DUI Near USC or UCLA

January 14, 2013

Beverly Hills DUI News Blogger: Gérard Depardieu a No Show at DUI Trial, As He Escalates His Bizarre Behavior

This Beverly Hills DUI blog is not above covering international news, especially news that concerns celebrities like renowned French actor Gérard Depardieu – perhaps the greatest French actor of all time.

The 64-year-old Depardieu, however, has also had a colorful, if bizarre, recent history of criminal wrongdoings. Two years ago, he was arrested after he urinated in his seat on a plane, despite the pleas of fellow passengers and flight attendants. More recently, last November 29th, he drove his scooter while under the influence of alcohol to the tune of over four times the legal limit!

If you’re arrested for a way-over-the-limit DUI in Beverly Hills, you can be hit with additional penalties, such as a harsher jail sentence, longer license suspension, more alcohol school, and other sundry penalties. According to news sources, Depardieu could have pled guilty to the charges, got dinged with a small fine, and been on his way.

Instead, the eclectic actor absconded from the country to Belgium. Not only did he ditch his January 8 hearing, but he now faces more serious criminal charges, which could net him up to two years behind bars on top of fines totaling nearly $6,000.

The actor’s citizenship changes require a flowchart to track. Last December, he moved to Belgium to protest the high tax rates in France, prompting the leader of France’s Socialist party to call him names. Meanwhile, Depardieu recently accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to make him a citizen of Russia, and he may move to Mordovia to become that region’s Minister of Culture. Depardieu released a statement from Switzerland (confused yet?) regarding his status: “I have a Russian passport, but I remain French and I’ll probably have dual Belgium nationality.”

Good grief.

Obviously, Depardieu’s legal fate – along with where he will ultimately reside – remain up in the air. But his legal situation is certainly fascinating. Of course, if you’re facing a Beverly Hills DUI charge, you’re much less concerned about being entertained and much more concerned about finding an appropriate, sharp Los Angeles DUI lawyer to deal with your charges in a sensible way.

The team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers can help you. Michael Kraut is a highly esteemed lawyer with a great track record. Connect with him and his team for a free consultation today.

January 7, 2013

Was Your Child Recently Arrested for Driving Under the Influence in Long Beach (or Elsewhere)?

by Michael Kraut

You’re a concerned parent whose child was recently charged with a DUI in Long Beach or elsewhere in Southern California.

You’re likely feeling a destructive cocktail of emotions right now, including anger, confusion, frustration, and helplessness. You worked so hard to raise a child who would abide by the law. The news of the arrest sent shockwaves through your immediate family. It’s forced you to reflect deeply on your values and parental strategies.

Whether your USC undergrad got stopped at a checkpoint on the 405 after an evening of New Year’s revelry; or your teenage daughter caused an injury accident and now faces the possibility of spending over a year behind bars, pursuant to charges under Long Beach injury DUI California Vehicle Code Section 23153, you want practical guidance. You also want to find empathetic, experienced people to help you deal with your own agita that’s been kicked up by the events of the past few days.

Your concern is merited. In fact, by researching and finding an excellent, trusted Southern California DUI criminal defense attorney, you can position your son or daughter to handle the charges better; manage the rehab and penalty phases more maturely; and identify and dispute officer errors and breathalyzer test false positives.

If your grown child can no longer drive to school or work — due to a license suspension stemming from his or her Long Beach DUI — then you may suddenly find yourself chaperoning once again. Likewise, if your child lacks a big savings account, he or she may look to you to pay the steep fines and court costs (which can total in the thousands of dollars). On a more indirect level, the psychological toll of getting arrested and convicted for a Long Beach DUI offense can impact the family for years. If you no longer trust your adult child to make wise decisions, that lack of trust can poison your relationship with the child.

On the other hand, the situation does not have to be grim, even if the offense is dire and the possible punishments manifold.

With the help of a reliable Long Beach DUI criminal defense attorney, like Michael Kraut of the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers, your child can put up stiff resistance to the charges and tap into a wealth of resources to deal with the various issues we’ve discussed in this blog post (as well as others not yet touched upon). Moreover, the DUI event can be re-framed as a learning and growing experience.

Get in touch with the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers now for a free, confidential consultation about what to do, so you can feel more in control and more empowered.

December 10, 2012

Quick Quiz: Is It Safe to Drive a Massive Truck DUI in Long Beach with a BAC of 0.50%?

by Michael Kraut

If you drive a truck DUI in Long Beach or elsewhere in the Southland, not only could you face jail time and a license suspension, but you can also lose your job and face other industry penalties.

Prosecutors bring the hammer down on DUI truckers for a reason: trucks are the most dangerous vehicles on the roads. They are more massive than passenger cars, motorcycles, and lightweight vans. Thus, they can inflict geometrically increased levels of force during accidents. A 20-ton truck travelling at 60 miles per hour that crashes into a wall will impart as much force on that wall as will a one-ton racecar that smashes into the same wall at 1200 miles per hour – over four hundred miles per hour faster than the speed of sound!

Consider those forces in light of a near tragedy out of a Beaverton, Oregon. 38-year-old Matthew Allen Hamilton almost drove his pick-up truck off of a Highway 217 overpass into traffic. The scene captured national attention: a red pick-up truck dangled precariously, stopped by destruction only by a surprisingly sturdy overpass guard rail.

It took police and rescue workers hours to rescue Hamilton and remove his truck from the guardrail. Once they plucked him down, they gave him a blood alcohol test, which found that he had a 0.50% BAC – that’s well over six times the Long Beach DUI limit. That’s a BAC level high enough to kill many people or at least make them comatose. So in some sense it’s remarkable that Hamilton even survived the drinking, let alone that he survived nearly driving off the overpass.

The drama behind this story notwithstanding, if you’ve been recently pulled over for driving under the influence in Long Beach, you can learn much from understanding Hamilton’s plight and possible best next steps.

1. Getting a Long Beach DUI charge can lead to public humiliation.

Hopefully, your arrest has not yet led to substantial public shaming – it hasn’t cost you clients, friends, prospective job opportunities, etc. But consequences like that can happen.

2. The fact that you survived your Long Beach DUI event means you got incredibly lucky.

You may not feel particularly lucky now, especially if you hurt someone else and/or if you face massive potential criminal penalties. But driving DUI is a dangerous game. In Hamilton’s case, slightly different physics would have resulted in his certain death.

3. You can take action, now, to start making things better.

Just because you are in a dangerous, helpless, or scary position doesn’t mean that you have to suffer helplessly forever. The team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers in Long Beach can help you understand and craft an appropriate Long Beach DUI truckers’ defense and answer your questions about best practices.

December 5, 2012

Even If You Know Pasadena DUI Law Like the Back of Your Hand, You Can Still Make Terrible Mistakes, Like This Guy Did…

by Michael Kraut

Does a deep, emotionally charged knowledge of Pasadena DUI laws inoculate you against making bad decisions behind the wheel?

Your intuition might suggest that it would. You’d think that police officers, Pasadena DUI defense attorneys, legislators and the gadflies who advocate for tougher DUI sanctions might exhibit safer behind the wheel behavior than the average citizen. To be fair, no one has ever conducted a systematic scientific study to compare these types of groups – the “presumed responsible” people versus average citizens. However, anecdotal evidence certainly suggests that Pasadena DUI lawyers are human and prone to fallibility, just like everyone else is.

Case in point: consider the sad story of 40-year-old Jeffrey Gallup, a former defense attorney who now faces his sixth DUI case. His latest arrest occurred back in September in Highland, Utah, just half a year from his previous DUI conviction. A police officer saw Gallup swerve, and he pulled the ex-attorney over for an equipment violation. The officer told the court that he smelled alcohol on Gallup’s person and noted that he had “glassy eyes” – both traditional symptoms of Pasadena DUI. (As regular readers of this blog know, other symptoms include loss of motor coordination, aphasia, inability to do physical tasks, inappropriate emotional reactions, etc.)

Gallup initially refused a DUI blood test after failing his field sobriety tests, so officers had to get a warrant to put him through the paces of a blood test. The former attorney racked up a BAC of 0.09% — over the legal limit for DUI in Pasadena and elsewhere of 0.08%.

Gallup faces a third degree felony count, since this was not his first DUI charge. As we’ve discussed many times, prosecutors do not take kindly to recidivist offenders. They have legal tools that they can use to amp up your charges and put you behind bars for far longer.

Gallup’s situation dramatically highlights that knowledge of the law – on a level far deeper than 99.9% of the population will ever enjoy – is simply not enough to inoculate you from making dumb decisions behind the wheel.

Fortunately, you can recover from what’s happened to you and turn your life around. Look to Pasadena DUI criminal defense lawyer attorney, Michael Kraut, of Pasadena’s Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers to help you build a potent case. Attorney Kraut is an ex-prosecutor. His perspective as both a criminal defense lawyer and a former prosecutor gives him a competitive advantage over other Pasadena DUI attorneys and law firms.

November 21, 2012

Driving Under the Influence Charge for Bobby Brown: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year for ‘My Prerogative’ Singer

by Michael Kraut

2012 will not go down as a very good year for recording artist Bobby Brown, who just got arrested (yet again!) for driving under the influence in Los Angeles, several months after losing his former beloved, Whitney Houston.

The 43-year-old Brown pled no contest to a DUI charge back in March and managed to get himself out of rehab in August. Just weeks after getting out of rehab, however, he got stopped in the Topanga area: the celebrity gossip website TMZ reported that Brown had been seen weaving between lanes. The strange behavior prompted a police cruiser to stop him under suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. He also exhibited symptoms of LA DUI and had an odor of alcohol. He failed his field sobriety tests and got booked into a jail in Van Nuys.

Brown was released on his own recognizance. Hopefully, he’ll get the help he needs to manage his multiple crises. On top of dealing with the DUI charges and the death of his ex-wife, Brown also received a tepid reception to his new album — the first he released in over a decade and a half.

Multiple stresses can lead to helplessness
One of the most common beliefs about alcohol addiction is that drivers who drive DUI when they ‘know they shouldn’t’ are somehow ‘giving in’ and behaving in a weak manner. Alternative theories about addiction, however, suggest that the drive to consume alcohol or drugs — or engage in other reckless, negligent, or dangerous behaviors — may stem not from a weak constitution but rather from a distorted drive to reassert control in a chaotic world.

Think about your own life. Think about your own Los Angeles DUI arrest. How did you feel in the days and hours leading up to your arrest? Did you feel completely in control of your life? Or did you feel out of control and helpless? Odds are, you felt that latter.

This is an important revelation, since it suggests that drivers who are arrested for crimes like DUI may need help gaining control over their lives and becoming more empowered. Instead, they are often counseled to ‘surrender’ their power and beat themselves up. The criminal justice system certainly assists in this negative regard by condemning drivers to punishments that may or may not fit the crime.

All of this is not to say that you may not bear culpability for what happened – or responsibility for your life.

However, it may be misguided to treat your problem as a simple problem of “lack of will.” The diverse forces that motivate your behaviors, actions, and habits can be complex stuff, indeed. These forces can touch upon psychological factors as well as physical factors.

What you need now is a thorough, comprehensive strategy to assess where you are at, legally speaking and otherwise, in the wake of the DUI arrest.

Get in touch with Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer Michael Kraut of the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers for effective, compassionate, and insightful guidance regarding your charges and your life in general.

November 16, 2012

Lakers Ebanks Busted for Driving Under the Influence in Hollywood – More Woes for L.A. Basketball

by Michael Kraut

Devin Ebanks, a reserve forward for the L.A. Lakers, got busted for Hollywood DUI last week, according to CHP records.

The 23-year-old was stopped at Hollywood Boulevard and El Centro Avenue at around 2:30 in the morning, after an officer saw him commit a traffic violation. Ebanks was later released on $5,000 bail. Apparently, he had just been chilling out at a Roxbury night club to celebrate a woman’s birthday. (He told his followers on Twitter to join him at the club.)

Notwithstanding the arrest, Ebanks managed to play for the Lakers against the Golden State Warriors the very next day; he’s on contract with them for $1.4 million — an agreement he made back in August. Ebanks has only averaged an anemic 2.5 points in 2012, however, and he is still reeling from accusations that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2011.

DUI in Hollywood Defenses

How should someone like Ebanks build and follow through on a Los Angeles DUI defense? You need to take a look at the charges in context. For instance:

• Does the defendant have any prior criminal convictions, especially for past DUIs?

The more DUI convictions you rack up, the more ‘legal ammunition’ prosecutors have to throw at you. For instance, if you get convicted for two+ Hollywood DUIs within 10 years, prosecutors can try to transform a misdemeanor DUI charge into a felony charge;
• What happened during and after the stop/accident/arrest?

Were you stopped and booked at a checkpoint? Did you get into an accident before getting arrested? Did police put you through a field sobriety test and arrest you after seeing you exhibit symptoms of Hollywood DUI? How were the DUI tests calibrated and conducted? Were there police errors? Were there any factors that could have thrown off your breathalyzer reading?

• Did complicating or quirky factors play a role?

For instance, did someone else crash into your car or cause the accident somehow? Did your vehicle malfunction and cause you to swerve off the road, thus prompting the police attention that led to your Hollywood DUI arrest?

An efficient, smart DUI defense strategy

Hollywood DUI criminal defense lawyer, Michael Kraut, of the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers, and his team are standing by to help you understand your challenges and construct an intelligent response. Get in touch with Attorney Kraut today for a free consultation.

November 14, 2012

Scary Southern California DUI News: CHP SWAT Team Called in to Detonate Pipe Bomb Found in DUI Driver’s Van

by Michael Kraut

Southern California DUI events are dangerous, in and of themselves.

If you drive under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or even prescription medications, your ability to react to unexpected conditions on the road, emergency signals, strange weather conditions, etc can be horrifically impaired.

Usually, the DUI driving is the most scary ‘part’ of any DUI stop. However, that’s not always the case! Consider a seemingly routine DUI stop up in San Jose that got totally out of control, when local police discovered that the driver had a bomb in his van.

According to news reports, the San Jose Police Department stopped a 1998 Ford Windstar van near the 101 and First Street at around 8:45 p.m. last Wednesday. Police became suspicious while chatting with the driver; and they searched the van. They discovered significant evidence to bust 35-year-old James Magill and hit him with narcotics charges and a DUI.

They also discovered a live pipe bomb!

A SWAT team was summoned to the scene, and police shut down streets around the area. The SWAT team prepped for hours before detonating the pipe bomb in a controlled explosion. Local residents felt and heard the blast. One person living nearby said he felt his entire apartment shake from the controlled detonation. No damage or injuries resulted, fortunately, and the ‘uncooperative’ Magill got booked on a number of charges, including DUI and possession of a destructive device. He was held without bail at County jail.

An investigation into the situation is ongoing.

Hopefully, your Southern California DUI was less scary. The vast, vast majority of people who are arrested for driving under the influence intend no harm. They either misjudge their own ability to metabolize alcohol or make other poor judgment calls.

To manage the aftermath of your DUI arrest effectively, you likely need substantial help from an experienced Los Angeles DUI criminal defense attorney.

The Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers’s Michael Kraut has a wealth of resources, experience, and connections to inform you and help you fight back against the charges. The best defenses involve both a deep and realistic appreciation of exactly how much trouble you are in as well as a success focused vision of an ideal conclusion to your case. Attorney Kraut is an ex prosecutor with a Harvard Law School background. He has the common sense, intuition, and experience to help you maximize your likelihood of prevailing.

November 7, 2012

If Arrested for DUI in Glendale, Don’t Drive the Wrong Way Down a One Way Street and Then Knee the Arresting Officer in the Groin

by Michael Kraut

If you or a loved one or colleague recently got arrested for driving under the influence in Glendale, your situation is obviously intense, scary, and overwhelming. Unfortunately – as we’ve catalogued numerous times in this blog over the past several months – DUI suspects often engage in tremendously dangerous and dumb behavior during and after the arrest sequence that redounds to cripple their legal defensive options.

Ideally, your Glendale DUI arrest was significantly less drama filled than the arrest of 37-year-old Andrea Weber, a British woman arrested in the town of Beatrice on Highway 136 last Wednesday evening. According to The Daily Mail, a paper in the UK, Weber got busted for a variety of charges, such as felony child abuse, flight to avoid arrest, assault, and the UK equivalent of driving under the influence. (In England, they obviously have different DUI laws, but these in many ways run parallel to the standards for Glendale DUI, as defined by California Vehicle Code Section 23152(a) and 23152(b) – or, if you injure someone, the “upgraded” felony CVC laws – 23153(a) and 23153(b).)

The Daily Mail reports that police saw Weber driving on Highway 136; they followed her car as she zipped down a one way street. The police pursued and eventually got her to pull over in a middle school parking lot. The police found two kids in her back seat. As the police chatted with the children, Weber tried to get back into her car. When a officer tried to stop her, she kneed him in the groin. Unsurprisingly, she was then restrained and arrested and hit with a bevy of charges, some of which we described above.

The moral for you, if you’ve been charged with a Glendale DUI
As embarrassing as your arrest might have been, what’s past is past. You cannot undo the damage you’ve done to property, people, and your reputation. However, you don’t have to let the past be a prison, either. Everyone makes mistakes. Your ability to rebound from your bad decision making might even surprise you. In fact, many famous figures in both American and British history have rebounded from incidents like Glendale DUI to become powerful leaders, humanitarians, etc.

You can almost view this as a learning experience – hopefully one that won’t cost you too extravagantly and won’t lead to massive jail time – and hopefully one that did not involve serious injuries to anyone or loss of life.

Glendale DUI defense attorney Michael Kraut of the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers and his team are standing by to help you unpack your potential legal defense options and help you systematically defend against the charges. Attorney Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated ex-prosecutor. He’s a highly respected “maven” of Los Angeles DUI law, who is often called upon by the Los Angeles Times, KTLA News and New York Times to weigh in on important local DUI cases.

November 5, 2012

Pregnant Zombie Arrested for DUI: Hopefully Your Burbank DUI Mug Shot was Prettier

by Michael Kraut

Whether you got arrested for driving under the influence in Burbank on “All Hollow’s Eve” or not, odds are that the experience was spooky and disorienting, and not in a good way.

DUI stories have a way of becoming surreal and macabre – both for DUI suspects and for victims of the crash and investigators. Burbank DUI bloggers and national “News of the Weird” scouts from places like Huffington Post were riveted last week by a strange Halloween DUI story out of Birmingham Alabama.

Allegedly, a woman dressed as a pregnant-zombie-who-had-been-shot-in-the-head was found passed out in her car the morning after Halloween. Initially, passersby thought that she had actually been shot in the head. These people called the police, who found that the woman was just wearing a Halloween costume. The costume itself was amateurish, but when the frightened passersby saw it in context, it certainly looked gory and real. Plus, they found her on the morning after Halloween, not on Halloween itself. As one Birmingham police officer said, “you can see why someone thought she had been shot.”

Local officers woke the woman up, looked through her vehicle, and then arrested her on charges of DUI.

Obviously, getting a charge like driving under the influence in Burbank is not pleasant. But it’s certainly better than getting shot in the head and left to die in your car.

Nevertheless, you face a superabundance of challenges and questions that you will need to address in the days and weeks ahead. For instance, will your license get suspended? Will you have to spend significant time in jail? What should you be doing right now to prepare for your legal battle? Have you written down your own account of what happened – including quotes from officers or from any witnesses? Did you make any statements to authorities or to anyone investigating the case that could compromise your case or cause you potential legal problems?

Have you found and retained a Burbank DUI criminal defense attorney yet?

These and other questions are probably whirling around your head, even as you try to process what happened to you. It can be difficult to prioritize and strategize, since you’re not an expert in Burbank DUI law, and you’re also almost certainly dealing with emotional “blowback” from the arrest as well as “day-to-day” life concern re: your job, family, and relationship obligations.

The practiced and efficient team at Burbank’s Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers can assist you in developing a proper defense and making good sense of your options. Attorney Kraut is a highly respected, knowledgeable, and successful criminal defense lawyer who has the compassion and relationships to provide you excellent service.

October 29, 2012

Driving DUI in Los Angeles, New York, or Anywhere: Never a Good Idea, Especially If You Drive a School Bus

by Michael Kraut

What should be done to prevent school bus drivers from driving under the influence of alcohol in Los Angeles, New York, and other big cities? Where do we draw the line between the need to respect the freedom of individuals and the need to protect kids from reckless, careless DUI driving?

New York legislators and policy makers are mulling over these and other similar questions this week, in the wake of new legislation proposed by New York state Senator Charles Fuschillo and Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice, that would require school bus drivers to blow into breathalyzer devices before being able to drive kids around.

If this New York law passes, it would be the first of its kind in the country; and it might set a president for how lawmakers here in California try to stamp out the problem of driving under the influence in Los Angeles.

Why Are Lawmakers So “Ginned Up” to Stop DUI Bus Driving?

The answer is pretty simple: a spate of DUI bus driving incidents over the past month have alarmed parents, lawmakers, and the general populace.

Here are three:

1. On October 3rd, Frederick Flowers, a 66-year old bus driver, crashed into a house while carrying five kids in his school bus.

Police believe that Flowers passed out behind the wheel prior to the crash. The kids, who ranged in age from 5 years old to 8 years old, miraculously survived without injury.

2. Less than two weeks later, 40-year old Robert Stundis got stopped and arrested for driving a school bus under the influence.

He tested to have a blood alcohol concentration of 0.23%. That’s nearly 3 times the maximum allowable BAC level of 0.08%, according to Southern California DUI law. Police found a half empty bottle of vodka on his school bus and charged Stundis with endangering the welfare of children, DWI while driving a school bus, and DWI with child passengers.

3. Lastly, on October 22nd, 47-year old James Sommer, crashed into a tree while trying to park his school bus.

Authorities later arrested him under suspicion of DWI; one girl, 12-year old, had to go to the hospital with minor injuries.

Obviously, this rash of bus driver DUI arrests is viscerally distributing. But would it be helpful to compel school buses to install interlock ignition devices? How could we measure the results of such an initiative? And would any increase in safety persist for years or decades? Would legislation be worth the expense and legal battle?

These questions are certainly intriguing, but if you’re struggling with a DUI charge yourself, you are probably less interested in how to change the world (or fix society’s larger problems) than you are in avoiding jail time, minimizing your punishments, and figuring out how to rebuild your life and reputation after your arrest.

To that end, talk to Mr. Michael Kraut of Los Angeles’s Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers about your legal needs. Attorney Kraut is an ex-prosecutor who spent 14 plus years “on the other side” trying to put defendants for DUI crimes behind bars. Now, as a defense attorney, he uses his knowledge of the mindset of prosecutors – and the relationships he has cultivated over the years – to deliver excellent service for his clients.