The California DUI Process by Don Hammond Criminal Defense Hero

Speaker 1:        Hi. I’m Don Hammond, your local DUI attorney and criminal defense hero. Today I want to talk to a little bit about the DUI process. When someone’s arrested for a DUI, it kicks off two completely separate processes. One is a court process, uh, where there’s possible jail time and fines and things like that involved. And the other process is a DMV process where the DMV wants to suspend your license. Today I’m going to talk specifically about the court. Uh, so somebody arrested [00:00:30] for a first time known aggravated DUI, uh, faces a maximum of six months in the county jail and a fine of about $1,000.00, which there’s penalties and assessments added, you end up with about $5,000.00 of fines. Um, in a typical case there’re additional, uh, requirements that the prosecutors want to see such as a three month DUI school program, a Mothers Against Drunk Driving program and a hospital and morgue program.

                        DUI school is a once a week, uh, about an [00:01:00] hour to an hour and a half program, uh, alcohol education class. The MADD program is a Mothers Against Drunk Driving class. It’s about two hours long and you’ll hear from people who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers and get additional information about the dangers of drinking and driving. The HAM program is a hospital and morgue program. That’s a two day program where you spend one day at the hospital and another day at the morgue, um, seeing [00:01:30] sort of a Scared Straight type of, uh, process where they’ll show you pictures and show you, um, actual, um, materials to, uh, basically scare the, scare you so that you want to do it again.

                        Um, on a typical case you’re not going to see any jail time on a first DUI, uh, but you will see a three year summary probation, uh, the conditions of which will be that you attend the classes that I’ve just discussed, um, that you submit [00:02:00] to a test offered by any peace officer and that you’re not drink, or not drive with any measurable amount of alcohol in your system. And then we’ll see, usually, a $390.00 which comes out to about $2,000.00 with all of the penalties and assessments added.

                        After you’re off of that three year summary probation or under certain circumstances where we’re able to terminate probation early, um, then we can go back and do [00:02:30] what’s called and expungement, uh, getting that DUI right back off of your record for most purposes. Um, of course these things are aggravated if you have a blood alcohol content that over .15 or over .20. Um, and also if there’s a crash as a result of the, uh, drinking and driving, some of the penalties get enhanced and then, of course, if there’s, uh, multiple DUIs within a 10 year period we’re going to see the penalties go up significantly with each [00:03:00] additional DUI conviction.

                        Um, so that’s sort of the run down of what we’re likely to see on a first DUI. If you have any questions I invite you to give me a call, triple 8 DUI HERO or visit the website, duidefensehero.com. Thanks for watching.