Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol

February 10, 2014

Sheriff Accused of Driving DUI Rolls Over Pickup Truck with 4 Kids Inside…

People who are intimately familiar with the dangers of Los Angeles DUI (or DUI anywhere) can still make horrendous mistakes – mistakes which can kill people and traumatize whole communities. Some people make bad mistakes, which, miraculously, do not lead to serious harm.

Fortunately for Utah Sheriff Lieutenant, Jake Adams, his recent DUI crash falls into the latter category.

The 39-year-old Adams, who’s worked at his local Sheriff’s Office since 1988, rolled over his Sheriff’s vehicle — a F150 pickup truck — with all four of his kids inside! According to the Utah Highway Patrol, Adams had been driving on Route 17 near the community of La Verkin at around 4:30 in the afternoon, when his vehicle suffered a “slow speed rollover.”

Todd Royce, a sergeant for the Utah Highway Patrol, reported on how the accident occurred: “Adams drifted off the right shoulder and then overcorrected back to the left. The truck left the roadway and went down a dirt embankment in a sideways slide.” The pickup then flipped onto its hood. Adams suffered a slight injury to his head (a red gash on his forehead), but the children (aged 8 to 14) remarkably made it through the incident without injury.

Police arrested the lieutenant for DUI as well as for making an unsafe lane change and carrying a gun while under the influence.

As Lieutenant Adams probably knows, the immediate hours and days after a DUI charge can be the most pivotal, from a legal point of view. Prosecutors often “jump the gun” and file DUI cases prematurely, prior to collecting enough evidence. An ex-prosecutor — with a thorough and detailed knowledge of how the government typically goes after DUI defendants — can advise you and make sure you follow best practices.

Understand that a California law enforcement agency may not file a DUI charge immediately. Just because you haven’t yet been charged doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. Police may just be doing a thorough investigation to amass as much evidence as possible before charging you.

No matter where you are in your “post Los Angeles DUI journey,” it can behoove you tremendously to connect with an experienced former prosecutor at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers today to go over your defense options. Michael Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated attorney who’s racked up an impressive 99%-plus success record at jury trials. He maintains excellent relationships with his former prosecutorial colleagues as well as with judges and police officers in L.A. County.
Continue reading

February 9, 2014

3 Common Los Angeles DUI Defense Mistakes

by Michael Kraut

You’re desperate to build an effective defense to recent Los Angeles DUI charges.

But if you’re like many (perhaps most) defendants, odds are you will make one of the following mistakes that could compromise your chances to fight your charges and potentially lead to unnecessarily long and harsh punishments, like excessive jail time, very steep fines and fees, a lengthy suspension of your California driver’s license, etc. That doesn’t even include all the auxiliary problems that will flow from the DUI arrest/conviction, such as drained self esteem, problems with your relationships and employer, and so forth.

Bearing all that in mind, here are three important blunders to avoid:

1. Blabbing about how much you drank to police.

Your instincts might be to “come clean” to the officer in the hope that he or she will show leniency. Or you might get defensive and deny wrongdoing: “I only had two or three drinks!” Don’t get into that business. Save your explanation for later.

2. Doing stupid things after the stop or accident.

For whatever reason, when people get stopped for DUI, they often lose touch with their senses and engage in wild behavior that puts them and others at risk. This appears to be a somewhat universal problem. (Consider actress Reese Witherspoon’s bizarrely aggressive behavior, after a Georgia trooper pulled over her husband, John Toth, for DUI in the summer of 2013.)

We’ve catalogued diverse examples of this phenomenon at work – drivers who hit and run; who resist arrest; who compound their humiliation by saying or doing totally ridiculous things during or after arrest, etc. The moral is: maintain your composure and dignity. Your behavior after the stop or arrest can have a measurable impact on your punishment (or lack of punishment) and thus on your future.

3. Waiting far too long to connect with a lawyer.

Whether you talk to someone at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers or find another Los Angeles DUI lawyer that you trust and respect, get experienced insight into your case sooner than later.

Imagine if you had a heart problem. Would you wait days or weeks to call a doctor? Or would you get in touch with a doctor as soon as you could? When your health’s on the line, the choice is clear – you make the call as soon as possible. This same kind of logic applies to your DUI defense. Don’t wait to get insight into your case, so you can start making responsible decisions.

January 30, 2014

19-year-old Walloped with Six DUI Charges in Four Car Accident

by Michael Kraut

19-year-old Kayla Garcia, a Miami woman who allegedly caused a four-car crash on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, faces six DUI charges. The wreck allegedly caused over $27,000 in damage. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Officers who responded said Garcia displayed classic signs of DUI in Los Angeles (or anywhere), including:

• Glassy eyes;
• Trouble walking;
• Failure on road sobriety tests;
• Slurred speech.

Someone at the scene also saw a can of beer (Natural Light) fall on the ground from her car. In addition to four counts of property damage, Garcia faces charges of DUI first offense and DUI with a BAC of over 0.15%.

This is the not the teenager’s first run in with the law: Garcia faces other criminal charges in Miami-Dade County. The judge in her DUI case ordered a GPS monitor for her and set her bail at $40,000. The judge also warned “if it’s found you have consumed any alcohol [after being release on bail], you will be rearrested.” He also ordered her to submit to drug and alcohol testing every week.

The Golden State has a “no tolerance” policy for teen DUIs, and offenders can be punished per the traditional DUI vehicle codes (such as 23152 and 23153) as well as by two other laws, 23136 and 23140. Let’s unpack these and try to understand them.

California Vehicle Code Section 23156 subjects underage drivers (less than 21 years-old) to a mandatory one-year California license suspension, if they test with even a small fraction of alcohol in their systems. A reading of 0.01% on a breath test, for instance, can lead to license suspension. (If you don’t already have your license, you’ll still be penalized – you’ll be forced to wait an extra year before getting your license.)

And that’s just a civil penalty.

A violation of 23140 is classified as infraction: you’ll face a fine in addition to the loss of your driving privileges for a year. A BAC level between 0.05% and 0.07% is enough to trigger this penalty.

And, of course, if you’re over the legal limit of 0.08%, you face a whole gamut of punishments that we’ve discussed in detail on this blog and on the website.

For help getting to the bottom of your charges — and coming up with constructive, intelligent defense options — connect with Harvard Law School educated ex-prosecutor, Michael Kraut, and his legal team today to discuss your Los Angeles DUI defense.
Continue reading

January 20, 2014

Los Angeles DUI Demolition: MMA Fighter, Tito Ortiz, Whacked with DUI After Smashing Up his Porsche

by Michael Kraut

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard something about the big Los Angeles DUI news story of the week: MMA Champion, Tito Ortiz, smashed up his 2012 Porsche Panamera on the 405 at around 4:00 a.m. earlier this week.

The California Highway Patrol reports that the crash happened near Santa Monica Boulevard and Sepulveda – a notoriously confusing stretch of the 405.

According to some reports, that section of the 405 – near the freeway’s intersection with the 10 – is one of the most congested intersections on the entire continent… during the day, that is! During evenings and nights, the 405 can transform into almost dystopian landscape with seemingly endless stretches of barren freeways punctuated by drivers zipping along at breakneck speeds.

In any event… the 38-year-old Ortiz had been heading north, when he lost control over the Porsche and smashed into the center median strip. Two people in the car with him luckily survived without serious injury. Ortiz blew a 0.12% on a subsequence breathalyzer test. (As regular readers of this blog know, 0.12% is 1.5 times the legal limit for DUI in Los Angeles, West LA, or elsewhere in Southern California.)

Police booked Ortiz at 6:00 AM at a local station; he easily met his bond of $15,000. Reports say that Ortiz and his friends had been partying at the Playboy Mansion — a pre-party for the BCS National Championship. Ortizs holds the title of UFC light heavyweight champion.

He will face his misdemeanor DUI charge in court on January 27th.

Putting Ortiz’s Arrest in Context to Help You Make Sense of Your Los Angeles DUI Charge

One of the weirdest elements of the Los Angeles freeway and surface street system is the disconnect between what our roads are like during the day and what our roads are like during the evenings. Of course, there’s always a chance you’ll hit a sig alert on the 134 or the 101 at 4 a.m. But for the most part, the freeways clear off at night. During the day, however, they clog like arteries. As a result, traffic congeals, then freezes, then flows, much like how Antarctic ice floes operate. This peculiar process may be important to your defense, because different types of freeway conditions promote different types of driving behavior. (For instance, Ortiz would have had a difficult time careening wildly into the median on the 405 at 4:00 p.m. on a Monday because of the traffic congestion.)

To make sure that you understand exactly what happened, why, and what kind of Los Angeles DUI defense you may be able to construct, connect with an experienced attorney here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers today for insightful, lucid, and strategic insight.

January 10, 2014

Will Your Los Angeles DUI Charges Live Forever on the Internet?

by Michael Kraut

Whether you got stopped at a Los Angeles DUI checkpoint on Wilshire, or pulled over in the Valley after partying too hard at a TV animation company’s soirée, your recent arrest was embarrassing.

Many possible problems now confront you:

• Jail time;
• License suspension;
• Mandatory IID installation;
• Higher insurance rates;
• Loss of your job / relationship;
• Etc.

You also fear for your reputation. And rightly so.

Google your name right now. Odds are high that a news article featuring your DUI might come up on the first page of the Google results – or at least near enough to the first page to cause problems. Even if you ultimately clear the charges, what you can do to protect your reputation going forward? Will the specter of your DUI forever haunt you (online), whenever you develop new relationships, take out loans, apply for jobs, meet new friends, etc?

It’s a scary situation — not necessarily an easy one to resolve.

After all, the virtual world creates challenges for all of us.

Pictures taken years before the internet even existed now pop up regularly on Facebook and other social media sites. A friend or colleague from years ago can tag your name in these pictures. A potential client (or date) can now see you in a ridiculous or embarrassing light. Even “normal citizens” are vexed by this effect.

For people who’ve been arrested for a serious crime in Los Angeles, like DUI, the problem can be much worse. Fixing one’s virtual reputation is just no small task, particularly if your arrest involved major news, such as serious injury or death to somebody else.

Here’s the core problem that you face: Google ranks sites and search terms based on relevance as well as on the so-called “authority” of sites that use them. So if ABC News, KTLA News, the Los Angeles Times, and other big publications all run stories about your Los Angeles DUI arrest, Google will look first to these “authority sites” first when returning information about your name, when it’s entered as a search query.

The situation can get even more complicated – and difficult to fix – if your story generated a tremendous amount of interest in the blogosphere or in the social media world. For instance, perhaps you did or said something ironic or ridiculous after the stop. Or perhaps you’re a celebrity or major executive or corporate figure whose arrest was “newsworthy” in and of itself. All the commentary creates more relevance. In other words, when Google looks for your name, it won’t just find articles linking to big authority sites like ABC News, CNN, etc — it will also find threads on big blogs discussing your name and the incident/arrest.

We’ll dive into detail about what you might be able to do to reclaim your online reputation in a future post.

For now, the most important thing is to get exceptional legal input to protect your rights. Connect with widely respected Los Angeles DUI defense attorney, Michael Kraut, today for more insight into your case.

January 8, 2014

Los Angeles DUI Reputation Management, Part-II: Will Your DUI Always Be One of the First Things That Shows Up on Google?

by Michael Kraut

If you Google your name right now, does the search engine return results like the following?

“Jane Doe was arrested for driving under the influence in Los Angeles, Thursday night, when her Honda Civic hit a police cruiser at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard.”

If so, you don’t just have a tough legal case – you also have a reputation management problem.

January 6, 2014

Will Your Burbank DUI Arrest Ruin Your Acting, Singing or Modeling Career?

by Michael Kraut

Maybe your Burbank DUI arrest came just a few months after you moved into the Oakwood Apartments complex to kick off what you’d hoped would be a wonderful, enduring acting career.

Or maybe police stopped you on Olive Boulevard, late at night, while you were driving back from your “best audition yet.” In either case, you’re worried about what your Burbank DUI charge might mean for your acting, modeling or singing career.

In Hollywood, brand management is crucial. You need to be able to sell yourself, not just so agents and managers will pay attention to your work (and casting directors will call you back), but also so that your audience will cheer you and look at you in a good light.

It’s one thing for an already established actor, like Lindsay Lohan, to collect a string of Los Angeles DUIs. That’s not necessarily good for her career, but she already had cache that she could afford to “burn off” and remain viable as an acting commodity.

But if your name is associated with a Burbank DUI arrest (or, worse, an injury accident punishable as a felony under California Vehicle Code Section 23153), your career can be stunted. (It’s not as if casting directors and executive producers don’t know how to use Google!)

Your carefully wrought (and expensive to edit) personal home page may come up as the top result in Google, when someone Googles your name? But do you really want result #2 to be along the lines of “24 year-old Janie McBanie was busted for Burbank DUI Thursday. The aspiring actress and comedian smashed her Toyota Corolla into a telephone poll on Olive and tried to scratch the arresting officer with her nails.”

Unfortunately, you can’t turn back the clock. What’s happened has happened.

But you can be judicious about how you defend against your Burbank DUI charge.

When you retain our Burbank DUI defense lawyer, we will immediately go to work for you to collect evidence and advise you strategically. For instance, we can represent you at your DMV hearing and help you deal with the suspension of your California driver’s license. (If you can’t drive, it’s hard to book auditions and jobs).

We can challenge evidence, such as your breath test results, and answer all of your questions and concerns throughout the process. You have so much potential. Don’t let your Burbank DUI charges threaten your ability to do good work. Let the team at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers help you.

January 2, 2014

Seeing the Forest for the Trees Re: Your Beverly Hills DUI Arrest

by Michael Kraut

Taken out of context, your Beverly Hills DUI arrest – whether you got pulled over on the 405 after partying with friends or stopped at a checkpoint on Sepulveda – is a “100% negative.”

In other words, there is no silver lining to what happened, other than the fact that you survived the stop and/or accident and that, theoretically, the situation could have been even worse. While that attitude can be technically justified, it’s grim.

It may also be misleading, because it prevents you from seeing the forest for the trees.

Most people who get stopped and charged with a crime like Beverly Hills DUI, for whatever reason, refuse to consider the charges in a broader context. They see it as a “fluke” – either an out of character one-time mistake or an injustice perpetrated by a biased or irresponsible police force.

It’s certainly true that the police can make mistakes. For instance, we’ve spilled a great deal of digital ink cataloguing the whys and wherefores of DUI breath test failures.

But the Beverly Hills DUI criminal defense lawyers at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers also believe that defendants should spend time introspecting — trying to figure out what, if anything, the DUI crisis means for them. For instance:

• Perhaps you only started getting in trouble (e.g. collecting DUIs) after you started to hanging out with certain friends. Upon reflection, maybe you should stop hanging out with those people!
• Perhaps you turned to alcohol and prescription medications after you hit a slump with your career. Perhaps you need to restrategize with respect your business, so you can deal with the helplessness and thus feel less seduced by the need to use the substances;
• Perhaps the police pulled you over multiple times because your car is missing a tail light and looks like a hunk of junk. Perhaps if you just fixed up your car, you would be less of a target for authorities (and you would be a safer driver, as well)

The point of this article is not to blame you, unnecessarily, for your Beverly Hills DUI arrest. As discussed above, you might be completely innocent – just like the 60-year-old Surprise, Arizona man who was arrested for DUI, despite blowing a 0.000 % BAC on his breath test!

But no matter what happened, by drilling down to figure out what went wrong in your case, you can feel more empowered and more excited to move on with your life. To start making progress, talk to the thorough, sensitive Beverly Hills DUI defense lawyers at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers now to schedule a free evaluation of your case.

December 25, 2013

Will You Lose Your Job After Your Glendale DUI Arrest?

by Michael Kraut

Perhaps police pulled you over on the 134, after noticing a missing taillight, and arrested you for Glendale DUI. Or maybe you got snagged at a checkpoint near the Galleria.

In either case, you face a slate of challenges. You’re worried about the jail time, fees and fines, and the embarrassment.

But most of all, you’re worried about your job.

After all, it’s a tough economy. You need to earn a fair wage to pay for your kid’s education, to save for retirement, to put food on the table and to pay your rent. If you lose your job, you could face quite an unpleasant financial picture.

A job loss is one of the most unpleasant, unexpected side effects of a Glendale DUI arrest/conviction.

Think about this way. Let’s say you committed a misdemeanor DUI in Glendale. Your fines and fees might total $1,000. That’s no small amount of money.

But what if your DUI leads to your getting fired? Let’s say you earn $2,000 a week. You then get fired and spend four months out of work. Without factoring in unemployment, if you’re out of work 16 weeks, and you miss out on that $2,000 a week income for 16 weeks, that’s a loss to your bottom line of about $32,000. That’s 32 times the DUI fines!

So what can you do?

Your options depend in a very sensitive way on the Glendale DUI charges you face, your past criminal history, if you have any, the nature of your job, the relationship you have with your employer, and so on.

To make a strategic plan to battle back against your Glendale DUI charges, get in touch with the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers today. Attorney Michael Kraut is a former prosecutor, who spent nearly 15 years in the Deputy District Attorney’s office, where he racked up a very impressive 99+% success rate at jury trials.

December 23, 2013

What If Your Beverly Hills DUI Never Happened?

by Michael Kraut

You recently got a Beverly Hills DUI charge. Ever since the cops’ red and blue flashing lights went off in your rear view mirror, you’ve been preoccupied with “what’s next?”

For instance:

• Will I have to go to jail? If so, for how long?