Hire your DUI attorney soon after your DUI arrest

Posted May 9, 2013 by Alex H. Morrow

My advice to anyone who is arrested for Driving Under the Influence is to hire your DUI attorney as soon after your arrest for DUI as is possible.  There are several reasons.

First is the fact that you have ten days to request an administrative hearing if you have been issued a DPS (Department of Public Safety) Form 1205.  If you do not file this request in a timely manner you can lose your driver’s license without ever being convicted of DUI.

Second is the fact that the scene of the DUI arrest should be visited by your DUI attorney as soon as possible after the arrest.  The location where you performed field sobriety tests should be carefully examined and its nature and characteristics documented as soon after your arrest as is possible.  Let me give you an example to explain why.  What if you were asked by the arresting officer to take nine heel-to-toe steps on the fog line at the side of the road during the nine step walk and turn field sobriety test?  What if the officer says you failed it?  What if the video of the arrest shows that you, in fact, were unsteady as you walked this line?  An examination of this line just after your arrest might show that under the white paint stripe called the fog line there are numerous points at which different layers of past road resurfacing happen to end and overlap.  So, what looks like a smooth white line in the video of the arrest is, in reality, a rough area where different layers of asphalt make an uneven surface and it is, therefore, difficult to walk on this surface heel-to-toe, even when you are completely sober.

Rest assured, you will want professional photographs of that rough surface to show the jury to contradict the prosecutor’s argument that you were unsteady as you walked on a smooth, painted line at the edge of the road.  And, rest assured, Murphy’s law dictates that if you do not get those photographs just as soon after the arrest as you can, the city, county, or state will barricade that section of the road and widen it, or in some manner change the configuration of the fog line, before you can document its original condition.  If you wait too long and let the condition of the fog line get changed, you have lost the opportunity to acquire evidence that could very well have resulted in your acquittal.

This hypothetical about the fog line presents only one example of a reason to hire your DUI attorney as soon as you can after your arrest.  There are others.  But, the fact is that a DUI arrest can greatly impact your life if you are convicted and the sooner you hire a competent DUI attorney to represent you in the matter, the better off you will be.