DUI nightmare: Life without a driver’s license

Speaker 1
00;00;00;01 – 00;00;01;19
Hi, everyone. Will I lose my license if I get charged with a DUI? This is Christina Williams with Just Criminal Law.
Speaker 2
00;00;08;26 – 00;00;10;06
And this is David Mann, legal storytelling specialist. Will I lose my license after getting a DUI? I’m going to guess, yes, you do.
Speaker 1
00;00;18;02 – 00;00;20;18
Yes, it is very likely you could, but you don’t have to. And, you know, I’ve had thousands of people walk through the doors of my office and, you know, their number
one concern is, ‘Am I okay to drive?’ And they come in with a pile of papers that they’ve received from law enforcement after they were released from jail.
And all they know is they don’t have the hard copy of their license anymore because the police officer seized it.
Speaker 2
00;00;48;12 – 00;00;48;24
Okay. So. The person gets stopped for a DUI, has to do all the things that we’ve talked about in other videos. And then, so, the hard copy gets taken away.
Is there some other, is there any kind of, like, time period where they get to drive just to get themselves home or something? Or they just can’t drive from that moment on?
Speaker 1
00;01;06;28 – 00;01;10;01
Yes, The officer in that pile of paper that, you know, the client gives them a paper license and it’s good for a few weeks, and that gives them full driving privileges in
Wyoming and allows them to take the steps or make efforts to make sure that they don’t lose all of their driving privileges.
Speaker 2
00;01;31;23 – 00;01;32;15
Okay.So they’re able to drive around for a while, but then what happens when that expires?
Speaker 1
00;01;36;17 – 00;01;37;01
Well, if they haven’t done anything about it, if they haven’t taken the steps to, you know, staty valid to drive, then they’re just not able to drive anymore.
They lose that privilege 30 days after their arrest. And, you know, they need to be aware of that because there’s an even shorter window to do something about it.
That is 20 days from your arrest. And if you get an attorney involved before day 20, they can actually request a hearing and contest the suspension of your license.
Speaker 2
00;02;14;06 – 00;02;16;02
Okay. Wow. All right. So, and I’m also thinking that if they go past this deadline, the 30 day deadline, and they’re out driving and they get caught, or they get stopped
for anything, that could be really, really bad, right?
Speaker 1
00;02;29;17 – 00;02;30;04
Right. They’re facing another criminal charge. You know, driving without a valid license. And sometimes that happens. And, you know, it doesn’t necessarily
look good for the judge that you’re waiting for your DUI and you’re driving around with a suspended license. So it just makes our situation worse.
Speaker 2
00;02;53;24 – 00;02;54;06
All right. So there’s these two deadlinesL 20 days and then 30 days, which, I imagine a lot of people are just not going to know about these deadlines; especially the day day one.
Say that they now get a lawyer involved. And what can a lawyer do to help, I guess, you said get the license privileges back?
Speaker 1
00;03;12;19 – 00;03;13;05
Yes. So, what we do in every case that we help somebody with a DUI on is, we request that contested case hearing. And that’s just an opportunity to have one of our lawyers
go through what happened in the client’s case and make sure that law enforcement did everything that they were supposed to. And you’d be surprised the number of times that they don’t.
So, if they didn’t do anything that they were supposed to then, you know, potentially we can keep them from losing their license. It’s also just a mechanism to keep them valid,
to drive during the pending DUI until we know what’s going to happen and when it’s appropriate, we withdraw that request for a hearing and help them get a work permit, and then
they’re able to continue driving from the day they get their DUI all the way through pleading guilty to the DUI in the case.
Speaker 2.
00;04;12;16 – 00;04;12;25
Yeah. So that pleading is going to be months down the line. So they’re definitely going to need to find a way to get to work. So a work permit then allows you to what? Just drive
to work and back? Or are there other versions of that?
Speaker 1
00;04;23;21 – 00;04;25;27
Well, you know, there are other versions. Say you’re a student or say you’re a stay at home mom. You know, you just have to make your application to the Department of Transportation.
And we help them do that, just to make sure they keep that limited driving privilege. And, you know, then when the DUI is completed and, say, they’re on probation, they can’t
forget the last step. And that is, they need to pay a reinstatement fee and that will get their driver’s license back that was taken from them when they were arrested.
Speaker 2
00;04;59;19 – 00;05;00;04
Okay. So from the moment of DUI, all the way to having everything cleared up again, there are a lot of steps, deadlines, regulations, rules. I’m thinking that it’s possible to do it on your own
but a whole lot easier to do it with an attorney.
Speaker 1
00;05;16;15 – 00;05;17;04
Yes. I mean, it’s typical paperwork. It’s hard to maybe understand what the Department of Transportation is asking of you. And you don’t want to mess around with your driving privilege,
especially if you need it to get to work. So, yeah, it’s something that you need some help on probably.
Speaker 2
00;05;34;16 – 00;05;36;05
And you have a lot of experience with that. So they should call you. And how does that happen?
Speaker 1
00;05;39;21 – 00;05;41;12
We’ll include a link in the description where they can call, text, or chat with a member of my team, any time, day or night.
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