Los Angeles DUI Attorney Blog

April 2, 2012

A Long Beach DUI Debate: Was Korn Drummer DUI…Or Just Drowsy Behind the Wheel?

Some instances of driving under the influence in Long Beach are pretty cut and dry. It’s obvious to everyone involved – not only to the police but also to the driver himself – that grave wrongs were committed. Other times… not so much.

Last week, Korn’s ex drummer, David Silveria, got hit with a DUI charge as he drove to breakfast in Huntington Beach… and nearly rear-ended the car in front of him. An officer pulled Silveria over and gave him a breathalyzer test, which allegedly came back negative for DUI. The drummer told police that he was drowsy because he was still suffering the effects of a sleeping pill he had taken the night prior for chronic insomnia. He told the celebrity muckrakers at TMZ that the drowsy driving “was an honest mistake.” Silveria was the original drummer for Korn; he played for the band from 1996 to 2003. After a long break from the music business, he recently joined up with the band INFINIKA.

Irrespective of what happens to Korn’s drummer, you probably would like to know a little bit more about how police distinguish someone who is DUI in Long Beach from someone who is simply driving drowsy in Long Beach. The answer is actually more complicated than you might guess. There is no equivalent of the breathalyzer test for drowsy driving. Just because you drink a lot of caffeine or Red Bull or Mountain Dew or whatever does not mean that you become immune to the effects of fatigue behind the wheel. Studies show that fatigued drivers – even caffeinated ones – can experience bouts of what’s known as micro sleep. Essentially, you close your eyes and lose consciousness for one or two seconds – you literally fall asleep – before regaining awareness. The micro sleeping process is so fast and so subconscious that most people don’t even realize that they have drifted off. If you’re driving at speeds of 60, 70, 80 miles per hour, (e.g. driving on the 405 when there is not much traffic on it – which only happens on days that don’t end with a “y”), you can drive 100 or even 200 feet while totally asleep and unconscious.

While there are field sobriety tests, breathalyzers, blood tests, and other tests for driving under the influence in Long Beach; there are no equivalent tests for drowsy driving. But studies connected by the likes of the American Automobile Association and the National Highway Traffic & Safety Administration show that drivers who fail to sleep can become as impaired as drivers who are DUI. For instance, one Australian story found that someone who stays awake for 24 hours has a level of impairment that’s equivalent to a 0.10% BAC – and remember that the Long Beach DUI cut off is just 0.08%!

Of course, this academic discussion aside, you have practical issues you need to deal with. A Long Beach DUI defense attorney, such as the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc.’ Michael Kraut ( 444 West Ocean, Suite 800 Long Beach, California 90802 Phone: (562) 531-7454), can help you understand the charges that you face, develop a smart and sound strategy to meet the needs of your situation, and reduce your stress, anxiety, and fears about the future.

March 29, 2012

Whitney Houston’s Ex, Bobby Brown, Hit with DUI in Los Angeles Charges

by Michael Kraut

Just weeks after his ex-wife, Whitney Houston, drowned on the eve of the Grammy’s, singer Bobby Brown got stopped and arrested for driving under the influence in Los Angeles. The R&B singer (and founder of New Edition) was charged with driving on a suspended license as well as two Los Angeles DUI counts, including allegations that he exceeded the legal limit of 0.08% BAC, as defined by California Vehicle Code Section 23152(b).

The California Highway Patrol stopped Brown last Monday, when he was seen chatting on a cell phone. The CHP officer thought Brown looked intoxicated and forced the R&B legend to submit to a field sobriety test, which he apparently failed. Brown is due back in court on April 16. He faces up to half a year in jail if he’s convicted of all his charges. As any Los Angeles DUI attorney will tell you, Brown has a lot of work cut out for him if he wants to fight the charges and get his life back on track.

Unsurprisingly, the celebrity news buffs and commentators in the blogosphere have gone hog-wild discussing the psychological reasons why Brown might have driven DUI. His relationship with Houston was at once notorious and epic, and their mutual substance abuse problems have been catalogued and retold endlessly.

But rather than delve into celebrity dirty laundry, let’s reflect a bit about what we can learn from Brown’s charges and how to apply those lessons in our own lives.

1. Emotional stress can lead us to make poor driving decisions.

Obviously, it’s impossible to tell what, if any, role Houston’s death played in Brown’s DUI. But it’s reasonable to assume that it did play some role. When we go through periods of stress, disorientation, overwhelm, or panic in our lives, we may find it easy to reach out to alcohol, narcotics, or prescription drugs to relieve the pain. This is not necessarily the smartest or safest way to deal with emotional baggage, but it’s a fact of life for many people, so let’s just recognize that this happens.

2. Bad driving decisions tend to go together – and create disasters that are worse than the sum of their parts.

According to California Highway Patrol reports, Brown was talking on the cell phone without a hands free headset – a big no-no, an illegal act, in and of itself. He had also been driving on a suspended license. So he was already on thin ice. And then he drove (allegedly) DUI. All these various problems no doubt will complicate his Los Angeles DUI defense.

3. What you do after your DUI arrest matters a great deal.

Your choice of a Los Angeles DUI criminal defense attorney, for instance, can have huge ramifications for your ability to win freedom, reduce/eliminate your charges, and bring order back into your chaotic life. Mr. Michael Kraut of the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. is a known and respected former prosecutor (an Harvard Law School educated attorney) who focuses extensively on DUI cases. Whether you are a UCLA or USC student who was recently stopped for DUI at a checkpoint or a doctor facing a charge like Medicare fraud, Mr. Kraut can explain your options and help you develop a strategy.

March 28, 2012

What if Driving While Texting was Punished the Same Way We Punish Driving Under the Influence in Pasadena?

by Michael Kraut

Driving under the influence in Pasadena (or anywhere else on earth, for that matter) is a dangerous and reckless act. Countless studies show that drivers who are DUI are less capable of responding to surprises on the road, more likely to get into injury accidents and cause property damage, and so forth.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you do not need yet another lesson from a Los Angeles DUI attorney about why this behavior should not be done.

But here’s something interesting! We don’t recognize that other acts that we do behind the wheel may be as dangerous – or perhaps even more dangerous – than DUI. Take texting while driving, for instance. Now, you may be familiar with reports like the famous Virginia Tech study from a few years ago that found that truck drivers who drove while text messaging were something like 20 times more likely than non-texting drivers to get into injury accidents. That’s 20 with a “2” and a “0.” Other studies from reputable institutions (you can Google around if you’re really curious) have basically come to the conclusion: driving while texting is as dangerous as driving under the influence in Pasadena if not significantly more so.

That being said, most people have an extremely difficult time really “grokking” this concept. The legal system certainly has not caught up with the science. Yes, driving while texting in California is illegal, and you can get punished. But compare the punishments for driving while texting with the punishments for DUI in Pasadena: mandatory jail time, interlock ignition device installed in your car, massive fines and fees and other costs, huge insurance inconveniences, loss of reputation, mandatory alcohol school, and so forth and so on.

Imagine if you had even close to similar punishments for driving while texting. Try telling a teenager who text messages 60 times a day that she can’t text for the next six months. See what happens. Or imagine if a driver caught text messaging had to spend 8 weeks at a class about the dangers of texting while driving.

This is not to argue that we should necessarily be more lenient on people who break laws like California Vehicle Code Sections 23152(a) and 23152(b) but rather that things should be more even handed. If driving while texting is statistically the equivalent (or worse) of driving while DUI, shouldn’t we apply our moral standards appropriately?

Having said all that, if you’ve already been tagged for a DUI, you are probably less concerned with fixing the strange artifacts of our justice system than you are with avoiding jail time, keeping your license, and cleaning up after the stop and arrest.

To that end, talk to Pasadena DUI criminal defense attorney Michael Kraut. As a former prosecutor who established the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. (790 East Colorado Boulevard, 9th floor, Pasadena, California 91101 Phone: (626) 345-1899 ) after spending 14 years on “the other side,” Attorney Kraut boasts a terrific reputation not just among clients but among judges and his legal peers. He regularly provides expert commentary for news media like KTLA, the New York Times, Fox News, and the Los Angeles Times.

March 26, 2012

Glendale DUI Lessons: Recognizing Your Patterns

by Michael Kraut

Getting stopped, arrested and prosecuted for driving under the influence in Glendale is no picnic. Even if you emerge successfully from the experience – you manage to get the charges dropped or manage to get a favorable plea bargain – you likely you will have to spend significant time, money, effort and worry to right your ship. It’s easy to think of the experience as an ordeal – as a horrible thing you have to go through. And it may be. But you could also look at the challenges before you in a different light – think of them as opportunities to learn more about yourself, to grow, and to surface and eliminate negative beliefs and bad habits that have been holding you back from living a satisfying, fulfilling, productive life.

As any Los Angeles DUI attorney will tell you, the consequences of failing to surface and rectify these fundamental bad habits or misplaced beliefs can be pretty dire. If you’re arrested and convicted multiple times for Glendale DUI, for instance, your fines, fees, jail time, alcohol school penalties, probation terms, and et cetera can escalate wildly. If you’re convicted of a misdemeanor like DUI three times or more within ten years, prosecutors may be able to leverage California law to transmute what an ordinarily might be a misdemeanor into a felony. The difference between a felony and a misdemeanor is huge – it could mean a massively longer jail sentence, for instance.

Given all that, it certainly makes sense to try to fix your bad habits or proclivities before they cause you future problems. This is a challenge that’s aside and apart from the specific challenges that your Glendale DUI criminal defense attorney will help you work out. So how do you surface the fundamental causes of your troubles? And once you do surface them, what can you do to eliminate them or get beyond them somehow?

These are tough questions, and obviously there is no one size fits all answer here. But here’s one interesting exercise you can try. Get out a piece of paper and write down one behavior or act that you’ve committed in the past two weeks that you regret — that you believe might have caused you significant trouble. You can pick your Glendale DUI arrest, if you want. And then ask yourself a simple question: Why did you do it? What was the reason you drove DUI or got arrested or did whatever it was that you did that you now regret?

You might contrive an answer to the effect of: “I don’t know. I just wasn’t thinking and I was tired and I wanted to get home.” The next step is to ask yourself why you did that. Why did you “stop thinking” when you got so tired? Your answer will hopefully get you closer to the root cause. You might say something to the effect of “I don’t know. When I party, my judgment goes out the window a little bit.” So you would ask yourself “why” to that – drilling down deeper and deeper to get at your root proclivity. You might eventually get down to something to the effect of “I have a difficult time controlling my impulses.”

By drilling down like this – asking why and why and why over and over again – we’re often able to surface the root of a behavior that we would like to change. Once you know that you have impulse control problems, for instance, you can seek help for those problems, using therapy, hypnosis, meditation, or whatever, to change your fundamental beliefs and come more in line with how you want to be.

Of course, this “drilling down” exercise aside, you probably want immediate and actual advice about what to do regarding your Glendale DUI. Los Angeles DUI attorney Michael Kraut of Glendale’s Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. (121 W Lexington Dr, Glendale, CA 91203 Phone: (818) 507-9123) is here to take your call, provide a free consultation, and to help you build a compelling, aggressive, systematic strategy to get results.

March 23, 2012

The Burbank DUI Ripple Effect: A Moment of Indiscretion, Diverse Results

by Michael Kraut

If you or a family member recently got stopped for a DUI in Burbank or elsewhere in Southern California, you might be tempted to think of the event as a kind of independent occurrence—a hiccup in your life.

If you face penalties for a DUI conviction in Burbank (e.g., jail time, fees and fines, forced probation, mandatory installation of interlock ignition device, etc.) you probably want to make this hiccup go away as soon as possible, which is understandable. But to leverage your best defense possibilities, it is critical to view the DUI in a larger context, both in terms of your life and in terms of society. As any experienced Los Angeles DUI attorney will tell you, there are patterns involved in DUI behavior. If you can identify the negative patterns in your own life that lead you to get into trouble, you can act to avoid becoming a recidivist (a repeat DUI offender) and fix other areas of your life that you didn’t even know were a mess until you examined them with a clear mind and open heart.

After all, the actions that you take (or do not take) will have ripple effects not only for you and your family but also for society as a whole. Consider, for instance, a story out of Concord, California. Last week, a 27-year-old trucker crashed into a utility pole and caused a power outage that affected thousands of local residents. The woman driver left the scene of the accident and took a cab back to her apartment. She was later arrested on multiple charges—not only for DUI, but also for child endangerment and hit and run.

As a good Los Angeles DUI lawyer will tell you, leaving the scene of an accident is never a good idea—and the bad actions and poor decisions that you make after your DUI arrest or accident can actually vastly complicate your case. The key is to avoid doing the metaphorical equivalent of throwing good money after bad—that is, making your situation worse and worse by continuing to break laws and behave irresponsibly.

In the case mentioned above, the ripple effect was clear—the woman hit a telephone pole, damaging it and causing a massive power outage and inconvenience for thousands. But any time a DUI stop or accident like this happens, there is a ripple effect. Even if you are the only one who is inconvenienced or punished, your problems will almost inevitably affect other people: your spouse, your employer, your customers, etc.

Connecting with a Burbank DUI criminal defense attorney such the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc.’s Michael Kraut (2600 West Olive Avenue, 5th Floor, Burbank, California 91505 Phone: (818) 563-9810) does not guarantee that you will solve all your problems. But Mr. Kraut has a stellar track record at jury trials, the respect of his judicial and lawyer peers, and a reputation in the community as someone who is extremely knowledgeable about DUI law, in theory and practice.

March 21, 2012

Beverly Hills DUI Education: Should Our Educators Take a Hint From Folks Up In Sacramento?

by Michael Kraut

Getting caught for driving under the influence (DUI) in Beverly Hills can be a big, big deal, not only because it can lead to life-changing legal repercussions, like prison time and loss of your driver’s license, but also to massive spikes in your insurance rates that can persist for years and cost you thousands of dollars. And that’s if you are convicted of a standard misdemeanor as opposed to a more severe charge, like a felony. But how can we, as a community, figure out why people tend to drive under the influence and what we might be able to do to collectively to change the behaviors and minimize the risks involved.

It’s easy to take a casual glance at the problem and begin moralizing. It’s easy to fall into an “us versus them” mentality:

• “That DUI driver is a careless or negligent individual.”
• “What really needs to happen is we need to punish people more”
• “The person who drove DUI was (insert label or judgment here: lazy, uncaring, selfish, etc)”

As any Los Angeles DUI attorney will tell you, the pool of defendants is far more diverse than many people realize. It’s not just “irresponsible teenagers” or “club-hopping twenty-somethings” that get nabbed for this crime.

Rather than focus just on punishing, dissuading, or stopping individuals from driving under the influence, it might be useful to address some of the underlying social causes.

To change the mentality, we may need different and more sophisticated educational tools. In Sacramento, students at Kennedy High School recently witnessed the real life sentencing of a DUI offender. The defendant, 25-year old Kristyna Robinson, got caught driving with a BAC level of 0.13%. The legal limit for DUI in Beverly Hills is 0.08%, as defined by California Vehicle Code Section 20152 (b). After drinking four beers and some whisky, she got pulled over and spent hours in jail. Her sentence included two more days in jail, informal probation, and fines totaling $2,300. The students witnessed her being led off in handcuffs with her head lowered. A sobering and emotionally-charged portrait of the potential consequences of DUI in Beverly Hills.

If we can make DUI more unacceptable to groups (as opposed to targeting individuals only), we might be able to find new points of leverage that will aid us in keeping our city and our streets safer… and in treating offenders with more compassion and respect.

If you or someone else needs the services of a Beverly Hills DUI criminal defense attorney, consider connecting today with the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. (9107 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 450, Beverly Hills, California 90210 Phone: (310) 550-6935). As a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former senior deputy district attorney for Los Angeles, Mr. Kraut has a wealth of experience, a terrific record at jury trials, and the resources and investigative tools to get you results.

March 19, 2012

Long Beach DUI Lessons: Mets’ Catcher’s DUI Rollover Holds Clues for Defendants

by Michael Kraut

If you recently got stopped for driving under the influence (DUI) in Long Beach – or got into a serious accident while DUI (or allegedly DUI), your life likely feels rather out of control right now. It can be useful to take a look at relevant DUI news items to give your situation some context and help you think more constructively about your options.

To that end, let’s examine some breaking news out of St. Lucie County, Florida, where 32-year-old Eric Langill, a former bullpen catcher for the New York Mets, rolled over his car at a traffic circle near Commerce Center Parkway and Reserve Road. Langill told witnesses that someone had cut him off—that’s why the car flipped. Initial reports from local law enforcement officials seem to support his conclusion. His white Honda Accord banked “hard to the right” as he approached the intersection, causing a kind of Rube-Goldberg’s-contraption type of accident. According to a report from WPTV, Langill’s car went “over a curb and hit a street sign and concrete fountain at the center of the traffic circle . . . [causing] the car to flip upside down.”

Fortunately, a witness and a friend came to the scene and helped Langill escape through the passenger door. The report said that he had consumed about three drinks that night. But it does not give an indication of whether he took a blood test. As a Los Angeles DUI attorney will tell you, the legal limit for DUI in Long Beach (and Florida) is 0.08%. But you need not test for a high BAC to get arrested and charged – you can be busted for DUI in Long Beach pursuant to a different California Vehicle Code, 23152 (a).

What Can We Learn from Langill’s Experience?

First of all, as a good Los Angeles DUI lawyer will tell you, even simple-seeming accidents or stops can lead to complex consequences. In other words, you may not be able to intuit your best defense strategy or even understand what caused the crash until you really probe the evidence, look at police reports, analyze whether or how breath or blood tests were performed, etc.

If you were DUI when you got into an accident that hurt another person, the circumstances of the crash are extremely important. If you cause the accident due to your DUI, your penalties can be escalated significantly—you can be charged with DUI pursuant to California Vehicle Code Sections 23153 (a) and (b). This can be a significant shift – making what could have been a misdemeanor into a felony, for instance. On the other hand, if the other driver is at fault, you may still be charged for DUI, but it can be a significantly lesser charge.

The point is that, to protect your rights and avoid making mistakes, it is helpful to connect with a Long Beach DUI criminal defense attorney like Michael Kraut of Long Beach’s Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. (444 West Ocean, Suite 800 Long Beach, California 90802 Phone: (562) 531-7454). For 14 years, Mr. Kraut worked as a prosecutor for the City of Los Angeles. Now, in his capacity as a top-level criminal defense attorney, he uses his knowledge of the prosecutorial mindset and philosophy to get results for his clients.

March 14, 2012

Pasadena DUI Breathalyzer News: Hundreds of San Francisco DUIs Could Be Tossed Due to Breathalyzer Test Issues

by Michael Kraut

If you’ve recently been arrested and convicted of a Pasadena DUI due to a breathalyzer test, some breaking news should be of profound interest for you. This knowledge could be crucial, if you want to understand what defenses might be available to protect you from penalties like jail, alcohol school, driver’s license suspension, and the rest of the works.

San Francisco police are investigating up to 1,000 local DUI convictions due to problems revealed with 20 local breathalyzer machines. For about a decade, these machines were poorly calibrated and maintained. Police did not test these machines effectively. According to a local public defender, the breath tests needed to be inspected every 10 days, “and that wasn’t happening.”

As a Los Angeles DUI attorney will tell you, breath tests work by measuring the alcohol exhaled from the lungs. Even under the best of conditions, breath tests can be problematic. Different people process alcohol differently. A heavy set man on a diabetes medication might absorb alcohol vastly differently than might a healthy slim 20 something year old woman. The amount of air you exhale into your Pasadena DUI breathalyzer test can radically affect your reading, too. This is the reason why police tell you to take a “deep breath” before you blow into one. We could (and in previous blog posts, have) go on and on and on about all the different possible problems with breath tests. And that’s IF the tests function perfectly.

So what’s happening in San Francisco? How might it impact you?

First off, the 20 bad breath test machines have been taken off out of operation. The consequences of the police negligence could linger, however. In some cases, massive damage may have already been done. As Trent Copeland, a legal analyst for CBS News, put it “when [a breathalyzer] fails, when the computer-generated technology simply isn’t maintained properly, then suddenly the whole system is thrown into chaos and we can’t rely on anything in terms of the results.”

An amazing situation, isn’t it? But here is what’s even MORE amazing…
According to another legal analyst for CBS News, Jack Ford, the San Francisco case may inspire other police departments across the United States – including here in Southern California – to reassess how their breath systems work (or do not work). That’s crucial. If it turns out that your Pasadena DUI breathalyzer was flawed, you might have extra leverage to defend yourself.

Of course, your choice of Los Angeles DUI lawyer can make a huge impact — either positive or negative — for your case. An inexperienced attorney – or someone who doesn’t really understand the diversity and magnitude of potential breathalyzer test flaws – may not be able to develop the most strategic case for you.

Fortunately, you can turn to the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. (790 East Colorado Boulevard, 9th floor, Pasadena, California 91101 Phone: (626) 345-1899 ) for guidance. Attorney Michael Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated Pasadena DUI criminal lawyer who served as a prosecutor before becoming a criminal defense attorney. As such, he understands what prosecutors look for, and he knows how to poke holes in the cases that they build against defendants.

March 12, 2012

Interlock Ignition Device after Los Angeles DUI? Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Jumps into the Fray

by Michael Kraut

Should someone who has been convicted of a Los Angeles DUI be forced to install an interlock ignition device on his (or her) vehicle?

This seems like a straightforward question. But the debate over the effectiveness and ethics of IIDs is roiling the blogosphere. Last week, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a national group dedicated to improving road safety, weighed in on the matter. Based on studies that suggest that interlock devices can reduce crimes like Los Angeles DUI by up to 12%, the IIHS now recommends that ALL DUI offenders be compelled to install these devices. As the Vice President of Research for the IIHS put it “we found that the higher the rate of interlock installations, the lower recidivism would be.”

That interlock devices can prevent recidivism is pretty well established. But, as an advocate for the American Beverage Institute recently put it, “as soon as you take [the IID] off, recidivism goes back up.” Unsurprisingly, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) supported the IIHS position. The American Probation and Parole Association, on the other hand, argued that mandating IIDs for all offenders is not necessary and could cost nearly $500 million to states to supervise people. In many cases, a DUI offender only suffers the IID consequence if he or she tests at a very high BAC level (0.015% or above) or demonstrates recidivism – that is, gets convicted more than once for DUI within a decade.

Thanks to a 2010 law, even misdemeanor first time Los Angeles DUI offenders can be burdened with the IID requirement. As anyone who ever dealt with one of these devices can tell you, keeping an IID in your car can be unpleasant, embarrassing, inconvenient, and a constant reminder of your past failings.

Can a Los Angeles DUI defense attorney build you a strategic case to help you escape punishments like a mandatory IID (as well as even more scary penalties like jail time and huge fines and fees and probation)? The answer obviously depends on the details of your case.

An effective response can be the difference between jail time/harsh penalties and a more favorable plea bargain or even a dismissal of the charges. Even if you did make a mistake (perhaps a significant mistake) on the night of your DUI arrest, you don’t have to KEEP making mistakes that jeopardize your rights, your freedom, and your capacity to rebuild your life.

Connect with a Los Angeles DUI lawyer at the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. (6255 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 1520, Los Angeles, California 90028) right now to discover the best strategy for your situation. Attorney Michael Kraut is a Harvard Law School educated former district attorney (prosecutor) who has terrific relationships in the legal community and a long and diverse track record of success – even in tough cases.

March 7, 2012

Long Beach DUI Multiple Offender? Not Necessarily a Problem: Ask Rodney King

by Michael Kraut

If you got arrested and convicted more than once for a crime like DUI in Long Beach, your prospects may be grim, indeed. Prosecutors like to “throw the book” at so called recidivists – people who commit the same crimes more than one time.

As any Los Angeles DUI attorney will tell you, if you are convicted for this crime more than once within a 10-year period, your penalties start to escalate in terms of:

• length of your jail sentence
• amount of alcohol school you need to attend
• duration of your license suspension
• strictness of your probation
• fees and court costs
• and more
But just because you have a DUI on your record does not necessarily mean that you are going to get raked over the coals. For instance, take a look at Rodney King’s situation.

Mr. King, whose videotaped beating touched off the notorious early 1990s Los Angeles riots, was arrested last July in Riverside County for DUI. He was also convicted for DUI in 2004. Police reports suggested that King’s BAC level was 0.06% — just shy of the Long Beach DUI cutoff of 0.08%, as defined by California Vehicle Code 23152(b).

That being said, officers say that they found marijuana in his system as well. All those factors – coupled with his 2004 conviction – could have spelled big trouble for the man famous for his remark “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” But – miracle of miracles (at least as far as King was concerned) – he managed to strike a plea deal with prosecutors that allowed him to escape serving jail time. This wasn’t to say that he got off scot free. In addition to pleading guilty, King agreed to pay court costs and a $500 fine, attend alcohol classes for nine months, endure three years of summary probation, and spend 20 days under house arrest. Given the alternatives for recidivist Long Beach DUI violators, King got a pretty square deal.

Your options change depending on innumerable factors. Did you hurt someone while DUI? Did you cause property damage? Did you resist police arrest? Are you prepared to accept culpability for what happened (if indeed you were to blame)? Do you have prior convictions on you record? If so, what were they for?

Only a qualified Los Angeles DUI lawyer can really help you sort out the best strategies and methods for dealing with prosecutors. In some cases, it makes more sense to fight your charges. In another cases, it might make more sense to aim for a plea deal. To really unpack your best solutions, connect with an experienced Long Beach DUI criminal defense attorney with the Kraut Law Group Criminal & DUI Lawyers, Inc. (444 West Ocean, Suite 800 Long Beach, California 90802 Phone: (562) 531-7454). Mr. Kraut is one of the most widely known and respected Los Angles DUI lawyers. He served as a Senior Deputy District Attorney for 14 plus years (after attending Harvard Law School, no less) before switching roles to become an advocate of defendants. His experience fighting on both sides gives him a unique advantage that he can bring to bear to help you.