Friday night this past weekend and again on Saturday night, between 12:30 am and about 3:30 am, I was awakened by calls from individuals who had been arrested for DWI and who were in the custody of police. Before being required to take a breath, blood or urine test, a suspect has a right to speak with a lawyer by telephone. In both cases, the arrested person had called someone else who looked up my DWI web site and then passed my cell number back to the person under arrest.
Often when I receive these calls I find that the person on the other end of the phone is seriously considering refusing to take the test that is being offered. This is a serious mistake, since a test refusal is a separate crime in itself. Besides being a crime, the test refusal carries with it a one year revocation of one’s driving license. So far I have always recommended that the person take the test. It is hard for me to imagine a situation when I would not recommend that.
When I receive one of these calls, I try to find out as much information about the arrest as I can. Sometimes this can involve staying on the phone with the “suspect” for as long as half an hour or so. The result is that often I know things about what went on that the police report may not include and that the potential client may not remember.
Usually after receiving one of these calls I can’t sleep for about an hour, maybe longer. I’ll admit that having this two nights in a row was a tad hard on me. If this seems a little disjointed, that’s probably why.
