Being charged with DUI and arrested for driving under the influence is always very stressful and puts you under the weight of a ton of negative emotions. And for good reasons too. First of all, the DUI implies plenty of legal penalties that may prove to be genuinely severe. In addition, do not forget that it may have a long lasting impact on your life in general – we are talking about loss of your employment and even family related issues. Hence, the timing is crucial as well as genuinely critical indeed – you are going to need to make sure that you are not losing any time and to get in touch with a qualified as well as genuinely experienced legal representative as soon as it is possible in order to minimize the damage that could be done to your life.
With that said, the legal consequences for driving under the influence of alcohol or perhaps any illegal substance are genuinely severe and harsh indeed. After all, you will have to pay hefty fines and this does imply thousands of dollars from your own pocket. In addition, you can also lose the driving privileges for a very long time, which is also quite catastrophic, seeing how these days it is pretty much impossible to imagine our day to day living without driving. You may also be required to perform mandatory community service and this does imply hundreds of hours of completely unpaid labor, which is the last thing you will ever want. The cost of the insurance is also going to be elevated sky high and you will end up paying several times more than you used to. Mandatory alcohol or drug awareness classes may also be a part of the sentence and you will have to pay for those on your own too. Finally, depending on the circumstances of the DUI that you were involved in, you are going to be either sentenced to county jail or to state prison for a pretty long time as well.
A DUI sentence may well meddle with your job – you may easily lose the position. Especially if you are a commercial driver – the profession will not allow it and you will definitely be fired from work at once. Furthermore, even if you are not going to lose your job right there and then, it does not necessarily imply that you will not lose your license. And in some of the cases this is very much similar to losing the job too. After all, you will be unable to get to work within the required time. And, of course, the DUI conviction, if it is a serious one, is going to be displayed in your personal records, which will mess with your job, your family life as well as plenty of other aspect of your day to day living.
Surely, the vast majority of people, who were arrested for DUI, never have been in custody before and never messed with any kind of laws or legislation to begin with. Hence, once they are arrested and booked, taken to custody – they become all the more depressed and nervous and this may well turn into a hug disadvantage, especially if you are unfamiliar with what the DUI process looks like. And furthermore trials as well as court sessions will be all the more demoralizing, especially if you do not have a qualified as well as genuinely experienced DUI lawyer with you.
Aside from the criminal hearing, there is going to be yet another one, where the fate of your driver’s license is going to be decided. This is the administrative DMV hearing and it does involve another hearing with a DMV hearing officer. Now, it does not have anything to do with the usual criminal hearing and these hearings do not affect one another.
Once you are arrested for DUI, the arresting officer is going to take your license from you. Instead, he or she will provide you with a temporary permit that will allow you to drive around for 30 more days. However, you will need to contact the DMV and initiate an administrative DMV hearing within 10 days after the arrest. Otherwise, your license will be automatically suspended. During that administrative hearing, you are also going to need a qualified as well as genuinely experienced legal representative by your side, especially if you are inclined to keep the license.
Indeed, the importance of having a good attorney simply cannot be underestimated. After all, the lawyer is going to be familiar with how it all works, with the legal process and, based on all the facts around your case, will be able to come up with the ideal legal defense strategy. He or she will question if the law enforcement officers had any reason to pull you over in the first place, if their actions were justified. The FSTs or the field sobriety tests are very much subjective and their results will also be questioned by the lawyer. Even the blood test results may well be quite inaccurate, since the blood sample was not stored properly and perhaps contaminated to begin with.
Finally, a DUI lawyer will know how to approach both the judge and the prosecution, since he or she probably had to deal with each other even before. Hence, regardless of how serious of a DUI it may be, odds are, you will be interested in minimizing the legal damage as well as perhaps dismissing the case to begin with, which is why having a qualified as well as genuinely experienced legal representative in court is a must. And this is why it is all the more important not to lose any time and to get in touch with the right lawyer as soon as it is possible so as to make the most from his or her representation.
If you need immediate help with your DUI case, do not hesitate to call Law Offices of Las Vegas DUI Specialists or email us using contact form.
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