Articles Posted in DUI

Someone with multiple DUI convictions in Illinois may be charged with a felony and could be sent to prison. In addition, their driver’s license will be revoked either for 5 years, 10 years or life.

Illinois DUI law provides for escalating criminal penalties for each new DUI charge. In the more extreme cases, probation is not an option; you will be sentenced to prison (the Illinois Department of Corrections, not just the county jail). You should also expect to pay higher and higher fines for each new DUI offense.

In addition, upon being convicted of DUI, you will have a driver’s license revocation. If you have not had a successful driver’s license reinstatement hearing, any later DUI arrests will mean you were also driving with a revoked license. Upon conviction for that offense, you will face jail time separate and apart from any jail or prison time you receive if you are convicted of the new DUI. In addition, your license will be revoked for another year.

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Two Springfield DUI police officers are among the Top 15 for DUI arrests in Illinois. These figures come from the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists (AIIM).

AIIM’S name suggests that it is a “grass-roots” organization. However, the fine print on its web page reveals that AIIM is nothing but a government-sponsored entity masquerading as something else (they had me fooled at first).

Anyone ever arrested in Illinois for DUI knows that while the government claims DUI enforcement is all about public safety, they sure make a lot of money off it. Towing expenses, bond, fines, fees, and so forth all benefit the state, the county, police agencies and some other special interests whose mission bears little, if any, relationship to public safety.

If you are convicted of DUI, even a first offense carries with it the potential of up to $2,500 in fines, not to mention probation fees, random drug testing (at your expense), head trauma funds, victim impact panel funds, and whatever else the authorities can conjure up to take money out of your wallet. The state police even charge a fee for arresting you!

There’s more: prepare to pay for high risk insurance that you must carry for 36 months, a drug and alcohol evaluation, 20 to 75 hours of alcohol counseling that will probably cost at least $25.00 an hour and possibly driver risk education courses.

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Ron Larson argues that DUI is nothing more than a scheme to extract money from the accused. He blames various actors involved in the DUI process for turning a DUI arrest into an expensive proposition. His solution is to remove all of them from the equation and automatically sentence someone charged with DUI to a year in prison.

Larson claims that DUI lawyers are an unnecessary expense. Let’s examine his thesis more carefully.

DUI is a crime. Under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, anybody in this country who is charged with a crime is entitled to legal representation. This right is considered so important that the United State Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that the government is required to provide a free attorney to anyone who is accused of a crime and cannot afford an attorney.

Therefore, the author’s solution- removing lawyers from the process- would require repeal of the Sixth Amendment. Were that to occur, no person charged with an offense- from speeding to murder- would have the right to a lawyer.

Under Larson’s concept, you would not be given the chance to defend yourself and a mere accusation would stand as proof of your guilt. This would place our country’s legal system on the same footing as those of North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, where authorities imprison their political opponents on the basis of trumped-up charges that the accused has no right to contest through a lawyer.

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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 been arrested for DUI in the previous 5 years. During all but the first 30 days of the suspension, you are entitled to an MDDP.

The MDDP allows you to drive for any purpose. However, at your expense, you must have a device installed in your vehicle’s ignition and blow into a tube in order to start your vehicle.

The Illinois Secretary of State receives a fee for administering the program, as do the providers of the devices. Therefore, the providers and the Secretary of State had a financial interest in seeing that this program was put in place and continue to profit from keeping it going and maximizing its usage. Under current law, installation of the device is optional.

The assertion by advocates of the MDDP program that it has been successful, as evidenced by both its level of usage (6,500 devices installed in 2009) and reductions in fatal accidents, is questionable. They credit the program with reducing the number of fatalities, ignoring the impact of the recession and the corresponding reduction in miles driven. (These are the same folks who have brought us highly questionable claims of how often a person drives under the influence without being caught).

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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 a fine of up to $2,500.

The consequences of a first offense can be lessened if you are sentenced to court supervision. Court supervision is available only once in your lifetime and only if you have not previously been convicted of DUI.

In order to receive supervision, you must plead guilty to DUI but the judge does not enter a conviction on your record provided that you complete all of the supervision requirements, which includes staying out of legal trouble during the 1-2 years your supervision is in effect, paying all fines and other fees, completing the alcohol counseling, attending a victim impact panel or other requirements that your judge might choose to impose.

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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 that her position of authority justified special treatment (“Don’t you know who I am?”)

Here are some tips to keep in mind if the police stop you and you are concerned about being charged with DUI.

First, statements that imply guilt (“give me a break”, “I can’t get another DUI”, “I am only 2 blocks from home, can’t you cut me some slack”) put you in a position of having to provide the judge and jury with an innocent explanation for your statements, and there is an old saying in the law, if you are explaining, you are losing. And these pleas for mercy never work.

Likewise, being belligerent (“I will have your badge”, “I will sue you”, “I am getting railroaded”, “you guys are all on the take”) does not help. Moreover, if the arrest is taped, and most of them are, your actions will leave the judge and jury who view the video with a negative impression of you.

Furthermore, most law enforcement officers encounter so many people on the job that by the time your case gets to trial, the typical officer in the typical arrest will not remember anything about your case other than what is in his notes. But if you have gone out of your way to be rude, that officer is likely to remember you better than the other people who are polite and cooperative. (the nail that sticks out is most likely to get hammered).

In addition, police are human. If you have treated the officer fairly, he is less likely to register a protest if the state officers you a good “deal”. While the prosecuting attorney has final say in those matters, many of them take the arresting officer’s input into account.

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