Los Angeles DUI Attorney Blog

January 24, 2014

Justin Bieber Walloped with DUI Charge: Pop Singer Arrested in $250,000 Lamborghini

If you recently got arrested for Los Angeles DUI, at least be grateful that your arrest is not international front page news.

The same CAN’T be said for 19-year-old pop star, Justin Bieber, who was arrested Thursday morning in a rented Gallardo LP 550-2 Spyder Lamborghini in Miami Beach and charged with DUI, drag racing, and resisting arrest.

Apparently “the Biebs” left a club and hopped into his yellow Lamborghini to drag race 19 year-old rapper, Khalil Sharieff. (Incidentally, Sharieff was also arrested at the scene and hit with charges of drag racing and driving DUI.)

The teen crooner is no stranger to controversy. Beiber potentially faces felony vandalism charges for throwing eggs at his neighbor’s house in Southern California and causing upwards of $20,000 worth of damage to the property. That’s right — $20,000 worth of damage with eggs alone. How is that even possible? Was he chucking them right at chandeliers?

Beiber allegedly did not exactly react to the DUI stop with grace and poise. Reports say he berated the officer who stopped him at around 4 in the morning with a less than courteous: “What the f**k did I do? Why did you stop me?” and uttered a string of other profanities before he finally submitted to the arrest.

The pop star allegedly admitted to having smoked marijuana, taken prescription medications, and consumed alcohol.

Raymond Martinez, the Miami Beach Police Chief, told reporters that Bieber had been belligerent (at first), “using some choice words questioning why he was being stopped, why the officer was even questioning him.”

Two SUVs blocked traffic on Pine Tree Drive and 26th Street, creating an ad hoc strip for Bieber and Sharieff to drag race their Lamborghini and Ferrari.

Deputies in Los Angeles County have investigated reports of Bieber drag racing right here in Southern California in the normally sleepy town of Calabasas, and one neighbor said that Bieber one time spat in his face. However, police lacked evidence of the speeding and the spitting, so the L.A. County District Attorney decided not to prosecute.

If you drive after smoking marijuana – like Bieber allegedly did – you could be hit with a drug DUI charge per California Vehicle Code Section 23152 (a). Per this vehicle code, even if you have a doctor’s order to take a medication, you can still be hit with a Los Angeles DUI charge. Police do not use breath tests in drug DUIs, but they can test you with urine or blood tests, and this chemical analysis can convince a jury that you were driving under the influence of narcotics or medications.

The good news – at least from a defendant’s standpoint – is that prosecutors have a much harder time convicting in drug DUI cases, in general, and police officers often don’t know what to look for when investigating drug DUIs.

Connect with experienced ex-prosecutor, Michael Kraut, today to develop your Los Angeles DUI defense.

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 Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. today for insightful, lucid, and strategic insight.

January 17, 2014

Los Angeles DUI Sports News: Erin Henderson (of the Vikings) Arrested Yet Again

by Michael Kraut

Whether you were arrested for DUI in Los Angeles recently – or you’re just a sports fan who’s rabidly obsessed with the NFL – you may have heard that Minnesota Vikings linebacker, Erin Henderson, just got arrested after a nasty DUI crash in Minnesota.

The six season veteran drove his black SUV off the road in Carver County, scraped across a grassy landscape, sailed across a parking lot, and then smashed into a copse of trees. The SUV’s front was “heavily damaged” in the crash.

The Vikings had a less than stellar season, as exemplified by a late season game against the Baltimore Ravens, during which the two teams traded a pair of touchdowns in the final two minutes of the game. (The Ravens won that battle… only to get knocked off by the Bengals in the last week of regular season play).

As for Henderson, he, also, struggled off the field before this latest DUI arrest. On November 19th, police arrested him for possession of controlled substances and probable cause DUI. As for his latest arrest… he now faces second and third degree DWI (the Minnesota equivalent of Los Angeles DUI) as well as charges of breath test refusal, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana, and violation of driver’s license suspension.

He posted a $12,000 bail, and he’ll head to court in early March to face the charges.

Despite Henderson’s impressive season – he nailed two interceptions, started 12 games and racked up 5 sacks – insiders suggest that his days with the Vikings are numbered and that he will be released after the Super Bowl’s transaction moratorium ends.

After his November 19th arrest, Henderson expressed remorse: “it is a strange situation, but I really can’t go into too much detail and depth right now as far as legal matters go… will kind of let the things play out the way they will. I am sure you guys will learn more in the future, but at this point right now I am not at liberty to discuss…”

Many people who face charges like DUI don’t understand what they’re really up against and what they can do to minimize punishment. Fortunately, if you or someone you love faces a Los Angeles DUI charge, you can turn to the experienced team here at the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. for a personalized, customized, and strategic defense.

January 15, 2014

2,268 Los Angeles DUI Arrests Over Holiday – Up from Last Year – What Does it All Mean?

by Michael Kraut

According to the L.A. Times, police around Los Angeles County arrested 2,268 people over the holiday period for driving under the influence in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said that the crackdown stretched from December 13 through New Year’s Day and involved diverse law enforcement agencies. The 20 day span utilized special saturation patrols, sobriety check points for Los Angeles DUI, and routine patrols. It netted 100 more people than did a similar crackdown during the 2012 holiday season. Authorities called the plan a success and boasted that the number of people busted for DUI in Los Angeles over the period was “significant.” Authorities plan to perform a similar anti-DUI canvasing during the Super Bowl holiday and St. Patrick’s Day weekend.

Taken out of context, the spike in number of Los Angeles DUI arrests may sound alarming. Are anti-DUI messages not resonating? What’s going on?

When analyzing statistics, you need to be careful to avoid over-interpreting data. Arrest numbers can vary due to random statistical noise. In other words, there may not be a “cause” for the fluctuation – randomness just happens. In fact, at one point over the holidays, CBS Los Angeles reported that seasonal DUIs were on a decline. Here’s a key quote from cbsla.com “the CHP tracked DUI related arrests from 6:01 PM Tuesday through 6:00 AM Wednesday and arrested 76 people in Los Angeles County during that time. During the same time last year, CHP officers arrested 86 people.”

The moral here is clear: statistics without context don’t lead to meaning. You need a guide to the Los Angeles DUI defense process that you can really trust. The good news is that former Deputy District Attorney, Michael Kraut, is standing by to help you make sense of what you’ve been through and plan a strategy to protect your rights.

January 13, 2014

Not All Beverly Hills DUI Stories End Like This (Police Officer Saves DUI Man Who Drove Car into a Pond)

by Michael Kraut

As someone who’s recently been arrested for DUI in Los Angeles, you probably have a negative opinion towards the police right now. As you reflect on the night (or day) of your arrest, you may ruminate about the punishments on deck for you, possibly including:

• Suspension of your California driver’s license;
• Forced installation of an Interlocking Ignition Device (IID) in your car or truck;
• Fines, fees, legal fees, and other sundry costs;
• Forced alcohol school;
• Restrictive probation terms;
• Jail time;
• Major spikes in your auto insurance premiums;
• Etc.

Consider, though, a tremendous story out of South Carolina. A Sumter police officer dove into a freezing pond to rescue a DUI driver, who had driven his vehicle into a pond. Officer Quentin Eley saw several cars gathered by the side of Second Millpond Bridge flashing their hazard lights. He approached and discovered that a car had driven into the water, and a person was trapped inside.

Officer Eley then made a daring decision to strip off his protective equipment and dive into the freezing pond, where he rescued 38-year-old Ioan Marcell Cimpean from what would have almost certainly been a drowning death. (Cimpean did not need any treatment at the hospital; authorities subsequently sent him to a local detention center on a DUI complaint. Cimpean secured his release, after paying a $2,267 bond.)

The Chief of the Sumter Police, Russell Roark, sung Officer Eley’s praises “he dove into the water without regard for his own safety… he was able to open the door and find Mr. Cimpean… for someone to take off their weapon and as much of their equipment as they can, and dive into freezing cold water to save somebody, it’s hard to put into words how proud I am actually of him and of the Sumter Police Department.”

This isn’t to say that the Beverly Hills police officer who arrested you for DUI was a hero. Police officers – like everyone else – can make egregious mistakes and even intentionally do things wrong to complicate DUI cases. However, it does illustrate the depth of humanity that many officers have… and the lengths to which good people will go to serve and protect.

If you’ve been struggling with Los Angeles DUI charges, what are your next steps? Will you go jail? What kind of defense can you put up? For help about answering those questions, connect with Harvard Law School educated, ex-Deputy District Attorney, Michael Kraut, today for a free consultation about your legal needs.

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 Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. 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 Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. 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 Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. now to schedule a free evaluation of your case.

December 30, 2013

The Pasadena DUI Vortex: What’s Your Risk for Recidivism?

by Michael Kraut

The statistics paint a scary picture. If you’re arrested just one time for driving under the influence in Pasadena, your odds of getting arrested again for the same crime spike — a lot.

A week ago, prior to your arrest, you might have had a 1% chance of ever being arrested for DUI. Today, your chance of getting re-arrested might be 4%. (Those numbers are made up to illustrate the point).

Every DUI arrest is different. Perhaps you will “learn your lesson” (if, indeed, you have a lesson to learn). But to understand your Southern California DUI arrest in context, you need to focus attention not just on the past but also on the present and the future.

Even if you didn’t hurt someone while driving DUI in Pasadena, you likely found the whole experience traumatic and a bit weird. If you’ve been replaying the stop/accident in your head, over and over again, don’t worry. You’re not going crazy. This is a natural cognitive response many people have.

To construct an effective defense — and at the same time reduce your risk for getting in similar trouble in the future — you may need to investigate the DUI in great detail. Sometimes, this close analysis can lead to evidence that can exonerate you. For instance, perhaps your breathalyzer test malfunctioned. Or perhaps you drove off the road because of a man-made obstructed or bad signage. A Pasadena DUI criminal defense attorney can help you with this investigation and analysis.

Moving on with Your Life — Safely — After Your DUI

Recognize that the past is past. Perhaps you screwed up. Perhaps you were just unlucky. Focus not on the past but rather on your current and future decisions. What steps can you take to fix your problems with alcohol (if you have any) and prevent future run-ins with the law?

To start the process, get in touch with a seasoned Pasadena DUI criminal defense lawyer. The team at the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. has the wherewithal, sensitivity and track record to deliver results. Find out more about what we do on our website, or call us to schedule a free consultation now.