Articles Tagged with DUI defense california

You may be at the beginning of the end of the worst part of your Los Angeles DUI arrest.inertia-after-dui-arrest

How so? After all, you feel downright miserable and scared about what’s happened to you, and you haven’t even found a lawyer yet. You have so much to do – and so much is at stake both for you and your family – that things almost by definition have to get worse before they’ll get better.

Right?

Not necessarily.

Consider this. What’s causing you so much agitation and worry is not the punishments or potential punishments, per se, but rather the UNCERTAINTY of your situation.

•    You don’t know whether you will be jailed for several months, several days, or not at all.
•    You don’t know whether you will face massive fines of thousands of dollars or no fines at all or somewhere in the middle.
•    You don’t know whether the prosecution will negotiate a plea bargain that you can live with or whether you will have to fight in court;
•    You don’t know whether the DMV will suspend your license for a few days, or a few months, or indefinitely;
•    You don’t know whether you will find a DUI defense lawyer who has good values and who has an effective track record.

These and other uncertainties piled on top of one another and create a kind of inertia. That inertia can you weigh down and prevent you from getting the guidance you need to start to answer the questions. It’s a kind of a Catch 22.

So how do you break through the inertia?

When you take action to solve problems, it becomes easier to follow through and do what that needs to be done. For instance, if you ever procrastinated on cleaning out your garage or doing a big stack of dishes, you’re familiar with this concept.

The thought of actually getting into the muck of the work is repulsive. But once you start, the job becomes easier. It’s a lot easier to think: “hey, I’ve been washing this big pile of dishes for 15 minutes, and I’m halfway through, so I’ll keep going” than it is to “pull the trigger” and to decide to spend the INITIAL 15 minutes on the troubling task.

The first step involves reaching out for help. If you have yet to retain a lawyer for DUI in Los Angeles, call Michael Kraut of the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers to figure out your next steps. Mr. Kraut is a respected, established lawyer with a track record of success. He can answer your questions and help you feel more calm and controlled about your situation: call now to start building positive momentum to obtain closure.
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Reporting for KPCC, journalist Erica Aguilar recently published a “deep dive” examination into female DUI arrests in Los Angeles. Her two-part series is obviously well worth read.female-dui-los-angeles

Let’s examine a few key themes she discusses in her article. The information will probably shock you!

Aguilar opens by quoting Rosemary Earl, a juror who helped to convict a 38-year-old woman of second degree murder, after the woman hit and killed two other women while DUI and then fled the scene. Earl told KPCC: “I put someone in jail, and it impacts me … she took two lives that destroyed a lot of other people’s lives.”

KPCC analyzed two decades of DMV data and found that the number of female DUI arrests has gone up – both across the state and here in LA – for reasons that are befuddling to the experts. Stephen Bloch, a researcher at the Automobile Club of Southern California, told KPCC: “[The number of female DUI arrests] was somewhat stable in the 1980s, and then began to go up and just accelerated, particularly from 1999 to 2011.”

Meanwhile, the number of male DUIs fell during that same period.

Another analyst noted: “We don’t know if more women are drinking and driving … all we do know is that more women are being arrested.”

So why is this all happening?

One spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department suggested that an improvement in deputy and officer training could potentially explain the findings. For instance, around 2008, CHP began a concerted, aggressive push to bust drivers for driving under the influence. DUI arrests soon went up. But this doesn’t explain why MALE arrests went down during this time, while FEMALE arrests went up.

Another theory suggests that police have been getting better at identifying drivers who are not just DUI but also under the influence of prescription medications. Potentially, more women than men mix prescription drugs with alcohol. This might explain the discrepancy.

Yet another explanation is purely demographic. More and more women are entering the workforce. Thus, more and more women are driving, instead of staying at home and attending to kids. The surge in female DUI arrests, in other words, has nothing to do with enforcement and everything to do with the fact that the subset of female population that always been more inclined to drive DUI has increased due to socioeconomic and cultural factors.

Whether or not researchers will ever really understand the “big picture” stuff driving this peculiar trend – perhaps the numbers are just a statistical artifact? – you want urgent help with your Los Angeles DUI defense.

Contact attorney Michael Kraut of the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers right now for ethical, thorough, and highly strategic assistance with your case.
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