Most government jurisdictions will bring an administrative suit against you at the DMV after a DUI arrest. If your state does, you need to be prepared to take on that action as well if you want to keep your driver’s license. In nearly every state, there is the strictly defined time period concerning how much long you have to call for the department of motor vehicle trial or face an routine suspension of one’s driving permission. In a lot of states, one could get as little as 10 days to request such a hearing, so quick action may be appropriate. Your drunk driving ticket should have information on the reverse side dealing with your DMV requirements. Unlike drunk driving court cases, department of motor vehicle cases commonly don’t involve live witness testimony. Alternatively, the police will introduce a series of paper evidence, such as your arrest report as well as breath tests, urine tests, and field sobriety test result. And unlike in criminal court, where one’s guilt must be proven beyond the reasonable doubt, the DMV hearing is a civil proceeding, so the state need only prove your criminality purely by the preponderance of the evidence in order to suspend your driver’s license. Another unique feature of dmv hearings in some jurisdictions is that the prosecutor and judge are the same person, meaning that the state motor vehicle department hearing officer that introduces evidence against you is the same person that will weigh your innocence. The department of motor vehicle is interested in the “per se” factor of one’s drunk driving case, meaning whether one’s BAC had been .08 percent or greater. Therefore, to well win one’s department of motor vehicle case, one must thoughtfully impugn the results of your chemical test , just as you should in your drunk driving court prosecution. This means questioning the integrity and precision or correctness of one’s chemical test and examining the arresting officer’s report to find inconsistencies that will help in your defense.
After examining the information and reviewing one’s arguments, the Department of Motor Vehicle hearing deputy typically will take the case under advisement and you will receive the printed notice of his finding at a later date.
Don’t give up, it is completely conceivable to win one’s DMV prosecution if you prepare one’s arguments and evidence well. The main thing is to take the hearing seriously, and to be wonderfully prepared.
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Mr. Douglas E Brown, of Utah, is an authority and broadly published journalist on the question of alcoholism treatment. For other information relating to DMV DUI, visit our web site.