Articles Posted in Beverly Hills DUI Defense Attorney

Even a first time Beverly Hills DUI misdemeanor conviction can lead to substantial jail time, hundreds of dollars in fees, required installation of an IID device in your vehicle, and mandatory alcohol classes. 60-million-dollar-los-angeles-dui.jpg

Your insurance rates may also go up precipitously. (Imagine if you had to pay $2,000 or $3,000 or more every year in car insurance… just because of your DUI!)

These costs don’t even touch on the harder to measure indirect costs, such as a job loss, trouble with your marriage or key relationships, and so forth.

But even if your Beverly Hills DUI accident caused a LOT of damage — for instance, maybe you fishtailed off Wilshire and smashed into the facade of the Beverly Hills Hotel — what you did wouldn’t hold a candle to what John Cota did.

On November 7, 2007, Cota, a 60-year-old ship captain, plowed a tanker containing 53,000 gallons of oil into a bridge’s support tower… while DUI and/or on drugs. The accident drenched the San Francisco Bay in oil, destroyed tons of wildlife (literally), and tarnished beaches for miles around. Officials later said the crash caused the deaths of 2,000 birds and cost the local government $60 million to clean up.

Cota took a test two hours after the accident. Police failed to find intoxicating substances in his blood, although recent evidence suggests that he had been taking a variety of medications for migraines, anxiety, and pain. These meds easily could have interacted to interfere with his driving/boating performance. Coast Guard officials later suggested that Cota’s prescription medications likely impaired his judgment. (If you or someone you know has been arrested for drug DUI in Beverly Hills, the team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers can help.)

Eight years prior, Cota was booked on DUI charges. His struggle with alcohol and his history of taking strong medications are both well documented.

Picking Up the Pieces After Your Beverly Hills DUI: What Will YOUR Punishment Be?

In the abstract, it’s practically impossible to even “ballpark” what your Beverly Hills DUI punishments might be. Factors that the justice system will take into consideration include:

• Your previous DUI history (if you have any);
• The severity of the crash;
• Your BAC level;
• Whether you committed other crimes while DUI, such as hit and run;
• Whether you got overly aggressive with police officers;
• Whether the officers calibrated and conducted your BAC and blood alcohol tests correctly and Constitutionally.

No legal team can guarantee results, but your choice of Beverly Hills DUI lawyer can matter – substantially. Connect with a former prosecutor and highly educated Beverly Hills DUI attorney, Michael Kraut, for insight into your situation and help moving beyond your humiliating and scary experience.

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Hopefully, you’ve taken our first Beverly Hills DUI “true or false” quiz. If not, skip back to the previous post to do so. Today, we’re going to test your knowledge of DUI trivia yet again by giving you another 11 scenarios and letting you guess which ones are true and which are false.goat-dui-defense-attorney.jpg

1. Police have arrested people for driving under the influence:

• on motor scooters (driving at 6 miles per hour);
• on pink electrical Barbie cars (driving 3 miles per hour);
• on skateboards;
• on lawnmowers;
• on adult tricycles;
• and on tiny pocket bikes!

2. After consuming a dozen beers, an Amish man “got behind the wheel” of a horse-drawn buggy and promptly got arrested for driving while intoxicated. He apologized, calling himself a “bad amish.”

3. During a party at Kappa Delta Sorority in Missouri, a 20-year-old woman consumed 20 “non-alcoholic” beers for her birthday and then got behind the wheel of a car. She was pulled over by police and tested to have a BAC of 0.06% — a BAC spike driven entirely by the small amounts of alcohol in the supposedly “non-alcoholic” beverages! (For reference, the legal limit for Beverly Hills DUI is 0.08% BAC, per CVC 23152.)

4. Out in Indiana, a man who was severely under the influence of alcohol hijacked a plane to show off to his girlfriend. He was so out of it that he missed the runway and had to make an emergency landing in a field of soybeans. Unsurprisingly, he was arrested.

5. One of the earliest Barnum & Bailey Circus attractions featured a stuntman, whose act involved drinking a flaming bottle of rum while riding a lion bareback. During one show, the stuntman caught the lion’s mane on fire, prompting the big cat to throw him off its back, killing him in front of a packed house. Curious fact: The stuntman was a former police officer!

6. Like something out of “A Fish Called Wanda,” a man hopped into a steamroller while significantly under the influence of alcohol. He then proceeded to ram the steamroller into a nearby car, in an attempt to flatten it. Police stopped him and arrested him for DUI.

7. The highest blood alcohol concentration for anyone ever stopped for a DUI in Southern California (or elsewhere) was 1.67% BAC. The woman lapsed into coma, but she miraculously recovered from a BAC level more than three times what’s normally considered a lethal BAC level.

8. Out in Spain, a disabled man who had a yen to visit a local house of prostitution drove his mechanical bed down the streets, while under the influence. Police stopped and arrested him.

9. If you bring any amount of alcohol into the state of Utah — unless you are a licensed dealer of said alcohol — you can be arrested and charged with a crime.

10. The winner of the 1994 Iditarod Dog Sled Race in Alaska had his championship crown stripped, when race officials discovered that he had been drinking whisky while driving his dogs through the finish line.

11. In Soviet Russia, Joseph Stalin’s KGB ran a secret program that encouraged agents to drink vodka and then drive around the streets of big cities, like Moscow and Leningrad, to terrify the populace and make people crave the “law and order” of the regime.

Hopefully you enjoyed these DUI curiosities. If you need assistance dealing with a recent Beverly Hills DUI charge, please connect with the experienced, highly capable team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers. Mr. Kraut is a former Senior Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles (a high level prosecutor) who worked in that capacity 14 plus years. He and his team can help you construct a vigorous defense.

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Everyone who cares about the public good wants to stop Beverly Hills DUI recidivist drivers from getting behind the wheel while under the influence and harming others and/or themselves. new-dui-law.jpg

The big question is: How do we do that? How do we make our system more just and more equitable at the same time?

This debate is obviously not just a local concern. Across the nation, states and cities are wrestling with questions like these – trying to balance needs to keep roads safe and needs to protect individual freedom.

According to an independent analysis, 40,000 people get arrested for DUI in the state of Washington, annually. Most are first time offenders. But 13% are recidivists. As followers of this Beverly Hills DUI blog know, recidivist offenders can be subjected to ratcheted up punishments, such as longer time behind bars, more alcohol school, stricter probation terms, longer license suspension terms, and on and on.

Dan Satterberg, a prosecutor for King County, hopes that a new DUI bill, HB 2030, will reduce the number of DUI recidivists. He said: “I want to focus on repeat offenders, not try for everything for everybody.”

HB 2030 would create mandatory jail sentences for second and third offenders. A recidivist can get out of serving a six month jail sentence (on second offence) if he wears a special sobriety bracelet and enters a program that would immediately alert law enforcement if he consumes alcohol.

Third offenders would be hit with a year of jail sentence and given an ID card that would prevent them from buying or being served alcohol beverages for a decade. It would also impose a mandatory Interlock Ignition Device (IID) installation after the arrest, but before the conviction.

Washington State representative Roger Goodman of Kirkland heard concerns from critics that HD 2030 may be overly harsh on first offenders. The costs associated are also high, but Goodman says those costs will be funded not by taxpayers but by offenders.

Without looking at the details, what’s nice (at least from a theoretical point of view) is that this law would give offenders choice: jail time vs. wearing a bracelet that can detect alcohol through the skin.

According to Goodman, increased prison time is not the answer. Satterberg spelled out this change of paradigm in DUI prevention/punishment: “The thing now that’s most promising…is that people are talking about DUI because, frankly, the answer is not new laws but in the attitude.”

The ACLU has expressed dubiousness over the mandatory IID installation. The ACLU said that a judge should have probable cause first. Goodman said he took the ACLU’s consideration to heart and said he and fellow legislators would try to rewrite the law before April 28 to address those concerns.

As someone who has been recently arrested for driving under the influence in Beverly Hills, you need insightful legal guidance. Attorney Michael Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated ex-prosecutor with the talent, processes, knowledge and dedication to get you good results. Connect with Mr. Kraut’s Beverly Hills DUI defense team now to set up your free case consultation.

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Our Hollywood DUI story of the week is clearly the Reese Witherspoon incident. The “Legally Blonde” actress didn’t nab the DUI, though. That honor goes to her husband, CAA uber-agent, James Toth.Reese-Witherspoon-Toth-hollywood-dui.jpg

Witherspoon and Toth had been in Atlanta, where the actress was shooting a movie (The Good Lie), when an Atlanta trooper saw Toth’s Ford Focus weaving in and out of lanes. Trooper First Class, J. Pyland, 42, stopped the vehicle. He reported that Toth’s eyes looked bloodshot and that his clothing looked disheveled.

After the agent allegedly failed his field sobriety tests, Pyland gave him a breathalyzer test. Toth blew a 0.139% BAC, which is nearly double the limit for Hollywood DUI of 0.08%, as defined by California Vehicle Code Section 23152(b). (Even though the couple got arrested in Atlanta, the “0.08% limit” is basically the national standard.)

The drama did not stop with Toth’s arrest, however.

Witherspoon allegedly stuck her head out the window and lashed out at Pyland, accusing him of not being “a real police officer.”

Per Pyland’s report: “I told Mrs. Witherspoon to sit on her butt and be quiet.” When she refused and instead got out of the vehicle — exercising her self-declared right to “stand on American ground” — Pyland handcuffed her. He wrote: “I put my hands on Mrs. Witherspoon’s arms to arrest her…[she] was resistant, but I was able to put handcuffs on her without incident due to Mr. Toth calming her.”

Witherspoon allegedly asked him “Do you know my name?” He said he didn’t. She told him “You are about to find out who I am…you are going to be on national news.” The officer impounded their car and sent both Toth and Witherspoon to jail in Atlanta.

A passenger in the back – who has not been identified yet – went home in a cab.

The celebrity power couple made bail the next morning, and Witherspoon’s attorney hammered out a deal to prevent her from getting a criminal conviction by doing a pretrial intervention program. She will need to check in with the judge on May 22nd to determine her compliance with the program.

The 37-year-old actress did walk on the Red Carpet at the NYC premiere of her new film, Mud, but she did not give fodder to the media afterwards by taking questions.

Mrs. Witherspoon’s post-arrest trauma overshadowed Toth’s DUI arrest. Lucky, in some sense, for him: it’s a pretty big deal when a major Hollywood agent gets arrested for DUI in Hollywood. It’s a bigger deal – at least from the national media’s perspective – when an actress of Witherspoon’s stature winds up behind bars.

Implications for your Hollywood DUI defense

This story does a good job of highlighting how no one is above the law. And no one is above doing “stupid things” before, during, or after a Hollywood DUI arrest. In the sober light of day, it’s easy to regret what you did or didn’t do. The challenge now for you is to figure out how to make your life simpler and how to be strategic going forward.

Connect with the Hollywood DUI attorneys at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers to understand the implications of your arrest and develop a strategy. Mr. Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated ex-prosecutor with the means and technique to provide you an excellent defense.

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Whether you got pulled over for your first-ever Beverly Hills DUI on Wilshire & Rodeo after a tony film industry soirée; or you just racked up your second or third DUI within 10 years, consider yourself fortunate that you are not 55-year-old William Grussing. 14-beverly-hills-dui-arrests.jpg

The Montana man was just sentenced to two decades behind bars for driving under the influence.

Why the harsh sentence?

Because this was his 14th time facing DUI charges!

In order to even become eligible for parole, Grussing must go through a very long and intense alcohol education program. He admitted to the judge that he was just 14, when he had his first alcohol beverage — with his father, no less.

Even though you are a DUI defendant yourself, you’re probably nodding to yourself that the judge probably did the right thing in this case. It’s one thing to make a misjudgment after a party… or even to make multiple bad decisions within a few years. But when you get into the double-digits with your DUI charges, something is just not working, and more drastic measures might be needed.

In your case, you want to figure out not only how to beat your Beverly Hills DUI charges, but also how to manage the core problems causing you to make less than optimal decisions.

Sorting out those root problems is no easy feat, even for someone who is dedicated, open, and persistent.

Fortunately, the team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers can help you with your Beverly Hills DUI charges. Attorney Kraut and his team are experienced, compassionate, and aggressive. They can help you understand what you might be able to do, immediately, to get control over your life and over your legal situation. Get in touch with the Harvard Law School educated attorney Kraut now for assistance.

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Ever since you got arrested for driving under the influence in Burbank, you’ve been racking your brain. How should you handle your case? How can avoid ever again experiencing the humiliation of getting arrested? Here’s an intriguing and potentially hugely useful (over the long term) strategy for shielding yourself from further trouble:burbank-dui-reduce-your-risk.jpg

Slice down your commuting time.

Whether you live in the Valley and commute to Sony to work on a production lot, or vice versa; you probably spend far too much time in your car stuck in traffic jams on the 101 or 134. You already hate driving, the entertaining DJs on KROQ notwithstanding. Statistically speaking, the more time you spend on the roads, the more likely it is that you will be involved in a Burbank DUI accident, either as a victim or as a wrongdoer.

It’s just simple math.

Especially if you drive late at night, when you chop down your commuting time, you reduce your overall exposure tremendously–not to mention add time “back” to your life.

The side benefits also include: you will burn less gas (save money), expose yourself to less pollution (better for your lungs and long-term health); and commit a not-insubstantial act of kindness towards the environment.

So how can you reduce your commuting time?

(Don’t worry, we’re going to get to Burbank DUI defense strategies in a second)

Here are some ideas:

1. Move a little closer to work.

You may only be five miles or so from work, but your morning and afternoon commutes can still take you upwards of an hour, depending on when you go and what horrifically clogged surface streets or freeways you choose.

2. Change up your work hours to make the commute less brutal.

3. Explore alternative routes to work.

Odds are slim that you’ve found the “ideal” routes to places around your neighborhood just by random chance. By finding shortcuts, you might shave off a few minutes every day on your driving time.

4. Shop more on the internet.

5. Do more grocery shopping in bulk (fewer trips to the store)

6. Carpool with friends.

7. Take public transportation from time-to-time.

Get creative to shortcut your route. Meanwhile, while you’re working on that, you obviously need to work on your Burbank DUI defense. The team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers is extremely experienced, compassionate, and well connected. Attorney Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated ex prosecutor. He really cares about educating defendants–not only about their rights but also about their resources. You want to get out of trouble and stay out of trouble for good. Find out more about attorney Kraut and his team here on this website, or connect with them today for a free consultation.

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If you were recently busted for DUI in Beverly Hills, you’re probably hugely embarrassed as well as frightened about serving time in prison, seeing your license suspended, and so forth. WILLIAM-HOLLAND-DUI.jpg

Whether you’re a film producer, celebrity, entertainment executive, or even somebody who works outside of the industry (believe it or not, people like that do exist here in Beverly Hills), you’re vexed. You are not the “type of person” who gets into trouble with the police.

Perhaps your arrest was a fluke. Maybe you had one too many cocktails at an advertiser’s fundraiser on Wilshire and then got behind the wheel when you really shouldn’t have. Then the police stopped you, and the drama began. Or maybe you only had one or two drinks but, for whatever reason, the police pulled you over and you blew a 0.09 BAC on the breathalyzer test–above the limit for Beverly Hills DUI. So now you’re in this awful situation.

Understand this: What happened to you can happen to anybody.

Consider the case of 61-year-old William Holland, the Auditor General for the State of Illinois, who was cited several weeks ago for driving under the influence in the town of Springfield. The arresting officers noted that the Auditor General “had a very strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath,” as well as “red bloodshot glassy eyes.” As regular readers of this blog know, these are classic symptoms of Beverly Hills DUI, as well.

Other common signifiers of potential alcohol use and DUI include:

• Slurred speech;
• Inability to answer officer questions;
• Failure to perform mentally or physically on field sobriety tests (like the finger to the nose test or the count backwards by 3 test;)
• Strange behavior–such as overly aggressive behavior towards officers.

Of course, as we’ve discussed before on this blog, alternative explanations for the “DUI symptoms” can exist.

For instance, if you’re exhausted from a hard day of negotiating with potential ad buyers, you might exhibit signs of fatigue, non-responsiveness, and bloodshot eyes. If you get really nervous in front of police, you might be unable to answer certain questions.

The point is not to suggest that your Beverly Hills DUI arrest wasn’t cut and dry–perhaps it was.

Rather, it’s that you should understand that anyone can make substantial errors behind the wheel. Holland was a powerful and widely respected (by both sides) watchdog–someone the government trusted to ensure and fair behavior. He helped prosecutors impeach and ultimately convict former state governor Rod Blagojevich, who began a 14 year prison sentence last year for a slew of corruption charges.

Connect with a Beverly Hills DUI defense attorney at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers for an insightful, thorough, and creditable defense help. Mr. Kraut and his team can help you get your life back on track and put the unfortunate and humiliating event behind you for good.

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If you’ve been arrested for driving under the influence in Beverly Hills (or elsewhere in Southern California), you might be inclined to think that your incident was an isolated one — i.e., it had no relationship to your history, habits, behaviors, beliefs, etc.ashley_stahl-DUI-beverly-hills.JPG

You might want to reconsider that belief.

While some Beverly Hills DUIs do, indeed, “come out of nowhere,” where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. To that end, you might find it resourceful to identify patterns in your bad decisions. If you can articulate why you act badly (when you do), you can strategically plan your life to avoid getting into trouble.

Consider that lesson in light of a scary story out in Oklahoma, where 26-year-old Ashley Stahl just got arrested for her third felony DUI charge — on top of charges of eluding arrest, hit-and-run, obstructing a police officer, violating multiple traffic laws, etc.

On Thursday, January 31st, a police officer saw Stahl swerve into a Toyota, at around Fifth and Harvard. The Toyota tried to get out of the way but couldn’t do so in time. The Red GMC Jimmy that caused the crash backed up and took off. Patrol officers saw the whole thing and followed the SUV to Roger’s High School, where they pulled over Stahl and convinced her to give herself up, after talking her off of the ledge for 10 minutes.

Scarily, a 10 month old child had been riding in the back of the Toyota.

Fortunately, neither the child, nor the child’s parents suffered injury. But this poor 26-yaear-old woman could have caused an epic catastrophe, had the accident played out in a slightly different and (less lucky) fashion.

The law can be very punitive, especially towards recidivist offenders.

If this is your second or third arrest for driving under the influence in Beverly Hills, expect prosecutors to be far less lenient this time. Potential punishments increase and diversify. Prosecutors can hit you with additional probation time, mandatory alcohol school time, driver’s license suspension time, jail time, fines and fees, and on and on.

On some level, it’s too bad that the system is so punitive. Many people who rack up multiple Beverly Hills DUI charges need help and compassion, not just judgment and punishment.

Fortunately, good resources abound to help you deal with your charges and manage your emotional and financial crises. Connect with the team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers for a free case evaluation. Attorney Kraut and his team can help you craft a compelling and thorough defense for your DUI charge.

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Everyone can admit that the Har-bowl was pretty epic, and kudos to Joe Flacco and the Ravens for pulling off a crazy playoff streak. But Super Bowl Sunday is traditionally one of the most dangerous days of the year for DUI. Other than New Year’s Eve and a handful of other holidays – like St. Patrick’s Day, Labor Day weekend, the 4th of July, et cetera – the Super Bowl is one of the scariest days to navigate the 101 (or any freeway or surface street, for that matter) because of all the unsafe drivers out there. superbowl-dui-in-glendale.jpg

Why is this so? Why do so many people get arrested during the holiday?

Perhaps it has to something to do with all the Bud Light commercials. Statistically, when more people drink and party, more people drive DUI and get arrested for the crime – it’s just a number’s game.

Of course, you’re not just “a number” – you’re a human being whose California driver’s license now may be on the line. You may also be at risk for serious fines, probation, jail time, spikes in your insurance rate, and a variety of other unpleasantries. So what can you do?

First of all, recognize that you may have a lot of legal resources available. For instance, let’s say that you failed a Glendale breathalyzer test — you blew a 0.12%, which is 1.5 times the legal limit for Glendale DUI, as codified by California Vehicle Code Section 23152 (a) and 23152 (b). You might be under the (false) impression that the breathalyzer results are set in stone. That is, they cannot be challenged because breathalyzers are technical instruments and thus never fail.

That’s not true. Surprisingly compelling research suggests that breath tests fail way more often than most people believe. On this Glendale DUI blog, we’ve talked a lot about how different factors (such as your dietary habits, gender, medications you might be on, etc) can throw off your breath test readings one way or another.

One really fascinating (and illustrative) way this can happen involves the depth of your test breath. If you breathe in really deeply, and then blast out a huge jet of air into the breathalyzer test, you can score a BAC reading that’s way higher than your legitimate BAC reading (if you were to measure it perfectly). This is often why police officers ask you to take a deep breath before you blow into a breath test – they know the game.

To understand how to deconstruct the case against you and build a powerful defense, get in touch with the Glendale DUI defense team at The Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers. Attorney Michael Kraut is not only a scholar of the law — he is Harvard Law School educated — but he is also renowned in the community for being able to take on tough, complex cases.

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Statistics compiled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and California Highway Patrol spell good news: the number of Los Angeles DUI arrests over the holiday season dropped substantially from the 2011 numbers. la-dui-arrest-over-holidays.jpg

The stats are still pretty staggering, but they mark a step in the right direction. Here are the numbers. From December 14 through December 19, per the LA County Sheriff’s Department, police officers from 100 different agencies busted 1,773 people for DUI in Los Angeles — down by nearly 500 from the 2011 numbers for the same period (2,205).

Meanwhile, the California Highway Patrol recorded a radically different trend statewide.

Between December 21 and December 25, 1,170 people got arrested for driving under the influence in California, and 39 people died. This compares poorly to the 2011 stats for the same period — 980 arrested and 14 killed.

When you tally up the numbers from December 14 through January 1, they are also pretty eye opening. 2,168 people got arrested throughout Los Angeles for DUI, per the Sheriff’s Department’s report. That means that one out of three arrests — almost 600 DUIs — came during the final 4 days of the campaign, from December 28 through January 1.

As we’ve discussed before, Los Angeles DUI arrests spike like crazy during holidays like New Year’s Eve, because partying people fail to get designated drivers or create “Plan Bs” for their route home.

The Sheriff’s Department leveraged a variety of methods to crack down on DUI driving during the holiday, including roving patrols, multi-agency task force operations, checkpoints, and beyond — all made possible by a California Office of Traffic Safety grant.

What should you do if you got wrapped up in the Los Angeles DUI holiday “dragnet”?

Whether you got stopped at a checkpoint and arrested for a routine misdemeanor charge, per California Vehicle Code Section 23152(a) or 23152(b); or you got tagged for a more complex offence, including hit and run, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, et cetera, you’re entitled to a stiff defense.

The question before you is: how should you build that defense? How can you avoid the scary penalties, such as loss of your Californian driver’s license, substantial jail time, large fines, and a substantial criminal record?

The team here at the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers can help you put together a detailed, step by step strategy to manage your charges and confront them in the most effective and knowledgeable way. Attorney Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated former prosecutor — he worked for the city for many years, so he knows what prosecutors tend to do in case like yours, and he can help you prepare accordingly. Get in touch with him and his team today for a free consultation.

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