Folks charged with DUI often wonder what defense attorneys actually do to help. In this brief video, an experienced South Carolina defense lawyer shows how it's not Law & Order. A lawyer who knows how to do it the right way knows it's a lot of work, often over a period of several months or more- but sometimes a quick, favorable outcome can be achieved.
Here’s how we defend your DUI first case. First I get your side of the story. You may feel like the officer ignored you, I won’t. Your side is my starting point. Next I get you back on the road. If your license got suspended at arrest, my first priority is requesting that administrative hearing to get you a temporary license. Once that hearing’s scheduled I defend you at it. Sometimes we have early negotiations most people are pretty happy with a reduced charge like reckless driving. If I feel like that's within reach we go to your first court date and I try to get it from the officer. If we can't or if we decide to skip this step we go to the next one which is requesting a jury trial. That delays your case for several months which can also help, the officers will to convict you at any cost can fade and a reason judgment to negotiate and winning defenses can emerge after we request discovery. That’s a motion I file at the same time as the jury trial request. It demands the state to give me all the evidence they have in the case. The most important part is the videos. When we get the response asking it to you because I want your input. I look for defenses you might not even know about and I also make extensive notes about how you don't look impaired and what the officer did wrong.
So by the time we get a trial notice we've done all the groundwork all we got to do is fine tune it to get it ready for trial and I do the hard part getting ready to talk to the jury and cross-examine the officer. I mean that's what you hired me to do right? You’ll do our strategy you'll have a voice in it including whether you testify. If you do you'll be ready. So when it comes to trial, if it goes that far, you can rest assured we'll go and ready and expected to win so is that a lot of work? Yeah sure is. That's why you should give your case to a professional like me because I can increase your odds and I just might find defenses you don't even know about. I thank you for thinking about this with me.
