Case Success: Aggravated DUI AZ

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I’m Burges McCowan, criminal defense attorney here in the Phoenix area. I’m going to talk to you about a recent case I had, an aggravated DUI. That’s ARS 28-1383.

Ben was an old client of mine who we went to trial on a DUI and won. Unfortunately, he got another DUI. This time they were charging it as a felony because they were saying that his license was suspended when he got the DUI. Ben and his mom gave me a call to see what I could do. Unfortunately, the case was a lot stronger this time against him. Going to trial was probably not going to work for us. I went through the case word by word and looked for everything I can to help Ben out. I realized that he wasn’t really driving on a suspended license. The government had just charged the case incorrectly.

Surprisingly, this wasn’t caught by the prosecutor and we went way into the case before I finally was able to convince the prosecutor they just didn’t have the evidence to charge this as a felony. Unfortunately, he did still have a prior, which meant that he was looking at six months jail. Ben’s a PhD student. He couldn’t really afford to miss that much time from his studies. It was really going to set him back. I was able to convince this prosecutor that because Ben had done everything he could with rehab and was really a good student who just made a really bad mistake, that he could give him a break and gave him only 30 days jail.

He was able to knock out that jail this summer, and he’ll be right back at school in the fall. If you or a family member you know have ever been faced with something like this, give me a call. I do free consultations and I can help.

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