Georgia DUI Attorney - Ways To Protect

• Get out on bond – If you are attempting to help an individual get out of jail you should know that a DUI, even as a misdemeanor, is entitled to bond. The bond amount is typically set in the highest amount of the fine available to the individual, usually about $1,500. If the person was charged with anything else, speeding, red light violation, etc., he may need to post a bond for these charges as well.

Bond can typically be posted in one of a number of ways. Through actual cash in the amount due, through a percentage of the amount due utilizing a bondsman, or with a property bond. A cash bond is arriving at the jail with the actual amount of the bond in hand. Prior to doing this you should call to obtain the bond amount so that you have the right amount of cash, in the correct denomination, as they may not be able to provide change for you.

You can also contact a local bonding company, which may or may not, at their discretion, grant you the right to let you use their credit in exchange for posting the bond. If you do go this route you should be aware that you will typically wind up having to pay 10 to 15 percent as a service fee.

Finally, if you are a property owner within the county in which the individual has been arrested, you can post your property, that is real estate, in an effort to get the individual out of jail. You will need to provide appropriate documentation indicating that you are the property owner and have the right to post it as a bond. Again, you should call the jail to find out what documentation you will need.

Please be careful, however, that if you do post a bond and an individual fails to show for a court date that the bond can be forfeited and action taken against the security that has been provided, whether it be cash, a bond through a bondsman, or property.

• Get the car if it was impounded – Being charged with a DUI is problematic enough, there’s no point in being inconvenienced further by not having your car. You need to rest assured that adequate protections have been taken to protect your driving privileges, and as a result you will have the ability to continue driving for at least ten business days, even if you refused to submit to chemical testing. The towing companies will continue to charge storage charges for every day that your vehicle is in their lot past the initial day. Thus, it is in your best interest to pick up your vehicle as quickly as possible.
  Make sure to call the impound lot prior to picking up the vehicle so that you know what documents you will need to have the vehicle released to you, and more importantly, the full amount that you will need in order to pay to have the car released and payment options.
• If you were involved in an accident, immediately report the accident to your insurance company – This is a very common and costly mistake many times made by individuals in an accident who are afraid to call and report the accident because they might also have been DUI. We recognize that it seems counter-intuitive to report an accident that might have occurred while you were DUI and that you will be afraid of having your insurance rates either raised or coverage denied. However, most insurance contracts require that you immediately report an accident and your failure to do so can negatively impact your coverage.

It’s not necessary in the initial report to your insurance company to give all of the facts that you can recall, just the facts that you’re asked for. Additionally, it’s not required that you admit drinking prior to driving if you are asked. You should just, however, give the most basic information possible. Most claim reports entail a specific set of questions designed only to open a file. A more comprehensive investigation will take place later. If asked to make a recorded statement when you initially report an accident decline to do so until you’ve had an opportunity to speak with an attorney.

Most insurance policies do require and provide for a legal defense to the civil claim for damages, including payment under your policy limits, even if you were DUI. The insurance companies also are required to provide you an attorney to represent you only with regard to the accident, that attorney will not represent you with regard to your criminal charges that stem from the accident, such as a DUI, hit & run, driving on suspended license, or other, similar charges.

If you need an attorney for this purpose, and if you were charged with any of these offenses you will, you should call the DUI CORPS immediately. Remember, not only do our attorneys work during hours convenient to you, but we have represented numerous people arrested for DUI while involved in accidents successfully. Even on a Saturday or Sunday, you can be sure that you can speak with a DUI CORPS attorney to answer your questions and, usually, within two and a half hours of your inquiry.

To Contact the DUI CORPS via phone, call 404-513-5297

To Contact the DUI CORPS via email, please submit this short form.

• DO NOT sign up for a DUI school, which is also caused risk reduction – At an early stage you are wasting both valuable time and money by signing up for this course long before you know whether it will be part of any punishment, if one is imposed. The course is expensive and does require about 20 hours of time, thus at the early stage it is not recommended that one panic and enroll in this course.
• DO NOT waste time waiting for an accident report or police incident report – Honestly your attorneys are going to obtain this information anyway, plus many times police departments will only release to you the public copy of the report, while a secondary (supplemental) report might exist that is more detailed that the officer completed. Your attorney will be entitled to receive the "supplemental" report. Wasting or waiting on these reports to be completed, which often take days for them to be put into the records room and made available for the public, will waste time that you can utilize to find a good attorney who is able to understand your case and get him working on it with enough time to protect your driving privileges and your liberties.
• Go and take pictures of the intersection or stop area if you contend that there was a reason that you were stopped that is unique to that intersection. – For example perhaps you did not see a stop sign because trees were covering it. The problem is that those trees may be trimmed back at a later point and you will be unable to prove the condition of the roadway at the time of your arrest.
• Make an appointment to see a qualified DUI defense attorney – Attorneys who specialize in DUI defense, such as the DUI CORPS know the ins and outs, the pitfalls and traps of defending these cases and ensuring that you are eligible to continue to drive while your case is pending. Our office has seen more than its share of cases that have come to it after an attorney who does not work in this area of the law has messed it up, or who simply just does not understand the intricacies of the law and places their client in peril. For your convenience you can set up an appointment via email with the DUI CORPS by filling out this form, or you can call us at 404-513-5297 to set up an appointment.
• Make sure that at some point you adequately protect your driving privileges – in Georgia, whether you have taken the chemical test or refused it, you have ten business days within which to request a hearing or your driving privileges may be suspended. The law and due process require that you are afforded a hearing at which a judicial officer will hear the grounds upon which an officer is moving to suspend your driver’s license. You have every right to contest these hearings and your lawyer should be adequately trained to do so. But you cannot get this hearing if you do not request it in a specific manner and in a specific time period. The DUI CORPS, of course, specializes in these types of hearings and is more than willing to help you get the proper documentation filed, timely, to ensure that you will have your hearing. This is done as a service we provide to all of our clients and no additional charge. You should be very cautious that if you do not engage in appropriately protecting these rights by demanding a hearing that your driver’s license will be suspended after the expiration of the 30 day period for which you have been granted temporary driving privileges. If you do so, and your right to a hearing lapses, you will lose your driver’s license for one year if you have refused chemical testing and one year if you have taken the chemical test, although under certain circumstances you may be entitled to a work permit. If you have found that you have missed these dates you should immediately call the DUI CORPS so that we can assess your situation and advise you further as to whether you can reinstate your driving privileges or somehow resurrect this problem.
• Do not talk to people about your case – Not only can it cause you embarrassment, or other problems should gossip get out, but you never know who is paying attention to a conversation and who is friendly with whom. Every time that you might make a statement with relation to your arrest you might make an admission that can be utilized against you at some form or time during either the process to suspend your driver’s license or the criminal trial against you. It is better to be safe than sorry and discuss the intricacies of the DUI as keeping quiet increases the effectiveness of your lawyer’s ability to defend you.
• Make copies of all the documents that you received when you were arrested – Oftentimes the tickets that you received are not printed on very well and you may have to darken them. It does not do any good to fax these documents as they come across fax machines black. When you meet with your lawyer you are going to want to bring every item that you can with you that you received on the day of your arrest, including tickets, limited driving permits, DDS 1205 forms, breath slips, bonding paperwork, inventory receipts of your personal belongings and the vehicle, and any documents generated during the towing process. While many of these documents might seem redundant, small details on each of them provide valuable information to your attorney and he will want to see them.
• Immediately sit down and write down the events that occurred on the night of your arrest, where you were, what you drank, who you were with, and what events led up to the stop, including your driving. You should also identify potential witnesses, including names and phone numbers, all of this information will be invaluable to your attorneys when you first meet them. It will be better to have information that you can provide that is fresh in your mind, or as close to your arrest as possible. After all the police will. You should also, to the extent possible, make notes of the names and numbers if possible, of people that were arrested and held in the same jail cell as you were on the night of your arrest. Believe it or not many times individuals who are housed together in jail cells when they are arrested for DUIs become valuable witnesses for one another because of things that they can testify to that correlate events. Such as individuals who are stopped at the same roadblock may have information that when pieced together can render a roadblock invalid. Other individuals may have seen you performing field sobriety evaluations and may be able to offer an opinion as to your condition. As many witnesses that you know of are possible are better to list, especially when you are contesting whether you voluntarily attempted to submit to a breath test or at a later point from your arrest rescinded your refusal to take it.

*The provision of this information by the DUI CORPS and its use by an individual does is not intended to create an attorney-client relationship nor constitute legal advice.