If you have been charged with a DUI in Oklahoma City, it’s important that you get a DUI lawyer as soon as possible. This is never more true than when the police or the state prosecutor are talking to you about aggravated charges.
Understanding an Aggravated DUI in Oklahoma City
In Oklahoma, non-commercial drivers over the age of 21 may not drive if their blood alcohol level is over .08%. Anything over this limit will result in a DUI charge. However, if your blood alcohol level was especially high, you may be charged with an aggravated DUI. Your blood alcohol level has to be .15% or higher for this to happen.
Being charged with aggravated DUI does not mean that your charge goes from a misdemeanor to a felony necessarily: whether you are charged with a misdemeanor or a felony usually depends on other factors. But what it does mean is that you will be slapped with extra penalties on top of the penalties that would normally go with whatever DUI charge is made against you.
So, for example, if this is your first offense, you would be facing a fine of $1,200 or more (assuming the Oklahoma City Municipal Court, which has a higher minimum than the state minimum of $1,000) and between six months to a year in jail, under ordinary circumstances. If on your first offense you’re being charged with an aggravated DUI, however, you may also be required to submit to in-patient alcohol rehab for at least 28 days, be under probation with alcohol monitoring and testing even after you get out of jail, and you will have to have an ignition interlock device installed on your vehicle. You may also be slapped with hundreds of hours of community service and other penalties.
What’s an Ignition Interlock Device?
An ignition interlock device, or IID, is a small gadget that connects to the ignition system of your vehicle and measures the amount of alcohol on your breath. If the amount of alcohol is higher than allowed, the ignition interlock device stops the car from being started. If you are required to put one of these on your vehicle, you will not only pay for installation but also the daily fee, which is around three dollars a day, plus you will need to pay to have it maintained and calibrated regularly.
You will also have to pay a $50 restricted driver’s license fee to the state to be allowed to drive using this device. The company who installs the device and keeps it calibrated is required to monitor it and report regularly to the Board of Tests for Alcohol and Drug Influence if they detect any attempt to violate the IID require requirements. In other words, an IID can be quite an enormous inconvenience and cost to a drive.
Your Driver’s License
Whether you were charged with a standard DUI or an aggravated DUI, the state will take two actions against your license immediately. One is administrative, and the other is criminal. The administrative action is to take your license from you and give you a temporary one, with 30 days for you to contest the suspension of your license at a special hearing. It is entirely your responsibility to request a hearing within the 30 days: if you don’t, you will lose your license for a year.
This administrative loss of license is applied on top of any penalty related to your license that you will be given at your criminal trial. So the total amount of time you are unable to have a license could be much longer than a year if things don’t go well for you.
Can I Avoid Charges?
No one can guarantee that you will be able to avoid a DUI charge, and Oklahoma does take these charges very seriously. The best way to get the best possible outcome is to work with an experienced DUI lawyer, and you will certainly do better with a lawyer on your side than without one.
What an Oklahoma City DUI Lawyer Can Do
If you have an experienced lawyer on your side, it makes a big difference. For one thing, your lawyer will understand the laws and will be able to analyze the prosecution’s case to find weaknesses that could get you a better outcome. Someone with experience will have a history of having done this for other clients, and this history and experience allows them to think of options and arguments that you might miss otherwise.
A good lawyer is also an expert at litigating and negotiating. They will be able to argue on your behalf in plea bargains to get charges lowered and will persuasively present your side of the story in court. And because a local lawyer has experience with the local courts, they know the judges and other court personnel, which can be very helpful in getting you the best outcome possible.
Dismissing the Case
Your attorney may challenge the legality of the traffic stop itself. If it can be shown that the police had no probable cause to stop you, then any evidence they collected during it might be excluded. Another area to investigate is the way that field sobriety tests were administered. These are very subjective and must be done and exactly the right way. A good lawyer may be able to show that you were given poor instructions or that medical conditions you have or environmental conditions present at the time affected the outcome of the tests.
Something else to explore might be whether the breathalyzer or blood test results are accurate. Breathalyzers, for example, must be maintained and calibrated properly. If it can be shown that a breathalyzer the officer used on you was not being properly taken care of, the results could be invalidated. Inaccurate procedures or storage with a blood test can also invalidate these results.
Plea Bargaining
If it’s not possible to get your case dismissed, the next thing your attorney will be able to do for you is to enter into plea bargains with the prosecution. For example, you may be able to get the prosecution to reduce the charge. If your blood alcohol level was right at .15%, for instance, you may be able to negotiate for a regular DUI rather than an aggravated DUI with the help of a good attorney. In other cases, you may be able to negotiate for a misdemeanor instead of a felony, for a shorter suspension of your license, or for less or even no jail time – particularly if this is a first-time offense.
Often, your willingness to participate in alcohol education programs, rehab, and community service can result in reduced charges or even a complete dismissal of the charges once you’ve finished the program assigned by the court. At the very least, your lawyer can negotiate with the prosecution and with the judge for you to receive nothing more than the minimum sentence allowed for the charge against you. The courts have leeway to apply higher or lower fines, more or less jail time, etc., within the boundaries of the law.
Having a lawyer on your side is the best way to get through a DUI charge, aggravated or not. For experienced help in OKC, contact Cannon & Associates today.