If you have been arrested for a DUI offense, you are probably asking yourself if you should retain an attorney. It certainly is comforting to have someone on your side in that situation. Facing a courtroom and all that goes along with is a really scary situation. Do you need a lawyer to represent you in a DUI case? (Refer Driving Laws website) Hiring an experienced DUI attorney always has its benefits —  familiarity with the court system, knowledge of plea bargain details, and the ability to navigate complex administration procedures. It’s especially important if you are a repeat offender. However, if this is your first DUI and there were no additional or aggravating circumstances such as reckless driving,  DUI with a minor in the vehicle, or a high blood alcohol content (a BAC over .12) you may choose to proceed without a DUI attorney.

Pleading Guilty

If this is your first DUI, you may choose to simply plead guilty. That might be a wise choice if there were some certainty that you would be convicted — for example if your BAC is higher than .11 and the arresting officer testifies that you were driving erratically. But before you plead guilty, you should learn about the DUI / DWI laws penalties and fines in your state in order to make an informed decision. Even if you are convinced you should plead guilty, it is always possible that a DUI attorney may offer advice or counsel that could affect the severity of your sentence. Also keep in mind that if your BAC was between .08 and .11 (and there may be some question as to whether the reading was accurate) conviction is less of a certainty and a DUI attorney may be able to better plea bargain your case. Another fact to consider is that in most first non-injury first offense DUIs, judges hand down a routine sentence that seldom varies from one case to another.

Negotiating Your Sentence

In addition to plea bargaining (where the charge is reduced to a lesser one, like from DUI to reckless driving), most states have sentence bargaining. Sentence bargaining is extremely useful where a guilty plea might result in a long period of incarceration. For example, you may be willing to plead guilty to a second DUI but only if you know what your sentence will be. The same is true with an aggravated DUI cases where your BAC is over .15, or injury or death has resulted. In these types of cases you probably wouldn’t want to plead guilty unless you knew what sentence you’re going to get, and you would be well advised to have an attorney (as is generally true with all non-routine DUI cases).

Second Offenders Should Seek an Attorney

If this is not your first DUI / DWI, you will most likely need the assistance of a DUI attorney. If you’re concerned about the costs, some DUI attorneys will work with you and may offer credit payment plans or discounts.

Schedule an initial consultation with DUI attorney

Why not? If there’s no charge. You should have the facts before making a decision. Alexander Truluck focuses his practice as a criminal defense attorney in Clearwater, Palm Harbor, Largo, Dunedin and the Tampa Bay area.

For more information, visit our website at http://www.criminallawyerclearwaterflorida.com
or call (727) 799-3550.

Refer New York Times June 21, 2014

Lawyers gawked from office windows last month when a BMW S.U.V. swiped a parked police cruiser in the parking lot of a courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, then slammed into a gate over and over again.

A judge was at the wheel.

As lawyers used smartphones to snap pictures of the morning spectacle, Judge Lynn D. Rosenthal became the third Broward County judge in six months to be arrested on charges of driving under the influence. A colleague, Judge Gisele Pollack, had been suspended five days earlier after getting arrested on a D.U.I. charge while already on leave for taking the bench intoxicated — twice.

Even for South Florida, where absurd news events are routine and the sheriff went to prison for corruption, the spate of judicial scandals has raised serious questions about whether the arrests in Broward are a bizarre coincidence or underscore a larger systemic problem. In a county where the judiciary is known for old-school nepotism and cronyism, and judges have been caught smoking marijuana in a park and found drunk and partly naked in a hotel hallway, some lawyers find themselves wondering: At what point do isolated instances of misconduct point to something bigger?

On Wednesday, WPLG, an ABC affiliate, citing anonymous sources, reported that a Broward family court judge was under federal investigation on suspicion of allowing a now-convicted Ponzi schemer to influence a case.

And this month, a former judge in Broward was disbarred for exchanging 949 phone calls and 471 text messages with the prosecutor during a death penalty case. Yet another judge was recommended for removal in April after being accused of cheating clients and a co-counsel in the settlement of a civil suit she handled as a private lawyer a decade ago.

As it turns out, bad behavior by judges has become distressingly common across Florida in recent months. Judge John C. Murphy in Brevard County is on leave after he was caught on video this month threatening a public defender, who later accused the judge of punching him in the head. In the Keys, a judge who was replaced on the bench after dozing off told a local news reporter that Ambien made him hallucinate about “ ‘Fantasia’ and the dancing brooms.” Another stepped down because a blogger exposed a sexually explicit profile the judge had posted on a gay dating site.

But Broward — a heavily Democratic county of 1.8 million people with many judges who are the children, spouses, siblings and fraternity brothers of other judges and some of the region’s most powerful people — seems to be ground zero for allegations of judicial misconduct. The system’s critics say that is because Broward has a highly politicized and clannish culture that is known for protecting its own, which has led some in the judiciary to feel invincible, even as they preside over a county court system that produces the state’s highest exoneration rate.

“I do think it belies an underlying systemic problem in Broward County,” said Howard Finkelstein, Broward’s elected public defender. “I don’t think this stunningly embarrassing fact of having all these charges pending at the same time is indicative of a judiciary with substance abuse problems, but I do think it is a manifestation of the greater problem of a circle-the-wagons mentality.”

Records posted online by the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the independent agency that investigates misconduct by state judges in Florida’s 67 counties, show that 17 percent of the 62 formal disciplinary cases filed against sitting judges since 2001 have been in Broward.

Those figures do not include two judges who were recently arrested or those who resigned before a case was made public, such as Judge Lawrence L. Korda, who, in 2007, after presiding over parts of the Anna Nicole Smith case, was caught smoking marijuana in a park. (Not to be confused with Larry S. Seidlin, the Broward judge who sobbed on the bench during a nationally televised ruling on where the reality TV star should be buried.)

Many judges accused of wrongdoing remain on the bench, such as the family court judge who took in a foster child who had appeared in his court, only for the teenager to accuse the judge years later of molesting him.