Facing a DUI charge can be overwhelming, especially if you have additional charges to answer. Your victory in the case is dependent on the quality of defense you receive during your hearing sessions. The San Diego DUI Attorney has the legal background and capability to win your case. We defend DUI offenders in Rancho del Campo by utilizing our long experience of DUI cases.

What is DUI in California?

Drinking is allowed so long as the driver is 21 years of age and above. This rate of intoxication for the driver gets legally intolerable when it shoots to 0.08% BAC blood alcohol concentration and above. At this level of intoxication, the driver is chargeable for a per se DUI charge even when there is no slight indication of breaking traffic rules.

However, a driver can also face a DUI impairment charge even when the level of intoxication is at acceptable levels. This charge is possible in cases when the driver cannot control the vehicle as the officer’s testimony establishes it.

Preliminaries of a DUI Case

In most cases, the DUI cases arise in the process of investigating another traffic violation except when caught in the imposed pattern at the sobriety checkpoints. The following are the situations where a DUI offense inquiry can begin:

  • When you have been involved in an accident and the officers want to establish your driving conditions
  • When caught violating other traffic and the officer seeks to unearth the reasons behind such violations
  • When there is something wrong with your car such as expired insurance or broken headlights

Any signs of intoxication, such as having an alcohol smell, can prompt the officer to conduct field sobriety tests on you beside the road if you can.

Arrest for DUI

If you can give the breath sample at the scene, the BAC is determined at the spot, but if not, you are rushed to the hospital, jail, or police station from where the blood sample is drawn for intoxication level determination before you sober up. Blood may take several days to be analyzed in the laboratory. All you have to do is submitting to the chemical tests or face the consequences discussed below. If your case is not so severe and you have clean DUI records, you may be released after some hours.

The arrest for the DUI should not always put you in anxiety since there is still a long way to pursue justice. You should be observant the following errors before and after the arrest to help your Rancho del Campo DUI Attorney strengthen the defense against you:

  1. Flaws in FST Interpretation

The field sobriety test is meant to gauge coordination, balance, and motor alertness when the officer suspects you of  DUI. The success or failure in FST is based on the subjective judgment of the officer. Hence, the following errors can lead to false interpretations in your FST performance to strengthen the incriminating evidence:

  • Having medical conditions that forbid you from coordinating well
  • Dim lit spots of FST or the flashing lights from police car or traffic
  • Conducting the FST in a slippery or uneven ground
  • Poor wording of the instructions from the officer. The officer may give the procedure with a rapidity you cannot cope with
  • Wrong assessment of the officer on your balance and coordination

  1. A Compromised Procedure Breath Test

The following should be ensured to conduct a breath test with the utmost care and avoid implicating you wrongly in the DUI case using evidence is improperly obtained:

  • The BAC assessor should be adequately trained in doing so
  • The breathalyzers used in BAC analysis should only be those approved for use California state
  • An observation period of 15 minutes must be adhered to so that you do not ingest, smoke or vomit which may interfere with the test results
  • Proper calibration of the breathalyzer which must be proved from the record that it was calibrated after 150 uses or after a ten-day usage whatever comes first
  • The breath test must be obtained from a deep blow from your lungs
  • The officer must take at least two breath samples which give almost identical results to indicate consistency in the collected breath samples

If any of the following guidelines is flouted, you should be quick to notify your attorney for a proper investigation of the evidence against you. Failing to observe leads to compromised BAC readings due to false positives in the following ways:

  • Contamination of the breath sample before it is tested
  • Breathalyzer operational mistakes such as attaching mouthpiece when the mouth is not empty thus interfering with the blowing
  • Having residuals traces of the alcohol that interferes with the level of alcohol in the breath
  • Medical conditions such as hypoglycemia fasting diabetes and low carbohydrates diet may trick the breathalyzers at the time of testing to give false positives

What You Are Supposed To Do

At such a time when you are faced with a DUI case and maybe other cases, you have to ensure a strong defense is by your side. You have the option of choosing to represent yourself, use the public defender availed by your court, or hire a private DUI attorney.

Representing yourself may not be the best option since emotions run high due to the case. Therefore you may give yourself a weak defense unless you are trained as a California DUI lawyer. Choosing a public defender has consequences, too, as listed below:

  • Some of them have relationships with the jury and the prosecutors and may weakly represent you to achieve their desired gains
  • They have little resources and time to dedicate to defending you
  • They are randomly assigned to you so that you have not freedom of choosing someone you can confide to

Why Choose Us for Defense

Not all private defenders are experienced to handle your DUI case and give a service that is worth your money. All you need to do is share your location when finding a lawyer to locate a Rancho del Campo DUI Attorney. We will advise you accordingly on what you may expect in your case.

You can be assured of obtaining value for your money because we will investigate your DUI case to bring all the facts in the table, define your defense strategy, and appear in person to defend you aggressively.

The situations surrounding your DUI case will dictate how your Rancho del Campo DUI Attorney will handle it. Regardless of the nature of your DUI crime, you will face criminal proceedings that will need representation by an attorney. The two defense scenarios are:

  • DMV hearing in California
  • California criminal proceedings

  1. Representing You in the DMV Hearing

After getting a driving license and driving while under the influence many times without being caught, many drivers forget that driving is a privilege in California. Many realize this as a privilege after they can longer drive due to license suspension. When the reality of failing to run your regular schedule in your car, such as commuting to work, taking children to school, and keeping appointments, you realize the weight of the privilege.

Once arrested for DUI, the arresting officer takes your legal driving license and issues you with a temporary license known as admin per se. From this date of arrest, you have only ten days to request a DMV hearing in a bid to secure your license from suspension.

The consequences of seeking a DMV hearing or not are:

  • Failing to request a hearing within the ten days makes you forfeit the chance of DMV hearing
  • After the expiration of the ten days, the admin per se expires, and your driving license is suspended automatically
  • If you request before the expiry of the ten days the suspension of the license is postponed until the DMV hearing occurs
  • Seeking for a DMV hearing will allow a Rancho del Campo DUI Attorney to interrogate the arresting officer to gather the evidence and information that will be used in your defense for the California DUI criminal proceeding

Since it will be your decision to be represented, we will only serve you if you choose the option of a private lawyer and contact us. We will, therefore, work with the DMV to avert the suspension of your license and, in advance, request for information that will help us prepare for the hearing. Depending on the situations in your DUI arrest, we will advise on whether the representation will be through in person or using a telephone.

The Importance of DMV Hearing

The DMV is an administrative hearing that allows you to present the evidence from your perspective, not to determine whether you are guilty or innocent. The DMV is meant for the following purposes:

  • To investigate whether there existed a reasonable suspicion necessitating the officer to believe that you were intoxicated while in physical control of the vehicle
  • Whether the right procedures were followed to put you under arrest for DUI
  • To establish whether the driver was given the Miranda warnings that failing to submit to chemical test could lead to suspension of the driving license for a certain period
  • To confirm whether the driver accepted and took the chemical test before the arrest. Sometimes the driver is submissive to test but the conditions cannot allow them to take the test

The outcome of the DMV case, whether winning or losing, does not affect the result of the criminal proceeding in a Californian court. If you win, then the driving privileges remain in force, while losing the DMV hearing gets your license suspended. It continues to remain so even if you win the criminal proceeding until the period of suspension ends.

Winning the DMV allows the lawyer to defend you more powerfully in the criminal proceeding. He also bargains for a plea to have your charges reduced to a less serious one such as dry reckless becomes easy.

Losing the DMV hearing leads to the re-imposition of the license suspension. You still stand a chance to win the criminal case and afterward begin negotiating for the reinstatement of your suspended license.

The following are some of the winning points that the derived from the officer’s testimony that defense attorney will use to help you win the DMV hearing:

  • No one, including the officer or a person, saw you in actual control of the vehicle. Being found pulling over for instance because you felt unsafe to drive would not constitute controlling the vehicle
  • You were not arrested at a legal DUI checkpoint. This point needs much scrutiny by your defense and may get off the hook even if you were illegally intoxicated.
  • There was no probable cause to warrant a DUI stop. The officer’s reports give the indications from which to scrutinize the existence of a likely cause. Being arrested after the taverns have closed does not prove a sufficient probable cause
  • The officer did not adhere to the 15 minutes observation that ensures the driver does not anything can interfere with the breath sample such as eating or vomiting
  • The breathalyzer was defective, or you had conditions that could give false positives such as heartburn. You need to let the attorney know all these
  • The officer never read to you word by word the privilege of failing to submit to the chemical test and the consequences

An error in the officer’s report that can be used to rule to your favor because the officer drafted it faster. The professional eye keen to details during defense utilizes such errors to weaken the evidence against you

  1. Representation in the DUI Criminal Proceedings

After the outcome of the DMV hearing, your Rancho del Campo DUI Attorney will also represent you in the DUI case in the California court if you hire them. The result of the DUI case may be either acquittal or conviction for the charges. The sentencing has consequences such as serving a jail term, paying fines, and submitting to probation demands. The record of your crime remains until you fulfill the conditions of the probation.

During the arraignment, the prosecution will always present the specifics of a sentence should you plead guilty to the charges. Negotiations rarely take place at this stage. You have the chance of pleading guilty, not guilty, or no contest. Pleading guilty of charges ends the proceedings, and the legal penalties are immediately enforced unless you have some probation to finish.

By examining your case, the lawyer will always advise you to plead not guilty. This plea will allow the lawyer to defend you. He accesses the police reports, maintenance records of the chemical testing and the evidence held by the prosecution to examine them for the defense during your trial.

Our attorney will spend a great deal of time to prepare a winning argument. They will utilize their legal experience in examining the specifics of your case and challenge the prosecution evidence in a way to open negotiations for acquittal or reduction of your charges. They will not settle for the prosecution offers during an arraignment as they are convinced of a better outcome once you plead not guilty and allow them to handle your case.

 After thoroughly being acquainted with the specifics of your case out, lawyers will request for a pretrial motion. During this pretrial hearing, the court has to settle certain things about your case before the real trial. The following takes place in the pretrial hearing:

  • A hearing meant to suppress all the evidence that was illegally obtained from the defendant and evade undue bias in the trial
  • The lawyer will also examine the officer’s complaint records in a bid to beat their testimony
  • A hearing meant to question the reasonable suspicion and the probable cause that prompted the arrest

After this stage, the way is paved to begin a trial where plea bargaining is given a priority. Only a few cases proceed to the level of a real trial. The attorney will give priority to your case by representing you in all these stages.

Blood Split Motions

It is one of the critical points that the defense uses to your advantage when representing you in court. Once conducted to the jail, hospital, or police station, you are given the option of either giving blood, urine, or breath for the BAC chemical test. It is compulsory to submit, or you face the consequences.

Sometimes the outcome of the BAC may shock you for supposing that you had not consumed much alcohol or being high against your expectations. Here you have the opportunity of conducting a separate test independently. Therefore giving a blood or urine sample allows you to file a blood split motion to challenge the results of the recorded BAC in the police station. Your Rancho del Campo DUI Attorney will use the difference of the results obtained when the analysis is done by an independent agency to defend you in court.

The police department is supposed to save a portion for the driver to test using an independent agency. Failure to keep a separate sample for the driver may lead to their evidence being inadmissible hence cannot be used in deciding the verdict.

The police should, therefore, treat the driver’s sample with the utmost care. The sample should be preserved with anticoagulant and prevent it from fermenting. Any slight change in the independent driver’s sample from the BAC records held by the police gives the defense an advantage to contest the evidence of the BAC. The attorney will involve the experts to properly get detailed facts of how the sample was stored and what could have affected the specimen to come up with a viable defense from the tampered sample.

In case the driver gave the breath sample for BAC determination, the lawyer will use other means of challenging the evidence, such as wrongful procedures of obtaining the breath sample.

Find a Rancho del Campo Attorney Near Me

From above, your core duty in helping your attorney is clear. You should cooperate with the arresting officer while taking note of every step made in the arresting process. It is from the unquestionable weight of the supplement evidence we will use to defend you. The San Diego DUI Attorney is dedicated to your defense should you get a DUI case in Rancho del Campo. Call today to get your desired legal help by dialing 619-535-7150.