To much fanfare, in 2009 Illinois instituted a DUI prevention program. Its publicly stated purpose was to prevent drunk driving. Under the Monitoring Device Driving Permit (MDDP), if you are an Illinois driver arrested for DUI, your license will be suspended for 6 to 12 months if you have not…
The consequences in Wisconsin for DUI are quite less severe than those for a DUI arrest in Illinois. What do those penalties and other consequences include? In Illinois, DUI is a Class-A misdemeanor for a first or second offense. The punishment is up to 364 days in county jail and/or…
You may be facing your first DUI charge. It could have been one of those fluke situations–you had a couple of drinks too many this one time and ended up driving. That can happen in real life. However, because of pervasive distorted reporting by powerful interest groups and their media…
If you are convicted of DUI and have an Illinois driver’s license, your license will be revoked. You must then submit yourself to a driver’s license reinstatement process before you are allowed to drive legally. The length of time you are required to wait before being eligible for reinstatement depends…
In Illinois, the county coroner’s office works with various police agencies within the coroner’s county. This recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times online concerns the deputy coroner of Will County Illinois (suburban Chicago) who was arrested on suspicion of DUI. If the police report is accurate, she seemed to imply…
You can be charged in Illinois with Driving Under the Influence (DUI) even though the police may not actually observe you driving. This Chicago Sun-Times article describes a man who was charged with DUI despite the fact that at the time of the arrest, his car was pulled over and…
Since 1984, federal law has required all 50 states to implement a drinking age of 21. Failure to do so results in a loss of federal highway funds. A recent newspaper article discusses proposed actions in the state of Virginia regarding alcohol possession by those under the age of 21.…
If this is your first Illinois DUI arrest, things may not be as bad as they could be. The sentence that celebrity playwright and actor Sam Shepard received for his Bloomington, Illinois DUI arrest is fairly typical for first offenders. The term “first offender” has two very different meanings for…
A much-anticipated Illinois Supreme Court opinion held that the HGN, one of three standardized field sobriety tests in Illinois DUI cases, was a valid indicator of alcohol impaired driving. What this means in practical terms that the state will not have to provide expert testimony that the HGN is some…
The San Diego Union Tribune newspaper recently reported on a California DUI arrest with a Cook County, Illinois connection. A man in San Diego, California faces prison time of 15 years to life for a DUI arrest that led to the death of another person. The article notes that California…