The Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled in Johnson v. State (1991) that this DOES NOT amount to double jeopardy. The bases of the MVA administrative hearing is to determine if the driver "broke his agreement" with the state when he was issued his license and agreed not to "drink and drive."

The drunk driver of the vehicle that hit the train stayed at the scene long enough for the police arrive. He told the police when asked that he was driving and he agreed to submit to field sobriety tests. He was found to be intoxicated, went to court and was convicted based upon his admission to the police and the subsequent field sobriety tests.

In the case of the defendant who hit a tree, left the scene and his car behind, jumped in a cab and went home to sleep it off. The next day when the police tracked him down by his license plate, he refused to talk to them without a lawyer present. He did not admit to driving, causing the accident, or to drinking. He was charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving property damage, but not DUI. When he went to court, the State could not prove he was driving that night and the defendant was acquitted. His only repercussion was the costs to get his car out of the Baltimore City yard.

I blogged about a case a few weeks ago that I got involved after the sentence had been imposed and tried unsuccessfully to reverse the damage. In that case the defendant did not get into an accident, blew a .16 and had only one prior occurring 11 years prior to the second. He received a sentence of 4 months to serve in the Baltimore City Jail after the case was badly mishandled by his attorney. I represented a similarly situated second offender in the exact same court last week with a completely different outcome. Here are the facts.

As I indicated in my blog about D1's case, I believe his attorney badly mishandled his case. This is because he accepted the State's offer on the very first trial date in Circuit Court after praying a jury trial and because the case was not properly prepared either for a defense or for mitigation. The prosecutors who handled my case were the very same ones who handled D1's case and their initial position was that they would demand a lengthy jail term for my client. But I did a few things differently than did D1's attorney.

First of all, I exhaustively prepared a plausible defense which was that the officer was lying about the probable cause for the stop. Ordinarily in a case like this I would send a private investigator to the scene to take video and still pictures of the area. In this case my client chose to do the leg work himself rather than pay for an investigator but the result was the same - we developed photographic proof that the police officer, at minimum, exaggerated my client's poor driving. I conveyed the gist of my defense to the prosecutor and I believe this made him at least consider the possibility that he might lose the case. Putting this kind of doubt in a prosecutor's mind about his case almost invariably improves the plea offer that he makes.

The second thing I did was take advantage of the crowded nature of the court's docket and allowed the case to be postponed for almost a year due to court unavailability. Sooner or later if a case is postponed enough times, the State will almost always have a problem with their case and that is what happened here. The arresting officer was out of town but had failed to submit notice ahead of time so the prosecutor was in a position of having to ask for a postponement which he knew could have been denied. Although I suspect the court would have granted his request, he would have no choice but to dismiss the entire case if his request was denied. This was a chance he did not want to take.

Ultimately the prosecutor made the calculation that between the defense that we prepared and his witness problem, that it was in the interest of the State to secure the conviction rather than risk losing the case altogether. He offered probation and my client gladly accepted it. I believe this was a just result in this case but it is not what would have happened if I had simply showed up in court and accepted whatever offer the State made like D1's attorney did for him.

I recently got involved in a DUI case that was badly mishandled by another attorney in Baltimore City Circuit Court. Here are the facts:

The case appeared was very strong against the defendant. As noted the stop was solid as he was pulled over for speeding. He was clocked on radar doing 71 in a MPH zone. He smelled badly of alcohol, performed very poorly on the field sobriety tests and as I noted blew a .16. DUI/DWI cases don't get much easier for the State to prove than that. The case ended up in Circuit Court after his previous attorney prayed a jury trial from the District Court in Patapsco which, given the currently line up of judges down there was probably the right tactical move.

But that was the last thing he did right. He then plead his client guilty in front of a bad judge on the very first trial date even though the judge told him that she was going to give his client 4 months in jail. One of the easiest things to do in the practice of law is to postpone a case on the first trial date in Baltimore City Circuit Court. Indeed more often than not there is not a trial court available even in the instances where you do want to go to trial on one of the first few dates. The attorney made no attempt to postpone the case and instead let his client go to jail for the longest sentence I have ever heard of for a second offender not involving an accident.

The defendant turned out to be a friend of a friend and this friend contacted me after the debacle I just described.and that I would attempt to get the judge to change the sentence. I warned my friend and indirectly the defendant's family, that it is always much more difficult to fix a legal mistake than it is to avoid it in the first place.

I went on to advise them that I would have at minimum advised the client to do a 48 hour and possibly a 28 day in-patient program in a situation such as this one, especially in Baltimore City where the judges are among the strictest in the State on DUI's. (I know this seems hard to believe given the amount of violent crime in Baltimore City but trust me it is true). At any rate I filed a Motion to Modify Sentence along with a letter accepting him into the 28 day in-patient treatment program at Right Turn of Maryland and a copy of a certified check for the entire tuition. I had a letter from his employer attesting to the valuable service he performs for the not for profit company where he worked. I explained to the court in the motion that the defendant's prior attorney failed to realize the serious nature of his client's alcohol problem which was indicated by the facts of the case and asked the judge to allow him to serve the remainder of the sentence in Right Turn instead of the City Jail or to at least set the matter in for a hearing to hear argument on the merits of the motion. But as I warned the client's family, it is always far more difficult to get a judge to change a bad sentence than it is to dissuade him or her from imposing it in the first place. The court denied the motion without a hearing.

As experienced Maryland DUI lawyers, we have found that in difficult cases, our clients often fair much better on appeal than in the original trial. This is usually due to the fact that the higher court is used to dealing with the most serious crimes and a DUI is, relatively speaking, not as serious as murders, rapes, and other crimes the higher court is accustomed to dealing with. It may also have something to do with the fact that delay is always a friend of the defense for several reasons.

Indeed at the time I was shocked at the level of incompetence of some of the attorneys. When I asked around, I found that many of these attorneys were domestic attorneys or had practices focusing on civil litigation. It seems that if one of their client's came to them charged with a criminal or serious traffic offense, they would simply handle the case themselves instead of referring the matter to a criminal attorney. As I said, I prosecuted cases against these attorneys on a daily basis for five years and the clients were usually not well served. I have made the same observations from the other side of the aisle in 12 years I have spent as a full time criminal attorney and I witnessed a particularly egregious example last week.

It turned out that this was the client's third DUI offense so he was definitely facing a jail sentence if convicted even with a "good judge". I listened to the attorney do a reasonably good job qualifying his client for the plea and then listened to the facts of the case. The police responded to the scene of a disabled vehicle. When they arrived they found a car that had slid off of the road and become stuck in the mud. The defendant was in the vehicle but not in the driver's seat. He was in the passenger seat listening to the radio. The keys to the vehicle were in the ignition but the engine was not on. The police found a half empty bottle of vodka in the vehicle and the defendant was clearly under the influence. The defendant admitted to drinking but claimed that he had not had anything to drink until after the car got stuck. He was never asked by the police if he was the driver. As the statement was read some of the other attorneys in the courtroom began to exchange knowing glances as this case had an obvious defense.

Under Maryland Law a person is entitled to use his motor vehicle for shelter, even if he is under the influence of alcohol. The leading case on this issue, Atkinson v. State, lays out several factors including the defendant's position in the vehicle and whether the motor is running, for the court to consider in determining whether the vehicle was being used as a shelter as opposed to driving or attempting to drive the vehicle while under the influence. In addition to the so called "shelter" defense there was also the defenses that he was not the driver and even if he were, that he had not been under the influence when he was operating the vehicle and only drank after he became disabled.

Needless to say, the attorney did not pursue any of the defenses and instead plead the defendant guilty. He presented decent mitigation but only had his client in an outpatient program which is almost universally considered insufficient for a third offense anywhere in Maryland. The defendant was sentenced to one year suspending all but sixty days to be served in the Detention Center. I have certainly seen much longer sentences for a third offender but this defendant had a very good chance at an outright walk had the attorney recognized the obvious defenses to this case. Not only that but had the attorney really been familiar with this particular judge he would have know that not only is he a "good judge" in the sense that his sentences are on the lenient end of the scale but he is also a "good judge" in the sense that he doesn't assess a trial penalty. In other words he will sentence the person to the same sentence if he has a trial as he would have had the person plead guilty. This is not always the case and because it is true of him there was simply no reason not to take a shot at winning the case in trial. In other words, the attorney really did get much of a bargain in exchange for his client's plea.

After the case was I was told by another attorney who was present that as I suspected the attorney did not specialize in criminal defense or serious traffic matters. Instead he was primarily a real estate lawyer. I have no idea how the client ended up hiring him but I can only surmise that he failed to investigate the attorney's qualifications before hiring him.

The real tragedy here is that this result was completely avoidable had the client taken just a few moments to investigate the qualifications of the attorney before retaining him. If the client had simply asked the attorney what percentage of his practice was criminal or how many DUIs the attorney handled each week or month, he would have become aware of his attorney's lack of experience in criminal and serious traffic matters. The are also many other ways to investigate an attorney's background to include contacting the bar association or researching the attorney's case experience on Maryland Judiciary Case Search - http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp.

Criminal and jail able traffic cases are serious matters that can result in serious negative consequences for the the person charged. Researching an attorney's qualifications is a relatively easy thing to do these days and a person really ought to spend at least as much time doing so as they would spend researching what movie they are going to watch on pay per view tonight.

It is very easy for the police to prove a vehicle was in an accident. Often there are paint, blood or hair follicles that can be matched to the object or person hit. In cases where the vehicle is not ditched, police are often able to track down enough evidence to make a case against the owner/ driver. Sometimes the investigation takes days or weeks.

In these instances, however, it is almost impossible to prove the operator of the vehicle was impaired. This is because in order to convict a person of drunk driving, the police need to establish that the person was 1) behind the wheel, 2) had alcohol or drugs in his system, and 3) was above the Maryland legal limit of .08 or otherwise impaired.

For more information on DUI's in Maryland, please contact me for a complimentary consultation.

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.

While the initial outcome of the case is certainly an important part of properly representing someone in a DUI/DWI case, it is also a vital part of the representation to anticipate what the consequences will be of a violation of probation should one occur. As a full time criminal and serious traffic attorney, I can honestly say that I have yet to meet the DWI/DUI defendant who didn't promise me in all sincerity that "he will never get behind the wheel after drinking again". Unfortunately, people have short memories and all too often the people we represent in these cases not only re-offend but do so while they are still on probation for the initial offense. So it is important to anticipate that a certain percentage of your clientele will re-offend and to plan accordingly. It is also important to recognize that while you may be able to identify some clients as likely probation violators, there will also be cases where clients who you couldn't imagine violating, do so. So a responsible practitioner simply has to assume that there is a possibility that each and every client has the potential to violate probation and, as I said, plan for that contingency.

And this is where my client's original attorney made his mistake because the judge that he allowed the client to appear in front of has a well deserved reputation for having zero tolerance for violations of probation. Any experience criminal defense attorney in Baltimore would have known that it is madness to allow your client to be on probation to this particular judge because if your client violates his probation, as a certain percentage undoubtedly will, the consequences for the client will be swift and devastating. Indeed, it is this particular judge's practice to immediately issue a no bail bench warrant upon being notified of a subsequent charge and if that person is convicted, to impose, without exception, the entire suspended sentence.

In this case my client made it on probation for about 10 months without incident until he was arrested on another DUI/DWI. This particular client has a family, a mortgage and a very good job. True to form, the original judge has issued a no bail bench warrant for the client which remains outstanding. Once he is apprehended he will be held until he new charge is adjudicated which could be months and then brought back before the court. And as I said, if he is convicted he can count on receiving the entire one year sentence.

This situation could have turned out far differently, even accounting for the subsequent DUI and violation of probation. Had the client been represented by a more qualified attorney he would now be on probation to a different judge who may very well have been willing to consider alternatives to incarceration such as an inpatient alcohol treatment program. I have worked with many judges over the years on situations similar to this one to find a solution that addresses the problem without the need for long term incarceration and the concomitant devastation that it causes to some one's life. My client's only hope now is to avoid being apprehended until we appear in court for the second case (where he will definitely be taken into custody) and hope that we are able to secure an acquittal. If we are able to do so he may be able to avoid serving the entire year on the violation but will still sit in jail for at least a month until he appears for the violation hearing.

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.

Getting back to the procedural history of the case, because DUI's are misdemeanors, the District Court is vested with original jurisdiction to hear these matters. This case was actually set for trial twice in the District Court. On the first trial date we drew a judge whom I knew had great difficulty putting the word "Not" before the word "Guilty" so I requested a postponement in the hopes of getting a better judge draw on the next trial date. Unfortunately, on the next trial date we drew a judge who, while certainly willing to say Not Guilty, was known as one of the toughest sentencers on the best and in particular on violations of probation. I believed that I had no choice but to remove the case to Circuit Court by praying a jury trial.

Once in Circuit Court I had to postpone the case several more times before finally drawing a good judge. The case was at this point, more than a year old. On my advice, my client waived his right to a jury and selected a court trial. The first witness called by the State was the arresting officer who admitted on cross examination that my client was able to follow directions, did not slur his words and was not unsteady on his feet. Ultimately she admitted that she called in the other officer to conduct field sobriety tests only because my client "was acting a little weird". The prosecutor tried to get her to testify as to what suboxone is but I objected that she was not qualified as an expert and therefore could not offer such testimony. The judge agreed and sustained the objection.

The next witness was the officer who conducted the field sobriety tests. He was not well prepared by the prosecutor and did a terrible job. In his report he said that my client exhibited 4 of 8 clues on the walk and turn. My first question on cross was to ask him to name the 4 clues that my client did not exhibit. He couldn't do it and it threw him back on his heals. I then attacked the details (where the devil always resides) of the clues that he said my client exhibited and he could not recall them. All in all he was a very ineffective witness.

The last witness was the DRE or Drug Recognition Expert. This was the witness that I was most concerned about because he would potentially be able to offer opinion testimony as to what my client was under the influence of and identify the prescription Suboxone as a narcotic for the court. Unfortunately for the State, they had not complied with the new discovery rules (these are detailed in our criminal blog in a 6/25/08 entry) which require the state to disclose the identity of the expert along with a synopsis as to what opinion that expert will offer and a copy of any reports generated by the witness. The DRE, as I was certainly aware, had generated a detailed report of his examination of my client but this report was never disclosed in spite of my demand for it. The State was unable to qualify the DRE as an expert and was therefore unable to elicit opinion testimony from him. As a result there was no evidence as to what suboxone is and no evidence that my client was under the influence of a drug.

My client was found not guilty of all counts with the exception of negligent driving - a one point non-jail-able citation that cannot violate his probation.

In addition to ensuring that the client takes some or all of the steps listed above prior to the court date, it is of equal if not greater importance for the Maryland DUI/DWI Attorney to ensure that the client appears in front of a favorable judge. For this reason, it is imperative that a person charged with Driving Under the Influence or Driving While Impaired and in particular subsequent offenders, research the background and qualifications of an attorney prior to hiring him or her. I have blogged about this subject in the past but I cannot stress the importance of making sure that the attorney has BOTH substantial experience handling these types of cases and has substantial experience in the jurisdiction where the person is charged.

It is simply not sufficient to determine that the attorney has handled large numbers of DUI's or DWI's over an extended time period if the client does not bother to take the further step of making sure that the attorney is experienced in the jurisdiction where the person is charged. This because it is vital that the attorney have an intimate knowledge of the tendencies of the judges on that particular bench.

It is equally insufficient to determine that the attorney appears regularly in the jurisdiction without also determining that he or she regularly handles alcohol related driving offenses.

As I noted above, I represented a 66 year old man on his fifth offense this week and kept him out of jail. This in spite of the fact that he was still on probation for his fourth offense and the State had a rock solid case against him. The facts of the case were that a police officer on foot patrol watched my client drive down a street in Northeast Baltimore County and park his car illegally (he parked against the northbound curb with his car facing south - in other words facing in the wrong direction).

The officer walked over to the defendant who was by the time he got there, out of the car and told him that he needed to either turn the car around or move it to the other side of the street or that he would give him a ticket. During this brief encounter, the officer noticed a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on the defendant's breath and noticed him to be swaying from side to side as he spoke to him. He asked the client to perform the standardized field sobriety tests and after my client performed very poorly on them, arrested him and charged him with driving under the influence and driving while impaired. The worst part (or the best) about this arrest from my client's perspective was that he had driving only about one block before being arrested. His home is only a block away from the bar he was drinking in and the only reason he drove instead of walking is that he has very poor circulation in his legs which causes significant pain when he walks more than a few steps.

Certainly not the most egregious facts to be sure but the case is basically indefensible. There would be no argument that the officer illegally stopped the defendant because there was no stop. A police officer can walk up to anybody he wants to talk to them in public and it is not considered a stop by the courts. Instead these interactions between cop and citizen are know as "mere encounters" that do not require probable cause or even reasonable articulable suspicion to be developed by the officer. There was also little doubt that the defendant was under the influence based on the officer's observations of the defendant, his poor performance on the field sobriety tests and my client's admission that he had "too much" to drink.

Recognizing that the State had a strong case and that my client was in peril of going to prison for up to 3 years, I immediately arranged for him to enter 28 day inpatient treatment program. I also insisted and he agreed, to go directly from the inpatient program to a halfway house and to remain there until the court date. My theory on this is that it would less likely that a judge would pull him out of a halfway house to send him to jail than if he had simply completed a program and was sleeping in his own bed. I then put together a mitigation presentation to highlight all of the positive accomplishments of my client's life as well as a list of his medical problems including the poor circulation issue noted above.

Still, I knew that none of these measures would be enough to spare him a lengthy jail term if I were unable to maneuver him in front of a favorable judge. This is where my intimate knowledge of the Baltimore County District Court bench came in very handy for the client. I was a prosecutor in Baltimore County and have appeared on a daily basis in both the District and Circuit courts for over 15 years, so I know the judges well. I have also handled thousands of DUI/DWI's so I know which judges are receptive to which arguments in this cases.

Fortunately for my client I didn't have to do much maneuvering because on the very first trial date he ended up in front of the best judge he could have possible drawn. Had this not been the case I would have taken a series of tactical steps, including postponements and possibly jury trial requests to get him in front of a favorable judge. At any rate, because of my knowledge of the bench, I was able to recognize that it wasn't going to get any better for him than appearing before this particular judge. I entered him into a plea and as I expected, the judge agreed with my argument that my client was well on his way to recovery and did not send him to prison. Instead he placed him on probation and required him to remain in the halfway house for an additional 2 months. A very good result considering his record and the strength of the State's case against him.

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.

A colleague of mine contacted me yesterday to get my take on a DUI case that he was handling in Baltimore County that illustrates the importance of reviewing the client's performance on the field sobriety tests carefully. The facts of the case were that the defendant was pulled over for driving on the shoulder of I695. There was road construction and as a result the traffic was backed up. The defendant was getting off at the next exit which was only a quarter mile or so up the road, so he drove on the shoulder to the exit and was pulled over.

The officer noted in his report that he detected a moderate odor of alcohol coming from the driver upon approaching the vehicle. He asked the defendant to exit the vehicle and perform the standardized field sobriety tests. He wrote in his report that the defendant displayed six out of six clues on HGN. He noted that he performed the one leg stand satisfactorily and than ,other than executing the turn incorrectly which nearly everyone does, he also performed the walk and turn as he was instructed.

Based on these observations the officer took him into custody and transported him to the police station. The defendant agreed to submit to a breath test and blew a .09. My colleague advised me that the State had offered him a plea to the lesser included offense of driving while impaired, and agreed not to oppose a probation before judgment. He advised me that he was inclined to recommend that his client take the offer but wanted to know what I thought about the case.

I certainly don't mean to try to take credit for another attorney's win. Most good criminal defense attorneys, including me, routinely consult other attorneys on their cases and very often the consulted attorney points out something that the attorney handling the case has overlooked. Having said that, in this case I immediately told my colleague that he should reject the offer. My reasoning was that probation before judgment was a virtual certainty under these facts regardless of whether the client takes a plea or loses at trial and as such I didn't think he had anything to lose by trying the case. I suggested to him that he had a very good shot at having the .09 test result suppressed as the product of an illegal arrest which would very likely result in a not guilty verdict. The reason for this is, as I wrote above, the primary purpose of the standardized field sobriety tests is to allow the police officer to develop probable cause to arrest. In this case the defendant had performed very well on both the one leg stand and the walk and turn. Moreover, the Court's have held that HGN only establishes the presence of alcohol or drugs in the system and that the presence of nystagmus does not in and of itself establish probable cause. As noted herein, the court's have also held that the smell of alcohol alone does not establish probable cause.

My colleague took the case to trial in the District Court. The judge agreed that the defendant's performance on the field sobriety tests did not establish probable cause. He suppressed the .09 breath test result and the client was found not guilty.

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:

Fortunately for the client, he had a very strong defense that the police illegally stopped him in this case. The leading case on this fact pattern is Rowe v. State. In Rowe, a Maryland State Trooper observed a van being driven in the slow lane of I-95, at about 1:00AM. The trooper followed the vehicle for a little over a mile, and in that span observed it cross over onto the right shoulder about 8 inches, touch the rumble strip, return to the slow lane, and cross over a second time. The trooper then initiated a traffic stop “for the benefit of the driver...because it was late in the evening.” Id. at 428. The officer determined that the driver was not intoxicated, but discovered that he was driving a rental vehicle with an expired rental contract. The officer then searched the vehicle and discovered marijuana. He arrested the defendant for possession of cds and issued a warning for failure to drive in a single lane under Trans Art. § 21-309(b) . Suppression of this evidence based on an unlawful stop was denied in the trial court.

The Court of Appeals reversed the denial. The Court stated that “the petitioner’s momentary crossing of the edge line of the roadway and the later touching of that line did not amount to an unsafe lane change or unsafe entry onto the roadway, conduct prohibited by §21-309, and thus, cannot support a traffic stop in this case.” Id. at 441. The Court also stated that a lawful traffic stop may also rest upon reasonable articulable suspicion, and stated: “A traffic stop may also be constitutionally permissible where the office has a reasonable belief that “criminal activity is afoot.” Whether probable cause or reasonable suspicion exists to justify a stop depends on the totality of the circumstances.” The Court did not determine that there was other reasonable suspicion.

The Assistant State's Attorney in our recent case refused to dismiss the case even though she acknowledge that our fact pattern was nearly identical to that in Rowe. We chose to try this case to the judge in the District Court (as opposed to electing a jury trial in the Circuit Court). The prosecutor attempted to distinguish the facts from Rowe because in our case there was the additional fact that he was weaving within his line. The court found this attempt to distinguish the facts unpersuasive noting that weaving within a line is also not a violation of § 21-309(b). The court suppressed the evidence and our client was found not guilty.

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.

The second mistake the attorney made was not understanding that he had an extremely viable defense concerning probable cause, or lack thereof, for the stop. The client had been observed by the police officer to be execute a lawful turn without utilizing a turn signal. The incident occurred late in the evening on an all but deserted road. I blogged about a similar case that I handled in the past so I immediately recognized this attorney's failure to raise this obvious issue concerning probable cause for the stop. Had he read the statute - TR 21-604(c) -, or my blog for that matter, who would have know that a driver is only required to utilize a turn signal if any other vehicle "might be affected" by his failure to do so. Had this attorney properly questioned the police officer and properly presented the argument to the court, the likely result would have been that all evidence would have been suppressed and the defendant would have been found not guilty.

The final mistake he made was to not properly prepare the defendant's case to present to the court in the event of a conviction. Any criminal attorney worth his salt would have had his client immediately enter an in-patient or at the very minimum an intensive outpatient alcohol treatment program. The attorney failed to do this and also had no documentation as to the client's employment or anything else positive to present. He only repeated multiple times that his client was a "good person" and a "hard working family guy". Needless to say this particular judge was unsympathetic and sentenced the defendant to a year in the County Detention Center with all but 60 days to be suspended. The attorney didn't even know to request recommendations for work release and home detention once the sentence was passed. I would assume that this sentence will in all likelihood cost this defendant his job and have other serious consequences for him and his family.

The real tragedy here is that this awful result was completely avoidable had the client taken just a few moments to investigate the qualifications of the attorney before retaining him. If the client had simply asked the attorney what percentage of his practice was criminal or how many DUI's the attorney handled each week or month he would have become aware of his attorney's dearth of experience. The are also many other ways to investigate an attorney's background to include contacting the bar association or researching the attorney's case experience on Maryland Judiciary Case Search - http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp.

The bottom line is that most people would not let a doctor operate on them without determining if he or she is qualified to do so and they should be equally diligent concerning serious criminal and traffic matters.