Jan 28
Against her wishes, former Miss USA Rima Fakih will have to soon face trial for her alleged DUI after a Michigan judge refused to give the beauty queen more time to prepare her defense, according to a report from The Detroit News.
District Judge Brigette Officer told Fakih that legal proceedings had dragged on long enough [...]
Jan 27
Fox 4 News had an interesting story on the front license plate law. The law has always been that you have to have a front and back license plate on your car. Other states, however, only require a back plate.
Some people don’t know about this law, or purposely defy it because they don’t want to drill holes in their front bumper.
Time and time again, I have seen local police use this as an excuse to pull people over to see if they have been drinking. Its one of the may little traffic laws that law enforcement use as a pretext to stop a car when they are only looking for drunk drivers.
Well, based on some mishaps in Austin, it looks they missed this one. Below is the story:
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DALLAS - Vehicles in Texas must display both front and back license plates. It’s been a state law since 1934. But lawmakers in rewriting the state transportation code recently made what could be a serious omission.
“Absolutely it is a potentially very big problem,” said Robert Gregg, a criminal defense and personal injury attorney. “The issue is not whether it is a fine. That’s where we start. The issue is whether or not it’s a crime.”
The old law read, “A person commits an offense if the person operates… a passenger car or commercial motor vehicle that does not display two license plates at the front and rear of the vehicle.”
In the new bill passed into law on the last day of the session that language was accidentally struck from the measure.
“Problem is they didn’t move it over to the new section, therefore it’s not a crime,” Gregg said.
And if the offense is no crime, law enforcement officials may no longer be able to pull people over for it.
“It is fairly common. Unfortunately in this state people don’t really adhere to the two plate rule like they should. They put a lot of their school logos or their favorite football or baseball team and it is against the law. It is a crime,” said Sgt. Don Pertiz with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department.
Pertiz said the law is often used as a tool to stop criminals on the streets.
“You’d be surprised how many offenses we uncover that start with no front license plate,” he said.
Trying to rectify the wrong, El Paso lawmaker Joe Pickett, who wrote the bill, has asked the attorney general for an opinion on whether it is a Class C misdemeanor not to display two license plates on a motor vehicle.
“Most times they don’t give you a ticket for this so the issue of not having a fine is not really it. The issue is they’ve taken out that it’s an offense. It’s not an offense. They can’t use it to pull somebody over, which they use it every day all day long,” Gregg said.
Pertiz said officers will likely continue to issue tickets based on the original law and let the courts worry about it.
Jan 27
I don’t even know where to start with this one…. Man Spends 2 Years in Solitary After DWI Arrest Dona Ana County, NM. Jan. 25 – A New Mexico man who said he was forced to pull his own tooth while in solitary confinement because he was denied access to a dentist has been awarded $22 [...]
Jan 26
Richard Roberts, former president of Tulsa’s Oral Roberts University and son of the the man who founded the school and spoke to millions on his Sunday morning program for decdades, was arrested early on morning of January 24, 2012, on suspicion of DUI and speeding, officials told The Times.
Shortly after midnight an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer [...]
Jan 26
Zolpidem Tartrate, sold under the brand name Ambien, is a non-benzodiazepine sedative hypnotic. The non-benzodiazepines are a class of psychoactive drugs that have pharmacological characteristics similar to the benzodiazepines, with similar benefits, side effects, and risks, although they have dissimilar chemical structures. A sedative hypnotic is a drug that depresses the activity of the [...]
Jan 24
The results of a recent study suggest that man are almost three times more likely than woman to be arrested for driving drunk, a finding that is sure to spur plenty of debate between the opposite sexes.
According to a report from KIVI-TV in Boise, Idaho, which cited evidence offered on an auto insurance website, men [...]
Jan 21
A routine DUI traffic stop in northern California ended in a bloody melee, as a man trying to escape a DUI arrest was gunned down by police after he reached for his own weapon, according to a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Sources indicate that the 42-year-old driver, whose identity has not yet been [...]
Jan 20
Our Newport Beach DUI Lawyers have learned that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department “Avoid the 12” DUI Task Force will be conducting DUI roving patrols in the Cities of Laguna Woods, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel and Aliso Viejo on Friday, January 20, 2012. These Multi-City DUI teams will target areas that have a high incidence of DUI-related arrests [...]
Jan 20
It may not surprise you to find out that alcoholics arrested for DUI will generally have higher blood-alcohol readings. It may surprise you, however, to learn that individuals having the disease of alcoholism will generally have higher blood-alcohol readings because they are alcoholics….. That’s right. It’s because the physiology of alcoholics is different in some important respects. One of those is that their [...]
Jan 18
The tragic death of a pedestrian due to a DUI accident hit a Florida community hard last week, but the bizarre survival of the walker’s dog offered a unique story of its own.
A man who was kayaking in the Gulf of Mexico discovered the pedestrian’s injured dog struggling to swim several hundred yards off the [...]