly believed that this was an abnormally high bail and decided not to post the bail and instead to attend his bail review hearing the next day. The client chose not to consult an attorney at this point believing that the worst thing that could possibly happen at the bail review would be that the judge would refuse to reduce the bail, and that in all likelihood would substantially reduce it if not release him on his personal recognizance. Under most circumstances the client would have been correct; in this situation his decision turned out to be a very costly mistake that could have been avoided had he or one of his family members contacted an attorney immediately upon being arrested.

Continue reading "Defendant Charged with First DUI/DWI has Bail Raised to $200,000 at Bail Review " »

In Maryland, DUI/DWI Attorneys are often confronted with cases in which a client was found not to be driving while impaired or under the influence, but instead was found to be sleeping in his or her vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. This situation implicates the so called "shelter defense" in Maryland. Unlike in some other states, Maryland legislators have chosen not to make sleeping in one's vehicle an absolute defense to DUI/DWI charges. Some states have decided that as a matter of public policy, they want to encourage people who are driving under the influence to pull over and "sleep it off" so to speak, rather than continue to endanger the public by continuing down the road while under the influence. In these States, it matters not where the person was parked, how long they had been there or whether or not they admit to driving the vehicle to the location while under the influence. If the person made the decision to pull over and park their car rather than continue to drive under the influence, they simply may not be prosecuted for DUI/DWI in these states. Not so in Maryland.

In Maryland, the law essentially states that a person may use his or her car as a shelter while under the influence of alcohol so long as he makes no attempt to control the vehicle and does not present an imminent danger of doing so. A person in this situation can only be prosecuted for DUI/DWI if the facts and circumstances under which the person was discovered in the vehicle indicate that the person operated the vehicle while under the influence prior to using it as a shelter or that the person is imminently going to operate the vehicle in that condition. The leading case on this issue is Atkinson v. State. In that case the court laid out a 6 factor test to determine whether or not the person had driving the vehicle while under the influence or was simply using the vehicle for shelter.

Continue reading "Third Time DUI/DWI Offender Successfully Defended utilizing "shelter" Defense in Baltimore County District Court" »

Breathalyzer machines, commonly used by Maryland police, detect and measure the alcohol present in air that is breathed out. During the consuption of alcohol, the alcohol crosses from the intestine into the bloodstream. When the blood circulating around the body gets to the lungs, some of the alcohol in the blood crosses into the air contained in the tiny sacs of the lungs. This same air, that is breathed out of the lung, contains alcohol that can be measured by breathalyzer machines.

Researchers have determined the ratio of breath alcohol to blood alcohol. The test result for a breathalyzer estimates the concentration of alcohol in the blood. Although different individuals have some variation, blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is approximately 2,300 times greater than breath alcohol concentration. Breath-alcohol analysis is fast and easy to use, unlike the more reliable blood test. This makes the Breathalyzer breath-test machine a useful tool of choice for Maryland police to monitor drunk drivers.

If a person's BAC measures 0.10, it means that there are 0.10 grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. According to the American Medical Association, a person can become impaired when the BAC hits 0.05. The legal standard for drunkenness in Maryland is 0.08.

Skilled and experienced defense attorneys are familar with the use of these machines and the nuances which can cause an innacurate breathalyzer reading. Often the machine is broken, not properly calibrated, or the associated paperwork is not properly completed by the officer.

For more information on drunk driving defenses in maryland, please contact the experienced lawyers at our firm or call 410-385-2225.

Maryland DUI Attorney. I had a somewhat interesting DUI/DWI case with a client who was repeat offender yesterday in the District Court for Baltimore County. My client, who is from West Virginia, was charged with DUI and DWI. The facts of the case were that he was travelling Westbound on Pulaski Highway in Baltimore County, Maryland at approximately 12:15AM on the morning of September 12, 2008. He and a friend were visiting other friends in Maryland and were staying at a motel on Pulaski Highway. They had gone out to dinner and then to a "Gentleman's Club" and were returning back to the motel.

The motel was located on the East side of Pulaski Highway which is a divided four lane road with two lanes in each direction and a cement barrier separating the lanes. My client and his friend were not intimately familiar with the area and it was dark. They inadvertently passed by the motel and had to proceed approximately a half mile further West on Pulaski to reach the first break in the median. Here, there was a dedicated left turn lane and no signs prohibiting either a left turn or a u-turn.

Continue reading "Fourth Time DUI/DWI Offender Successfully Defended" »