Not every DUI arrest in Georgia occurs in the traditional manner, where our client is pulled over to the shoulder of the road. This article discusses how our award-winning DUI attorneys with highest lawyer ratings have defended clients with odd fact patterns to obtain a DUI dismissal or a reduction of charges.
These cases all resulted in NO DUI conviction for these clients. Many of these have been for an Atlanta DUI or a hit and run in Atlanta If we are contacted within the first 24 hours of the “incident,” this early guidance to our clients often makes a huge difference.
Seven fact patterns discussed on this blog post have occurred in cases handled by our Georgia DUI attorneys near me. Our law firm’s attorneys have handled over 10000 cases in which a DUI charge was brought against our client. You will be hard-pressed to find another DUI lawyer Atlanta law office to have handled that many cases.
Especially when a client is not located within several hours after such collisions, they might ask our DUI lawyer GA litigation team, “Can i get charged with a DUI after the fact?” That answer is maybe, but the bigger question becomes, “How much proof collected by police points to our client, to the exclusion of all others?”
This types of evolve after two motor vehicles strike each other in a parking lot or on a roadway. Two (or more) vehicles collide, and our client left the scene, either under the vehicle’s own power or on foot. Can you be arrested for drunk driving after the fact when these crashes occur? Absolutely.
This behavior of not staying at the roadway and giving aid, if anyone is hurt, is commonly called hit and run GA. This serious misdemeanor crime (after being involved in a motor vehicle collision and then fleeing the scene) is as problematic for a criminal justice attorney to defend (in many ways) as a DUI offense.
In addition, if another person is seriously injured or killed by the DUI-DWI driver, a first-degree vehicular homicide GA or serious injury by vehicle in the first degree will by indicted or charged. A similar sentence for a hit and run Georgia case resulting in a fatality of serious bodily injury. Each of these Georgia felonies carry up to 15 years in state prison for each injured or deceased person.
7 Actual DUI Case Fact Patterns Where Excellent Results Were Obtained
Seven different actual case scenarios are discussed below. These examples show you how cases can be won:
- In some cases, the client gets to his or her home, or to a nearby restaurant or bar that is still serving alcoholic beverages. The key is for the person to not answer the door. If the door is answered, remain silent. Plus, multiple empty containers of alcoholic beverages in the trash case may assist.
- Other times, police find the suspected Georgia hit & run disabled vehicle on the road, facing the same direction as the vehicle that fled. In a dew cases, a tag number or partial number is observed, but often, the description is too vague or lacking in detail. These omissions may include mistaking the color of car or truck and being able to accurately describe the driver. If an officer continues driving, and then see a pedestrian walking a mile or so down a desolate stretch of roadway. If the client knows to remain silent and only provide his or her name and address, these will usually be good cases. If that abandoned vehicle is not registered to our client, and he or she had enough forethought to leave the keys in the abandoned vehicle, that improves our facts even more.
- If the client is found have alcoholic beverages in a bar 40 minutes later, police officers cannot tell how much alcohol was consumed after the collision or before, unless the person self-incriminates.
- In a few cases, our client made it to a nearby hotel and paid for a room and was never found in or near the suspected vehicle that night. In one Alpharetta crash in a heavy rainstorm, the client’s vehicle was totaled on northbound GA Highway 400, but he quickly got out of the wrecked vehicle and jumped a right-of-way fence and hightailed it through the woods. This was about 3:30 in the morning. He was never located the night of the wreck. Police did receive a call from a nearby Waffle House of a rain-soaked, muddy white male, who asked to use the restaurant’s phone.
- In one recent case, our client was almost home, when she veered into a parked vehicle and also struck a utility pole. Her vehicle was still drivable, and she got to her home a few blocks away, opened the garage and got inside the closed garage. Unless someone opened the door, a search warrant would have been needed. Since this was an unoccupied, parked vehicle, the hit and run statute under OCGA 40-6-270 was not implicated.
- In different cases in two different jurisdictions, our client (in each case0 was having a medical crisis (both were diabetics). One (who was driving a pickup truck) sideswiped another vehicle but never slowed down. In the other accident, that client sideswiped a car that was waiting for a traffic light to change, and the confused driver got out of his vehicle and walked to his apartment building. Both cases were reduced, and a plea entered to a minor charge, but our DUI defense lawyer team had to bring medical records and other proof to negotiate the case out.
- DUI Lawyer Atlanta answers: What is DUI “after the fact” arrest? In one very odd case, our client was found in his damaged vehicle that was on the property of a towing company in DeKalb County, in what is now in the city of Brookhaven. The highly intoxicated client was found sitting inside the vehicle that was so damaged that it could not have been driven to that towing lot.
The client never admitted driving, and this tow lot was within a short walking distance from a notorious nude bar that was open and serving booze at the time of the police investigation. This client had been a client of Mr. Head’s before and knew to not talk. Multiple police cars looked for nearby telephone poles and other fixtures along all roadways near this location but never found any likely place this vehicle may have crashed.
Frustrated by the drunk man’s silence, the DeKalb County police officer charged this client with DUI. Mr. Head requested a non-jury (bench trial), and cross-examined the two investigating officers so aggressively, that the judge ruled that the man was not guilty. By showing five different, plausible alternative explanations (including that this vehicle could have been towed to this lot from another jurisdiction, OR that the client may have ridden with the tow driver, and once there, saw the strip club and decided to visit there, and get drunk, before returning to sleep it off in his totaled vehicle.
Top-Rated DUI Lawyers Near Me
DUI Atlanta lawyer Larry Kohn and Atlanta DUI defense attorney Cory Yager are the name partners in Kohn & Yager LLC. Their professional corporation teams up with William C. Head PC, the professional law corporation of William Head, better known as Bubba Head, Attorney Atlanta Georgia. Mr. Kohn began clerking 25 years ago, before passing the GA Bar and joining Mr. Head’s law office group.
The 45-year veteran Georgia DUI lawyer is the best-known Atlanta DUI lawyer, largely due to being the author of the leading legal guide on defending Georgia DUI Laws since 1995. The “double Dawg” UGA school grad enjoys top attorney ratings and is one of fewer than 100 Board-Certified DWI-DUI attorneys in America, with the National College of DUI Defense.
In addition to our DUI lawyers in Atlanta, our law group has three other offices in Marietta (Cobb County), Alpharetta, and Sandy Springs (Fulton County). All have free parking nearby, except for the downtown Atlanta office, which is directly above the Peachtree Center MARTA train terminal.
When you need an experienced and qualified criminal defense attorney for a driving under the influence case, look no further. Our attorneys in Atlanta GA are experts on legal issues like:
How to fight a blood alcohol test
How to Avoid having a mandatory State ignition interlock device put in your vehicle for 12 months (or longer)
DUI Schools: A DUI Driving School near me that permits VIRTUAL classes for Risk Reduction Course
