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What should be done to prevent school bus drivers from driving under the influence of alcohol in Los Angeles, New York, and other big cities? Where do we draw the line between the need to respect the freedom of individuals and the need to protect kids from reckless, careless DUI driving?

New York legislators and policy makers are mulling over these and other similar questions this week, in the wake of new legislation proposed by New York state Senator Charles Fuschillo and Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice, that would require school bus drivers to blow into breathalyzer devices before being able to drive kids around.

If this New York law passes, it would be the first of its kind in the country; and it might set a president for how lawmakers here in California try to stamp out the problem of driving under the influence in Los Angeles.

Why Are Lawmakers So “Ginned Up” to Stop DUI Bus Driving?

The answer is pretty simple: a spate of DUI bus driving incidents over the past month have alarmed parents, lawmakers, and the general populace.

Here are three:

1. On October 3rd, Frederick Flowers, a 66-year old bus driver, crashed into a house while carrying five kids in his school bus.

Police believe that Flowers passed out behind the wheel prior to the crash. The kids, who ranged in age from 5 years old to 8 years old, miraculously survived without injury.

2. Less than two weeks later, 40-year old Robert Stundis got stopped and arrested for driving a school bus under the influence.

He tested to have a blood alcohol concentration of 0.23%. That’s nearly 3 times the maximum allowable BAC level of 0.08%, according to Southern California DUI law. Police found a half empty bottle of vodka on his school bus and charged Stundis with endangering the welfare of children, DWI while driving a school bus, and DWI with child passengers.

3. Lastly, on October 22nd, 47-year old James Sommer, crashed into a tree while trying to park his school bus.

Authorities later arrested him under suspicion of DWI; one girl, 12-year old, had to go to the hospital with minor injuries.

Obviously, this rash of bus driver DUI arrests is viscerally distributing. But would it be helpful to compel school buses to install interlock ignition devices? How could we measure the results of such an initiative? And would any increase in safety persist for years or decades? Would legislation be worth the expense and legal battle?

These questions are certainly intriguing, but if you’re struggling with a DUI charge yourself, you are probably less interested in how to change the world (or fix society’s larger problems) than you are in avoiding jail time, minimizing your punishments, and figuring out how to rebuild your life and reputation after your arrest.

To that end, talk to Mr. Michael Kraut of Los Angeles’s Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. about your legal needs. Attorney Kraut is an ex-prosecutor who spent 14 plus years “on the other side” trying to put defendants for DUI crimes behind bars. Now, as a defense attorney, he uses his knowledge of the mindset of prosecutors – and the relationships he has cultivated over the years – to deliver excellent service for his clients.

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After recently getting arrested for driving under the influence in Glendale – and possibly for other charges on top of that – you face a scary and, quite frankly, fraught legal future. taamu_dui-glendale.jpg

But the world is unfair.

Sometimes, people can commit truly egregious actions and receive little to no penalties. Consider, for instance, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Alameda Ta’amu, who was arrested early Sunday morning (i.e. Saturday night) for 15 separate criminal charges, including DUI, aggravated assault, misdemeanor accident causing damage, resisting arrest, felony fleeing police, and other assorted “bad stuff.”

A sports writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review suggested that the Steelers should have cut Ta’amu for the DUI incident. But the management decided just simply to dock his pay for two games. Mike Tomlan, the Steelers’ coach, told a local radio station “we deem his actions as a detrimental effort and we are treating it as such… the other ramifications and so forth of the situation, I am not at liberty to discuss at this time, but we thought it was very important that we act quickly in terms of addressing this and we can focus our efforts on the men that are planning and getting ready to meet this week’s challenge… Obviously, it’s a disturbing incident, one that we take seriously as members of this community.”

How does this all relates back to your Glendale DUI charge?

If you committed far fewer violations than Ta’amu allegedly committed, you can nevertheless wind up with a variety of unpleasant punishments, not limited to a long time behind bars; huge fees and fines; a tremendous spike in the amount of money you pay for car insurance, if you can still get a car insurance; a suspension of your driver’s license; intense probation; and damage to your reputation at work and your social life that may take months or even years to rebuild.

Your Glendale DUI situation may seem unfair – and you may feel a range of emotions including but not limited to depression, overwhelm, frustration, fury, and helplessness. The key to moving forward in your life is to start to understand what options might be available to you.

To that end, you may benefit a lot by getting in touch with attorney Michael Kraut of Glendale’s Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc.. As a Harvard Law School educated ex-prosecutor of Glendale DUI crimes, Mr. Kraut understands on a firsthand basis how prosecutors will likely treat your case, and he can develop a DUI defense that’s most appropriate and that has the best chances of getting the best results.

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As someone who recently failed a breathalyzer test for driving under the influence in Beverly Hills, you are probably feeling ashamed, humiliated, and terrified about the potential legal consequences. beverly-hills-dui-breath-test-fail.jpg

Even if you didn’t cause any damage or hurt anyone – and thus you cannot be subjected to punishments per California Vehicle Code section 23153(a) or 23153(b) – you no doubt fear going to jail, having your license stripped, and paying potentially thousands of dollars in fines and fees (and that’s the tip of the iceberg).

On the other hand, you may be prematurely judging yourself as “guilty.”

In fact, a surprising amount of research suggests that many breathalyzer tests for Beverly Hills DUI and DUI elsewhere, can be flawed and potentially extremely misleading. A variety of factors can lead to false positives. For instance, if you are diabetic, you may wind up in a pathological metabolic state known as ketoacidosis, in which you produce compound known as ketones; these can cause a “positive” to register on a Beverly Hills DUI breath test.

A similar “skewing towards the DUI positive” can happen if you’re on a restricted carbohydrate diet. Low carb dieters often enter a metabolic state known as ketosis, during which they produce similar compounds to the compounds that diabetics produce when they are in ketoacidosis. In fact, one of the big (and misguided) criticisms of low carb diets has to do with confusion over healthy ketosis and unhealthy ketoacidosis. These are actually two very different metabolic states.

Getting back to the point… many different things can throw off a breathalyzer reading, including what you have recently eaten, how the officer calibrated the machine, how deeply you blow into the machine, and so forth.

Sometimes people do really weird things that can ALSO influence BAC readings.

Consider, for instance, a crazy story reported out of Middletown, Connecticut, where a local woman nearly crashed her car on October 5th after losing control. Local police put her through the paces of a field sobriety test and also gave her a blood alcohol test. They found that she had a BAC of 0.17% — which, as regular readers of our Beverly Hills DUI lawyer blog know, is over twice the legal limit for DUI here in Southern California, per CVC 23152(b).

What’s interesting about this woman is that she drank half a bottle of hand sanitizer before getting behind the wheel.

You read that right: half a bottle of hand sanitizer. Yikes!

According to reports, the amount of alcohol she consumed was equal to 32 shots of vodka. No wonder she had a BAC of 0.17%! One wonders whether the woman suffered from a condition known as Pica, which is a disorder characterized by a craving to eat nonfood items, such as sand, dirt, plastic, metal, and all sorts of other crazy stuff.

In any event, if you need help dealing with your Beverly Hills DUI case, get in touch with attorney Michael Kraut today to set up a free and thorough case consultation.

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Even if you’ve been arrested for driving under the influence in Burbank, and you’re not a sports fan, you likely are familiar with the Chicago Bears’ legendary old coach Mike Ditka – if not for his football legacy then at least for his appearance in snarky TV ads (or maybe his football-related wine label). mark-ditka-dui-burbank.jpg

But Ditka’s brand has been challenged by the strange behavior of his sons, Mark and Michael.

Michael has been arrested multiple times for driving under the influence –including a stop in April 2011 that we discussed at length here on our Burbank DUI blog. Curiously, in the 2011 case, Michael lashed out that he had been stopped because if his family name.

His brother, Mark, meanwhile, has also been in the headlines for DUI arrests multiple times – in fact, last Sunday he scored his fourth DUI arrest in Deerfield, a suburb of Chicago. According to local news reports, police saw him driving erratically and pulled him over. They found Hydrocodone pills in his car (a prescription opiate – which Mark apparently had no prescription slip for). Plus, Mark lacked insurance and had been driving on a suspended license. When he refused to take a blood or breathalyzer test, he was arrested and held on a $25,000 bond.

Ditka was arrested last year around the same time, according to the Chicago Tribune, for driving with a BAC of around twice the legal limit. In Burbank, that limit is 0.08% BAC, as defined by California Vehicle Code Section 23153. That case was tossed because Ditka’s chewing tobacco likely skewed the results of his breathalyzer test. In his other two DUI arrests, he managed to get the charges lowered.

But Ditka’s situation illustrates both dangers and opportunities for people who have been arrested multiple times for driving under the influence in Burbank.

On the one hand, with a properly positioned and executed defense, you can do things like effectively challenge a breath test reading. After all, as we’ve discussed dozens of times here on this blog, breathalyzer tests can be compromised due to innumerable factors, including the presence of chewing tobacco; whether you are a diabetic or not (ketones produced by ketoacidosis on the breath can artificially inflate your BAC rating); and diverse other factors.

On the other hand, if you get arrested and convicted for multiple DUIs in Burbank or elsewhere, prosecutors can enjoy more and more different kinds of legal leverage against you.

For instance, if you are arrested and convicted for three DUIs within a 10-year period, prosecutors can try to convict you of a felony for what would ordinarily be a misdemeanor offense. Likewise, as you get more and more DUI convictions, you will face an escalation in penalties, such as the amount of money you have to pay in fines and fees, the length of your jail sentence, the extent and severity of your probation, the amount of time you have to spend in alcohol education classes, the duration of your California license suspension, and much more.

To respond aggressively and effectively to the difficult charges against you, look to the Burbank DUI criminal defense team at the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. to equip you with a sound legal defense. Attorney Kraut is a highly respected and highly motivated ex-prosecutor who uses his Harvard Law School education and deep connections with the Los Angeles DUI community to get excellent results for his clients.

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If you injured someone while driving under the influence in Long Beach or elsewhere in Southern California, you likely feel tremendous regret and panic. Whether the accident was your fault or not – or only partially so – you are probably confused about your legal rights, and you want to know what you can do to protect yourself.rancho-long-beach-dui-crash.jpg

Consider the following news item to help place your arrest into context.

Last week, in Rancho Cucamonga, 29-year-old Cory Holker apparently lost control of his silver Toyota Camry on Base Line Road as he tried to pass another car. The Camry flipped over a curb, smashed into a tree and spiraled around and hit three Alta Loma High School girls – two freshman and one sophomore. A local resident heard the accident and the screams and called 911. All three girls were taken to the hospital with injuries – and one had to be pried out from underneath the car – but fortunately, all three are expected to survive.

Holker, on the other hand, faces a difficult road ahead of him, legally speaking.

He allegedly failed a breathalyzer test at the scene – and even though Long Beach DUI breathalyzer tests are notoriously unreliable, as we’ve talked about many times on this blog, it’s still not a great piece of evidence for him to “explain away.” In addition, he was cited for speeding, failing to wear a seatbelt, and following another car too closely. Holker also has a substantial record of citations, and he now faces a felony Southern California DUI count as well.

When most people read stories like these in the news, they immediately feel empathy and sympathy for the victims – as well, they should. It’s easy for the not-involved to demonize DUI drivers, especially drivers who hit and hurt other people who do other ìdumb/illegal stuffî while DUI. But it’s important to be compassionate – not just towards victims, but also towards defendants. The reality is that there is often much more to most Long Beach DUI cases than meets the eye – or that can be conveyed through a simple news blurb or blog post.

Consider your situation, for instance.

Even if you believe that you were in the wrong or guilty of DUI or other driving-related crimes, odds are you do not see yourself as a cartoonish villain or in morally black and white terms. Your situation is complex, and you’d like a little bit of compassion as you struggle to understand what motivated you, what you can do in the future to prevent getting into similar situations, and what you might be able to do to repair any harm that you may have accidentally caused.

The team here at the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. has tremendous experience and a unique perspective on Los Angeles DUI cases.

Attorney Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated ex-prosecutor – he spent the bulk of his career prosecuting DUI cases – and that experience gives him a powerful and informed perspective on the whole process. It’s helped him to be a more effective and intuitive Long Beach DUI defense attorney. Find out more about Attorney Kraut’s credentials and record for service here on this site, or get in touch with his team today for a confidential consultation about your defense options.

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Fatal Los Angeles DUI accidents are always horrific, but they are somehow more so when they involve young people and children. Sammi-Kane-Kraft.jpg

Last week, Sammi Kane Kraft, one of the stars of the 2005 remake of the movie Bad News Bears (with Billy Bob Thornton as the coach), died when a car she was in got rear ended by a truck on the 10 Freeway at around 1.30 in the morning. Kraft was a passenger in the Audi – her friend, 21-year-old, Molly Kate Adams was driving. Police say that Adams had been driving under the influence in Los Angeles at the time of the crash – she survived with moderate injuries.

Kraft and Adams had been returning from a night out checking out bands, when the tragedy struck.

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Just because you’ve recently been arrested for driving under the influence in Los Angeles doesn’t mean that you have no knowledge of right and wrong or no standards. Far from it! In fact, odds are, you probably resent being lumped in with other DUI defendants!dui-long-beach-burbank.jpg

Understand that there is an enormous spectrum, when it comes to DUI offenses. On the one hand, there are the perennial, serial DUI offenders who get arrested and convicted multiple times. But this “species” of Los Angeles DUI defendant is surprisingly rare, and even people who fall into this category generally deserve more respect, empathy, and support.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can find people who commit minor mistakes – or who actually make no mistakes at all but rather wind up as victims of overzealous officers at Los Angeles DUI check points.

But anyone with a moral compass might wonder about what happened recently up in Napavine, Washington, where local state patrol officers arrested a 14-year-old girl from Portland, who had allegedly flipped a van while driving under the influence. The incident took place the Sunday before last on Interstate 5, near the town of Chehalis.

You might think that this was just a case of a rebellious teenager borrowing her parents’ van and going for a joy ride. Nope. Initial report suggests that circumstances were far weirder. In the van with her was a 51-year-old Portland man and a 16-year-old runaway girl.

The driver and both passengers suffered minor injuries in the rollover. But local reports from KATU suggest that it’s not yet clear how the three people know each other.

The 14-year-old girl, meanwhile, faces charges of driving without a license, driving DUI, and being a minor in possession of marijuana.

Who knows what was actually going on up there?

If you’ve been tasks with defending against similar (or even more severe) charges pursuant to your Los Angeles DUI arrest, you might appreciate the revelation that this case appears to be far more complicated than superficial analysis reveals. Indeed, many DUI cases are wrapped up with strange subtleties, and only a thorough investigation and detailed legal work can help defendants get cleared or at least put up their best possible defense.

Attorney Michael Kraut of the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. spent a significant portion of his life working as a city prosecutor (14 plus years as Senior Deputy District Attorney), so he has a really good feel for how prosecutors like to go after Los Angeles DUI defendants.

Attorney Kraut now uses that knowledge to help people like you with creative, legally taut defenses to their DUI charges. Get in touch with attorney Kraut and his team today to go over what he can do to protect your interests.

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Your recent Long Beach DUI accident and arrest was humiliating enough. pink-elephant-dui-los-angeles.jpg

Hopefully, no one got hurt. And hopefully, you did not compound your woes by offering a preposterous explanation for your behavior, like 31-year-old Samuel Phipps recently did when Delaware State Police stopped him on I-95 and hit him with his seventh lifetime DUI charge.

The 31-year-old told State Police that he had smoked a kind of drug known as “wet” – which consists of a marijuana cigarette laced with the PCP – prior to taking a ride in his Land Rover the Friday night before last. As he cruised southbound on I-295, he hallucinated and thought he saw a pink elephant in the road. Thus spooked, he veered off into the guardrail near Route 141.

According to a Delaware State Police statement, the trooper who found Phipps interviewed the driver, who told him “that the accident was a result of… swerving to avoid an elephant he observed running in the path of his vehicle.”

Phipps was busted for his unlucky number seven DUI offense and hit additionally with the charge of driving without insurance. Instead of being sent to jail, he was committed to the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution and held on a bond of $21,000.

If, like Phipps, you’ve been hit with multiple counts of driving under the influence in Long Beach or elsewhere, you could be facing substantial jail time, even if you did not hurt anyone and prosecutors thus cannot charge you per California Vehicle Code Sections 23153(a) or 23153(b).

In fact, as your number of DUI arrest/convictions increases, so does the leverage of prosecutors.

If you get convicted for three DUIs within a 10-year span in California, for instance, your third DUI – which would ordinarily be a misdemeanor – can be charged as a felony count, even absent any other legal violations. Plus, other penalties get ratcheted up: you’ll face longer time in alcohol school, a longer license suspension, stricter/longer probation terms, more fines and fees, and likely a bigger spike in your auto insurance rates, assuming that you can still drive and carry insurance.

Of course, if you’re getting arrested three or four or seven times for DUI – or for other crimes – you may need more than the help of a good Long Beach DUI defense attorney. You may also need therapy to deal with other crises in your life that may be compelling you to take refuge in alcohol or medications.

The team at law offices of Michael A. DeMayo can help you appreciate what you might be up against and give you practical, sensible, actionable advice.

Learn more about Attorney Kraut’s background as a Harvard Law School educated former prosecutor here on our website, or connect with us now for a free, completely confidential evaluation of your Long Beach DUI case.

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Your recent arrest for driving under the influence in Burbank may have been humiliating, scary, and overwhelming. But hopefully you did not behave as carelessly as 25-year-old Derek L. Greene allegedly behaved. The Rhode Island native was arrested last Sunday night, after local police saw him speeding at 120 miles per hour on Interstate 95, with three kids in the back, ages 2, 3, and 4. Local troopers busted Greene for reckless driving and also tagged him with a DUI charge.dui-burbank-kids-in-back.jpg

Your situation: uncomfortably similar to Greene’s?

If you just got stopped at a routine Burbank DUI checkpoint and busted for driving slightly over the limit, as defined by California Vehicle Code Sections 23152 (a) or 23152 (b), you might not put yourself in the same ìclassî as Greene. But be careful about ìexonerating yourselfî too quickly. When you drive recklessly – drive while on a cell phone, drive while fatigued, drive while DUI in Burbank, whatever – you’re not just affecting your own fate and the fate of your passengers. You’re potentially impacting strangers on the roads, including small children. So although you might not have driven 120 miles per hour with three small kids in the back – an obvious no-no in everyone’s book – you potentially committed a similar form of intransigence, only more indirectly dangerous.

The question before you now is: how do you clean up from your Burbank DUI arrest?

Obviously, prosecutors can hit you with a battery of charges, ranging from jail time to forced alcohol school to mandatory installation of an interlock ignition device in your car to huge fines and fees and so forth. And all of these punishments can have their own indirect repercussions. For instance, if you lose your California license, how will you get to work or school? How will you live your life?

You need to consider the legal implications – and your needs might be best met by connecting with the team here at Burbank’s Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc.. Attorney Michael Kraut is a phenomenally experienced Burbank DUI criminal defense lawyer. After being educated at Harvard Law School, Attorney Kraut spent years (14+) working as a city prosecutor. His deep and diverse background helps him to provide extremely thorough and strategic assistance for his clients.

But beyond the immediate implications of your DUI in Burbank arrest, you also may want to think about what the event means in broader terms for your life, safety, and well-being.

For instance, maybe you were unfairly arrested – the breathalyzer test yielded a false positive, and you want to challenge that. If so, the team at the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. can help.

But what if this was your fifth arrest for Burbank DUI? What if you’ve gotten in trouble with the law before? If so, you might benefit from some introspection. What created the problems in your life? What can you do to take responsibility and solve your personal crises, so you can avoid getting in trouble in the future and start to build towards the life that you want?

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January 10th was not a good day for 23-year old Allison Smolinski. If you’ve been arrested for driving under the influence in Burbank or elsewhere in the Southland, chances are (hopefully) your event was less dramatic and devastating than Ms. Smolinski’s. Allison-Smolinski-dui.jpg

According to news reports, Smolinski piloted her 1997 Nissan Pathfinder into three different accidents within a single hour, climaxing with her smashing the SUV into a house in Wheaton, Illinois. People inside the home had been watching TV, and fortunately no one inside was hurt.

But Smolinski suffered a neck injury, and her passenger, a 27-year old male, sustained a major gash to his head. Prior to the explosive conclusion to the accident-spree, Smolinski allegedly smashed a car on Blanchard Street and banged into another car on I-290. Reports suggest that she might also be implicated in a rollover crash on another highway, I-355, where witnesses said that some driver had been “swerving all over the road.”

Smolinski has been in jail since January. Since she has already served several months in prison, and she only need to serve 85% of the total jail sentence per state law, she might be eligible to get parole in only two years or so.

Nevertheless, Smolinski’s situation is a dramatic example of how Burbank DUIs or DUIs anywhere in Southern California or the rest of the country can radically alter one’s future in ways that you could hardly predict. Imagine, for instance, if your family member got hurt or even killed in the rollover accident on I-355. Imagine if Ms. Smolinski had smashed into your home instead of the home on Wheaton Street.

The big question before you is: How can you pick up the pieces of your life and reputation after your Burbank DUI arrest?

This is not an easy question to answer.

In fact, the relevant laws, such as California Vehicle Code Section 23153(a) and 23153(b), which cover injury DUIs in Burbank, are pretty subtle. If you don’t have a respected and compassionate Burbank DUI criminal defense lawyer on your side, such as Michael Kraut of the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. here in the Valley, you may have a difficult time intuiting the right way to build a defense and fight your charges.

Don’t make a major strategic mistake – get in touch with a member of the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. today to go over what you can do — and, even more key, what you shouldn’t do — to defend against your charges and start to pick up the pieces after your overwhelming experience.

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