What do you do if you’ve been arrested for a DUI? If you’ve been arrested for a DUI, you have probably either made it out of detox or made it out of jail and are on bond with a ticket that says that you have a court date coming up pretty soon. The other thing that you have is either a hold on your license or a license that has been taken away and now you have to figure out how I’m going to be approved for driving.
In any DUI case in Colorado you have two different sides of the matter that you have to address. The first is the administrative department of revenue licensing aspect, and then you also have the criminal side of a case, which involves a judge and a district attorney and possible other penalties. Within a very short period of time after being released, you need to go down to the DMV and request a hearing for determination of whether your license is going to be suspended or not by the department of revenue and department of motor vehicles. If you fail to ask for a hearing within the very short period of time that they give you, you will not be able to contest your license being suspended and your license will enter into a period of suspension. This prevents you or restricts you from being able to drive a vehicle. This obviously makes it very difficult for you to go to work, pick up your kids, go to a job, get groceries, go to church, or do any normal activity that you’re normally used to doing on a day to day basis.
Once you request a hearing, you have the DMV set your case for a review hearing before the department of motor vehicles. At that hearing, the hearing officer will address whether or not you had violated the law to a degree and will determine whether or not your license will be suspended. Many times in these hearings you can request the officer to be present or you can request that the officer not be present. What decision you make will be dependent on the facts or circumstances. After your hearing is over many times your license will be suspended. You’ll have to then figure out some means or mode of transportation in order to be able to carry along your basic life.
In the criminal proceeding you will also have a court date. Any of these court dates are mandatory, court dates that you need to make sure that you attend. You cannot miss any of them. When you go you will be able to address the facts of your case, have a discussion with the district attorney, be able to potentially receive a plea bargain or an offer on how to resolve the matter. You will then be able to decide on whether you want to move forwards on having a trial on the issues or whether you want to resolve the case with the district attorney’s office.
Any one of these decisions are incredibly important and are different in every single case. In order to learn more about how to deal with your case or a family member’s case, please contact us here at Miller & Steiert and we will be happy to help you with the process and the court case.
