What to Expect After a Maryland DUI

If you are charged with a DUI in Maryland, there are some important things you should be prepared for. We go over some of the major expectations below.

Complications of Maryland DUI Cases

The first thing that a person needs to do is get on the phone with a defense attorney as soon as possible. Somebody walking away from a DUI can end up with 10 to 15 sheets of paper in their hand when they leave the police station. It’s all very confusing. It’s all very specific. All the documents are packed with legal jargon that most people would not understand unless they have been through the process before or have an attorney’s help.

It’s important that action is taken right away to make sure that there is somebody counseling them through the process. DUIs in particular have a lot of time restrictions that are placed on them, especially in Maryland. Notices, in particular, need to be filed by the defendant in order to preserve their license and in order to preserve evidence in a particular case. There are also certain sensitivities associated with getting a person enrolled in an alcohol education program as soon as possible so they can curry favor when they enter their criminal trial date.

How a Maryland DUI Attorney Can Help

For a first-time DUI offense, nobody should panic about jail time unless an attorney has made clear that it is a possibility. It is very rare for an individual to face incarceration as a first-time offender, however a DUI can carry significant penalties other than incarceration that one may feel the impact of. The impact on a person’s driver’s license is often one of the more immediate ramifications of being charged with a driving under the influence offense.

Maryland DUIs Can Add a Lot of Points to Your License

If a person is charged with a DUI, they should remember that driving under the influence charges carry up to 12 points on a person’s Maryland driver’s license, which could revoke their privilege to drive for a very long time and have an impact on their insurance premiums. If they follow their attorney’s instructions, there are ways to keep those points off a person’s driving record, to make sure that they don’t face any jail time, and to attempt to reduce the fines and costs that might be associated with the penalties of a particular DUI case.

Benefits of Pre-trial Alcohol Education Programs

If they’re working with an attorney that’s advising them properly, the attorney will send them to some kind of an alcohol education program, because judges like to see that a person has been proactive in the process of preparing for the DUI case. If there were any alcohol issues that needed to be addressed, hopefully this alcohol education program can address them and curry favor with the court.
After they’ve done those things, they should leave the rest to their defense attorney. A defense attorney is able to identify whether or not the prosecution has enough information to actually prove the defendant guilty of the charges that are being alleged. If there is a good defense available, the attorney will identify it and prepare it for court.

Contact an Experienced Maryland DUI Lawyer

When you have DUIs in Montgomery County you are dealing with judges who appreciate when a defendant is proactive about preparing for court, whether that involves alcohol education, alcoholic anonymous meetings, or even remarks prepared by the defendant in advance of trial. When you are in Frederick County or Washington County, the rules are pretty much the same. In Prince George’s County, they may be a little bit different. If you can get a charge dropped down to a less serious offense than a DUI, you usually resolve it in District Court. If not, it’s common practice, in Prince George’s County, to do something called “demand a trial by jury.”

In that jurisdiction, a trial by jury means that the matter is set for a status conference before a particular judge in the Circuit Court. That circuit court judge often comes to a resolution that is more favorable than a resolution you’re able to get in the District Court on those same charges. So, there’s a different strategy in how you would approach a DUI case in Prince George’s County versus other places.

Montgomery County is the most strict when it comes to DUI prosecutions because DUI cases are on the docket as some of the most serious offenses that we see there. The perspective is a little bit different than for a prosecutor in Baltimore City or Prince George’s County, where there are far more serious offenses that those particular offices have to handle.