Cyber Crime Lawyer Blog

As a Fort Lauderdale drunk driving criminal defense attorney, I was not at all surprised by a recent article in the Daytona Beach News-Journal. The newspaper is in the middle of a three-part series on drunk driving in Volusia County, focusing on cases where prosecutors brought only one DUI charge, typically against a first offender. Its first part, published Dec. 27, looks at how prosecutors decide to drop, reduce or pursue DUI charges. Its unsurprising conclusion: Defendants with private attorneys are more than twice as likely as those with public defenders to win dropped or reduced charges, which means they never get a first drunk driving conviction on their records.

The article goes into detail about why defendants with private representation tend to do better than those with public defenders. According to the News-Journal, public defenders often aren’t even assigned to a DUI case until the defendant makes a decision about how to plead. They also have heavy caseloads -- 300 to 400 cases each, the newspaper said. By contrast, private attorneys can get involved as soon as the defendant calls, and their caseloads are typically closer to 50 cases at a time. They also have specialized DUI defense experience, giving them a better chance of finding flaws in the cases against their clients. Other factors making dropped charges more likely include mistakes by the arresting officer, flawed evidence and videotapes of the arrest that don’t show obvious intoxication. And the article noted that public defenders cannot represent clients at the DHSMV hearing, as private attorneys can and do.

I use these defenses almost routinely in my work as a Miami-Dade DUI defense lawyer. As the article notes, one mistake by an officer can mean throwing out the evidence created by that mistake. For example, one woman in the article was told that she had to submit to field sobriety tests, which is simply not true in Florida. Her lawyer filed to suppress the resulting evidence, which ultimately allowed her to plead guilty to reckless driving. A conviction for reckless driving still carries probation and alcohol classes -- but it keeps a DUI off your record. That means there won’t be a first conviction on your record in the event of another DUI charge -- though the article says 90% don’t re-offend.

I believe this is the strongest argument possible for hiring a South Florida DUI criminal defense lawyer like me, if you’re facing drunk driving charges. The penalties for a first intoxicated driving conviction in Florida are severe, including potential jail time, loss of your driver’s license, hundreds of dollars in fines, probation and community service. As the article notes, hiring an attorney isn’t always cheap -- but neither are the costs of all of these penalties. If losing a license means losing a job, the cost is even higher, in both dollars and financial security. And of course, the benefit of keeping a criminal conviction off your record is not always measured in dollars. An Orlando drunk driving defense attorney like me can’t promise a specific result -- but as the article showed, statistics are on our side.

As a South Florida drunk driving criminal defense attorney, I have been avoiding writing about Tiger Woods. It seemed like there was more speculation than actual evidence showing that he was under the influence when he crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant Nov. 27. But last week, new information was released showing that Woods was unlikely to face any intoxicated driving charges. According to a Dec. 7 article from the Associated Press, the FHP trooper who responded to the accident requested blood test results to see if Woods was intoxicated, but prosecutors denied the request because there was insufficient evidence. This news means that police and prosecutors simply won’t have the breath or blood test evidence necessary to bring a solid DUI case against Woods.

In Florida, you can be charged with DUI for driving while intoxicated by alcohol, prescription drugs, street drugs or some combination of those. According to the article, a witness who was likely Elin Nordegren, wife of Tiger Woods, told the trooper that Woods had been drinking, and had legal prescriptions for both Vicodin and Ambien. Both are drugs with sedative effects, and doctors say neither should be mixed with alcohol. (As I noted recently, Ambien is not on Florida’s list of substances that are illegal to take before driving, although this may change.) However, no evidence I know of suggests that Woods had actually taken the drugs that night, and the prosecutor’s office apparently decided that the evidence of alcohol intoxication was weak or nonexistent.

In fact, this Dec. 9 article from Central Florida News 13 says Woods did not even have a smell of alcohol, which would strengthen any case against him. A former Orange County DUI prosecutor interviewed in the story said he thought “the judge would laugh [prosecutors] out of the courtroom” if they tried to subpoena medical records without witnesses or stronger evidence. As a Fort Lauderdale intoxicated driving criminal defense lawyer, I’d like to add that the only reported evidence that Woods was intoxicated was the word of his wife. Reports suggest that Nordegren was angry with Woods at the time, and subsequent reports of his infidelity suggest that she may be still. This gives her a motive to lie, making her an unreliable witness. This is far from sufficient to support a case without additional breath or blood test evidence, field sobriety tests or even a trooper’s documented observations of intoxication.

To win a DUI conviction in Florida without a blood or breath test reading, prosecutors must show that the accused was “under the influence” of alcohol or certain specific drugs. This is a vague standard that’s difficult to prove, even when the evidence is stronger than the word of an angry spouse. As a Miami-Dade DUI criminal defense attorney, I routinely advise clients to plead not guilty and defend intoxicated driving cases without a breath or blood test. Even if nobody was harmed, a first charge of driving under the influence has serious consequences in Florida, including potential jail time, probation, a six-month license suspension, vehicle impoundment and hundreds of dollars in fines. This puts a criminal charge in your record, can cause serious trouble at work and will certainly cause and an immediate increase in your auto insurance rates. When you’re facing penalties that serious, it only makes sense to mount a strong defense with help from an experienced Orlando drunk driving defense lawyer.

As a South Florida tax evasion criminal defense attorney, I have been keeping track on this blog of the investigation by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service into overseas tax evasion. Through much of 2009, the IRS actively pursued the names of accountholders at Swiss bank UBS, which had acknowledged helping U.S. taxpayers hide their assets to avoid taxation. The agency claimed throughout that its investigation was just part of a larger crackdown on tax evaders with overseas financial accounts. Now, news reports show that this was likely the truth. As a Dec. 3 article from Bloomberg News reported, the IRS has filed for the names of certain taxpayers in the ongoing fraud case of R. Allen Stanford, a Texas financial mogul accused of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme involving fraudulent certificates of deposit. He also faces an SEC lawsuit.

According to Bloomberg, the IRS is interested in the names of Stanford investors who had overseas accounts between 2002 and 2008, in CDs at his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd. In a statement, the IRS claimed an unnamed taxpayer told it that statements from the Stanford bank and CD accounts did not state interest or income. Disclosing such income from overseas accounts is required under federal tax laws; failing to report it puts taxpayers at risk of criminal tax evasion charges, which carry up to five years in prison and six-figure fines. Stanford’s businesses are being managed by a court-appointed receiver because Stanford is imprisoned without bail; that receiver said he would comply with all legitimate requests. The court-appointed attorney representing Stanford investors said the anonymous disclosure suggested that Stanford “made an effort to keep CD investors from learning about the IRS reporting violations.”

Like that attorney, I hope the IRS keeps this in mind during its investigation. As I wrote during the UBS investigation, many taxpayers depend on their tax professionals and financial institutions for information about tax reporting. Someone without a financial background may genuinely not know that overseas income is taxable, especially if the bank fails to report it. Tax evasion is a serious charge, carrying up to five years in prison for each count, along with fines so high that they can even exceed the value of the account. As a Miami tax evasion criminal defense lawyer, I believe these are very serious penalties that may be disproportionate to the crime if the taxpayer genuinely didn’t realize there was a reporting requirement. And unfortunately, a tax crime investigation may literally add insult to injury for taxpayers who are already victims of Stanford’s Ponzi scheme. In fact, there may be nothing available for the IRS to take in some cases.

During the months-long UBS investigation, the IRS offered a voluntary disclosure program for taxpayers willing to come clean in exchange for substantially reduced penalties. These taxpayers would still have to pay back taxes and reduced penalties, but were not eligible for prison in most cases. This was an ideal offer for accountholders who never intended to evade their taxes, and the program saw an unprecedented flood of takers throughout 2009. That window of opportunity for UBS accountholders closed in mid-October, but the IRS offers a voluntary disclosure program year-round for people with any unreported legal income.

I offered my services as a Fort Lauderdale tax evasion defense attorney to UBS accountholders during their seven-month window. I suspect that this will remain an active practice for me in 2010, because these recent actions signal that the IRS is serious about tracking down tax evaders whenever it spots an opportunity to do so. The voluntary disclosure program is not available to people who are under investigation already, so if you may come under suspicion, it’s vital to make a move first. Admitting ignorance or wrongdoing, and paying the fines, may hurt -- but compared to the harsh consequences of a criminal conviction, voluntary disclosure seems like by far the better option.

As a Fort Lauderdale drunk driving criminal defense attorney, I was pleased to see a Nov. 28 editorial in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel pointing out major problems with sobriety checkpoints. These are the roadblocks set up by police, in which they stop every driver (or one out of every few drivers) passing that point to check for signs of intoxication. As the editorial points out, these DUI checkpoints are particularly popular around the holidays, when law enforcement expects more drunk drivers on the road. However, the editorial says, sobriety roadblocks are extremely ineffective compared to roving law enforcement patrols, in which officers simply take to the streets and actively look for drunk drivers.

According to the article, written by Sarah Longwell of the American Beverage Institute, roving patrols are both cheaper to taxpayers and better at catching drunk drivers than checkpoints. To illustrate this, it uses several examples from other states. For example, in Delaware, the 2008 holiday season saw 30 arrests at DUI checkpoints. During the same time period, roving patrols of officers arrested 276 more drivers. In fact, the article says, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation says roving patrols are 10 times more effective than roadblocks. One reason the article gives for this is that at checkpoints, officers wait for drunk drivers to come to them, while roving patrols actively seek offenders. It also notes that once one driver knows where a checkpoint is, it isn’t hard for that driver to warn friends via cell phone or Internet. Furthermore, it notes that checkpoints can cost as much as $10,000, while roving patrols can cost as little as $300.

As a South Florida DUI defense lawyer, I would like to add that there are serious legal and philosophical problems with sobriety checkpoints as well. By design, sobriety checkpoints pull over everyone who passes, regardless of whether there’s a reasonable suspicion that the drivers pulled over are intoxicated. Under normal circumstances, any charges resulting from a stop made without probable cause would be illegal under the Fourth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the checkpoints themselves are legal, even though they violate our constitutional right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure, because of their contribution to public safety. Some defense attorneys call this the “DUI exception” to the Constitution. Several states have outlawed sobriety checkpoints, but Florida is not one of those states.

As a Miami drunk driving defense attorney, I am uncomfortable with the “DUI exception” to the Constitution. I understand the importance of taking drunk drivers off the streets -- but I do not believe that goal should be attained at the expense of our civil rights. And if the facts presented by this article are true, law enforcement may not even be finding intoxicated drivers in the most financially efficient or practical manner. In my criminal practice, I’ve certainly met people who were not intoxicated enough to be pulled over by a passing cop, but who were nabbed at a roadblock by officers who took their nervousness as an admission of guilt. Sobriety roadblocks implicitly accuse everyone who passes by of being a criminal until they prove otherwise, which is offensive, mildly absurd and even a bit of a threat. If they also don’t work well, we should focus government resources on something better.