Believing That Your Case Is Special And You Deserve A Deal

Let's explode this myth right away. Every prosecutorial arm in Utah has either a standing or unwritten policy that explicitly prohibits any deals, negotiation, or deferred pleas on DUI's. And if that weren't enough, the Utah DUI statute actually discourages any such negotiation. So if a friend told you to forget a lawyer and that their friend got a deal, make them promise to pay your fine when it all goes South. You aren't getting a deal because its your first one, your BrAC was near .080, or for any other reason; it doesn't happen - even cops get prosecuted (and fired as it were) for DUI's. When a person wants to know about the workings of a complex governmental system, it just makes common sense to ask the people who work in the system every day; not those who have "heard" anecdotal tales.

Unfortunately, the justice system doesn't care that you teach underprivileged kids, volunteer at the fire department, or routinely overpay your taxes; and in point of fact, such evidence is prohibited from introduction into the process. Furthermore, the system doesn't care that the cop who arrested you tightened the handcuffs until they left marks on your wrists, verbally abused you for drinking at all, or purposely lied to you in order to get you to admit how much you had been drinking.. In fact, that kind of abuse has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal charge against you (rather it is an unrelated civil complaint), and is rather more routine than we'd like to see. So while you may be rightly outraged for such behavior (as we are), don't think that you understand or know how to play this thing called criminal justice, because even criminal defense lawyers are intimidated by its rather impervious nature - it is a leviathan of unequaled power and mass.

If you want to play the odds, which are certainly much more in your favor when compared to pleading guilty, you hire a lawyer schooled in the area. What you do not do is get a copy of the police report, represent yourself at the DMV hearing, and then plead your case to the prosecutor while spilling all sorts of admissions that can and will be used against you; in short, you play just as professionally as you can and as hard as the rules will allow - with a Utah DUI lawyer by your side. We wish it were different, but for now we are stuck with the rules as they presently exist.