DUI DWI News: Why You Don’t Want a Conviction.

How much can a DUI in Utah cost?

DUI’s Cost a lot.  Even if you are not guilty and found not guilty, they cost a lot.  The prosecutors and police officer’s know this.  I had a prosecutor tell me that they would rather try the case and lose, than to dismiss a case against a man whose breath alcohol level was .06, which is below the legal limit to drive.  Another prosecutor told me after he lost a DUI case, "well, at least he had to pay you."  What a vindictive outlook.  The costs are great.  However, I truly believe that the costs can be minimized by hiring a lawyer.  A lawyer may cost a lot in the short run, but can save a lot in the long run.  That is if you have an attorney that is willing to put up the fight.  Here’s an article about costs that I stumbled on recently.

Drunk driving could cost $20,000
By Craig Guillot •

Twenty thousand dollars sounds like a lot to pay for a drink at a holiday party, but if that last cocktail puts you over the legal limit, that "one for the road" could easily cost you that or more.

And that’s only considering the potential financial cost of being ticketed for driving under the influence or driving while intoxicated, better known as DUI or DWI, never mind the staggering financial blow if you cause an accident — or the emotional devastation if your actions cause injuries or worse.

With the holidays upon us, early December through the new year is one of the worst times for drinking and driving. In fact, December is National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month. According to the National Highway Safety Administration, or NHTSA, 17,602 people were killed in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes alone in 2006 and alcohol-related crashes cost about $51 billion every year. In 2005, a whopping 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence.

One drink too many puts you at risk for not only an arrest, but also for fees, fines and costs that can run you thousands of dollars. While a DUI or DWI may be a misdemeanor charge in a number of jurisdictions, it’s a matter that most judges and district attorneys take very seriously. The financial toll of a conviction will play out for years to come, and in many states that can add up to $20,000 before everything is over. This includes bail, fines, legal fees, increased auto insurance premiums, loss of work income, court-ordered alcohol education programs and more.

Of course, if you get fired from your job as a result of the arrest, that dollar figure would skyrocket.
Potential expenses from a DUI — first offense

You don’t even have to get convicted to start running up expenses on a DUI charge. But if you’re found guilty, a first offense could mean that last drink cost you dearly. While the amounts vary by location and specific circumstances, here are some of the expenses you may realize:
• Fines. • Court costs.
• Attorney fees. • Bail.
• Loss of job. • DUI "school."
• Temporary loss of income. • Car towing, impounding.
• Alternate transportation costs. • Car ignition interlock device.
• Periodic blood testing. • Monthly monitoring fees.
• Cost of incarceration. • Increased auto insurance premiums.

The financial impact of a DUI arrest on any one person can vary greatly depending on many factors, such as driving record, jurisdiction, blood-alcohol level, attorney fees and fines, not to mention the specific circumstances of the incident and whether there was an accident or if anyone was injured.

The Texas Department of Transportation says a June 2006 survey in that state showed the total costs of a DWI arrest and conviction — for a first time offender with no accident involved — would range from $9,000 to $24,000.

And while expenses can vary substantially by jurisdiction, in no city is a DUI charge cheap.

In 2000, when graduate student Kate S. was driving home from a party in Woodstock, Ga., she was involved in an accident. She was not found to be at fault for the mishap, but blood tests at the hospital later revealed she was over the legal alcohol limit and she was booked on a DUI charge. Some costs Kate had to pay included a $2,500 fine, approximately $3,000 in legal fees and insurance premiums that rose an additional $600 per year for the next five years.

"As part of my sentence, I had to go to what they call ‘DUI school,’ and one of the things we had to do was tally up how much

Don’t drink and drive, then post on Facebook.

This is is a quote "If it shows up under your name you own it," he said, "and you better understand that people look for that stuff."

Don’t drink and drive, then post on Facebook
Photos on social networking sites come back to bite defendants

Anonymous / AP file
The photo of Joshua Lipton at a Halloween party (discovered on Facebook) was taken two weeks after Lipton was charged in a drunk driving car crash that seriously injured a woman.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton’s drunken-driving case.

Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.

Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.

"Social networking sites are just another way that people say things or do things that come back and haunt them," said Phil Malone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The things that people say online or leave online are pretty permanent."

The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrass defendants but also can make it harder for them to convince a judge that they’re remorseful or that their drunken behavior was an aberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defense lawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of a star prosecution witness.)

Prosecutors do not appear to be scouring networking sites while preparing for every sentencing, even though telling photos of criminal defendants are sometimes available in plain sight and accessible under a person’s real name. But in cases where they’ve had reason to suspect incriminating pictures online, or have been tipped off to a particular person’s MySpace or Facebook page, the sites have yielded critical character evidence.

"It’s not possible to do it in every case," said Darryl Perlin, a senior prosecutor in Santa Barbara County, Calif. "But certain cases, it does become relevant."

Perlin said he was willing to recommend probation for Lara Buys for a drunken driving crash that killed her passenger last year — until he thought to check her MySpace page while preparing for sentencing.

The page featured photos of Buys — taken after the crash but before sentencing — holding a glass of wine as well as joking comments about drinking. Perlin used the photos to argue for a jail sentence instead of probation, and Buys, then 22, got two years in prison.

"Pending sentencing, you should be going to (Alcoholics Anonymous), you should be in therapy, you should be in a program to learn to deal with drinking and driving," Perlin said. "She was doing nothing other than having a good old time."

Santa Barbara defense lawyer Steve Balash said the day he met his client Jessica Binkerd, a recent college graduate charged with a fatal drunken driving crash, he asked if she had a MySpace page. When she said yes, he told her to take it down because he figured it might have pictures that cast her in a bad light.

But she didn’t remove the page. And right before Binkerd was sentenced in January 2007, the attorney said he was "blindsided" by a presentencing report from prosecutors that featured photos posted on MySpace after the crash.

One showed Binkerd holding a beer bottle. Others had her wearing a shirt advertising tequila and a belt bearing plastic shot glasses.

Binkerd wasn’t doing anything illegal, but Balash said the photos hurt her anyway. She was given more than five years in prison, though the sentence was later shortened for unrelated reasons.

"When you take those pictures like that, it’s a hell of an impact," he said.

Rhode Island prosecutors say Lipton was drunk and speeding near his school, Bryant University in Smithfield, in October 2006 when he triggered a three-car collision that left 20-year-old Jade Combies hospitalized for weeks.

Sullivan, the prosecutor, said another victim of the crash gave him copies of photographs from Lipton’s Facebook page that were posted after the collision. Sullivan assembled the pictures — which were posted by someone else but accessible on Lipton’s page — into a PowerPoint presentation at sentencing.

One image shows a smiling Lipton at the Halloween party, clutching cans of the energy drink Red Bull with his arm draped around a young woman in a sorority T-shirt. Above it, Sullivan rhetorically wrote, "Remorseful?"

Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini said the prosecutor’s slide show influenced his decision to sentence Lipton.

"I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man was feeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thought it was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of going to prison," the judge said in an interview.

"The pictures showed a kid who didn’t know what to do two weeks after this accident," Bristow said, adding that Lipton wrote apologetic letters to the victim and her family and was so upset that he left college. "He didn’t know how to react."

Still, he uses the incident as an example to his own teenage children to watch what they post online.

"If it shows up under your name you own it," he said, "and you better understand that people look for that stuff."

Here is a list that I found in Utah for that machine.

BREATH ALCOHOL IGNITION INTERLOCK DEVICE PROVIDER LIST 02/29/08

A breath alcohol ignition interlock device is a constant monitoring device which, when installed in a
motor vehicle, prevents the motor vehicle from being started without first sampling the operator’s breath
alcohol concentration. If the operator’s breath alcohol concentration is greater than a predetermined
concentration level the device prevents the motor vehicle from being started.

The following is a list of providers certified to calibrate and install breath alcohol ignition interlock
devices in Utah:

702 Motoring
Contact: Joey Carter
595 Bluff St.
St. George, UT 84770
Telephone: (435) 986-9800

A Plus Interlock Systems
Contact: CoDee Stephens
2647 S 1900 W
West Haven (Ogden), UT 84401
Telephone: 1-800-659-0380
Cell: (801) 510-4440 (Ogden)
Fax: (801) 334-7499

Affordable Interlock
7107 S 400 W #4
Midvale, UT 84047
Telephone: (801) 562-5111
Toll Free: 1-888-488-0484

Affordable Interlock
155 N Bluff St.
St. George, UT 84770
Telephone: (801) 562-5111
Toll Free: 1-888-488-0484

Affordable Interlock
325 N Main St.
Spanish Fork, UT 84660
Telephone: (801) 562-5111
Toll Free: 1-888-488-0484

Alcohol Sensors International
Contact: David Gannon or Joseph Lively
3911 West VanBuren
Phoenix, AZ 85009
Toll Free: 1-888-786-7384

American Interlock
Contact: George Stoll
PO Box 2045
West Jordan, UT 84084
Telephone: (801) 201-1255
Email: a_interlock@hotmail.com

Best Interlock
Contact: Patrick Kennett
2232 N 640 W
West Bountiful, UT 84087
Telephone: (801) 292-7800

Best Interlock
Contact: Patrick Kennett
860 W Riverdale Rd., Unit A2
Riverdale, UT 84405
Telephone: (801) 644-1600

BTC Interlock
Contact: Sean or Levi
515 N 2500 W
Vernal, UT 84078
Telephone: (435) 789-6465

Chapman Security & Investigations, LLC
Private Probation Division
7651 S 700 W, Suite 109
Midvale, UT 84047
Telephone: (801) 838-9194
FAX: (801) 838-9196

Chapman Security & Investigations, LLC
Private Probation Division
7 South Main Street, Suite 108
Tooele, UT 84074
Telephone: (435) 843-0814
FAX: (435) 843-0854

Consumer Safety Technology
Contact: Ask for Sales
Scot Lewton, Dave Arringdale, or Tracy
Pettyjohn
10520 Hickman Rd., Suite F
Des Moines, IA 50325
Toll Free: 1-877-777-5020
www.intoxalock.com
Email: slewton@cstinc.com
Locations:
Murdock Chevrolet
1355 S Carbon Ave
Price, UT 84501

Riverdale Circuit City
Road Shop
1093 W Riverdale Rd
Riverdale, UT 84405

Stokes Car Entertainment
896 N Main
Logan, UT 84321

Orem Circuit City
360 W University Parkway
Orem, UT 84058

Utah Motor Company
270 E Main St
Vernal, UT 84078

Sugarhouse Circuit City Road
Shop
724 E 2100 S
Salt Lake City, UT 84106

Fort Union Circuit City Road Shop
1340 E Park Centre Drive
Salt Lake City, UT 84121

Foreign Auto Service
257 W St George Blvd
St George, UT 84770

Jordan Landing Circuit City
Road Shop
7156 S Plaza Center Drive
West Jordan, UT 84084

Guardian Interlock Systems
Contact: Joseph Sheram Jr
110 Mariette Station Walk Suite 320
Marietta, GA 30060
Toll Free: 1-800-849-5465
Contact: Chris Muirbrook
Salt Lake City, UT
Telephone: (801) 278-4446

LifeSafer Interlock
Contact: Mary E Phillips
1424 s Gladiola St., #1
Salt Lake City, UT 84123
Toll Free: 1-888-301-6906
Telephone: (801) 886-2456

S&S Interlock
Contact: Scott Thompson
285 W 200 S
Pleasant Grove, UT 84062
Telephone: (801) 785-4606

Smart Start
Contact: Jim Ballard
4850 Plaza Drive
Irving, TX 75063
Toll Free: 1-800-880-3349

BREATH ALCOHOL IGNITION INTERLOCK DEVICE PROVIDER LIST 02/29/08

A breath alcohol ignition interlock device is a constant monitoring device which, when installed in a
motor vehicle, prevents the motor vehicle from being started without first sampling the operator’s breath
alcohol concentration. If the operator’s breath alcohol concentration is greater than a predetermined
concentration level the device prevents the motor vehicle from being started.

The following is a list of providers certified to calibrate and install breath alcohol ignition interlock
devices in Utah:

Cache County
Consumer Safety Technology
Contact: Ask for Sales
Scot Lewton, Dave Arringdale, or Tracy
Pettyjohn
10520 Hickman Rd., Suite F
Des Moines, IA 50325
Toll Free: 1-877-777-5020
www.intoxlock.com
Email: slewton@cstinc.com
Stokes Car Entertainment
896 N Main
Logan, UT 84321

Carbon County
Consumer Safety Technology
Contact: Ask for Sales
Scot Lewton, Dave Arringdale, or Tracy
Pettyjohn
10520 Hickman Rd., Suite F
Des Moines, IA 50325
Toll Free: 1-877-777-5020
www.intoxlock.com
Email: slewton@cstinc.com
Murdock Chevrolet
1355 S Carbon Ave
Price, UT 84501

Davis County
Best Interlock
Contact: Patrick Kennett
2232 N 640 W
West Bountiful, UT 84087
Telephone: (801) 292-7800

Salt Lake County
Affordable Interlock
7107 S 400 W #4
Midvale, UT 84047
Telephone: (801) 562-5111
Toll Free: 1-888-488-0484

American Interlock
Contact: George Stoll
PO Box 2045
West Jordan, UT 84084
Telephone: (801) 201-1255
Email: a_interlock@hotmail.com

702 Motoring
Contact: Joey Carter
595 Bluff St.
St. George, UT 84770
Telephone: (435) 986-9800

A Plus Interlock Systems
Contact: CoDee Stephens
2647 S 1900 W
West Haven (Ogden), UT 84401
Telephone: 1-800-659-0380
Cell: (801) 510-4440 (Ogden)
Fax: (801) 334-7499

Chapman Security & Investigations, LLC
Private Probation Division
7651 S 700 W, Suite 109
Midvale, UT 84047
Telephone: (801) 838-9194
FAX: (801) 838-9196

Consumer Safety Technology
Contact: Ask for Sales
Scot Lewton, Dave Arringdale, or Tracy
Pettyjohn
10520 Hickman Rd., Suite F
Des Moines, IA 50325
Toll Free: 1-877-777-5020
www.intoxlock.com
email: slewton@cstinc.com
Sugarhouse Circuit City Road Shop
724 E 2100 S
Salt Lake City, UT 84106
Fort Union Circuit City Road Shop
1340 E Park Centre Drive
Salt Lake City, UT 84121
Jordan Landing Circuit City
Road Shop
7156 S Plaza Center Drive
West Jordan, UT 84084

Guardian Interlock Systems
Contact: Joseph Sheram Jr
110 Mariette Station Walk Suite 320
Marietta, GA 30060
Toll Free: 1-800-849-5465
Contact: Chris Muirbrook
Salt Lake City, UT
Telephone: (801) 278-4446

LifeSafer Interlock
Contact: Mary E Phillips
1424 s Gladiola St., #1
Salt Lake City, UT 84123
Toll Free: 1-888-301-6906
Telephone: (801) 886-2456

Tooele County
Chapman Security & Investigations, LLC
Private Probation Division
7 South Main Street, Suite 108
Tooele, UT 84074
Telephone: (435) 843-0814
FAX: (435) 843-0854

Uintah County
BTC Interlock
Contact: Sean or Levi
515 N 2500 W
Vernal, UT 84078
Telephone: (435) 789-6465

Consumer Safety Technology
Contact: Ask for Sales
Scot Lewton, Dave Arringdale, or Tracy
Pettyjohn
10520 Hickman Rd., Suite F
Des Moines, IA 50325
Toll Free: 1-877-777-5020
www.intoxlock.com
email: slewton@cstinc.com
Utah Motor Company
270 E Main St
Vernal, UT 84078

Utah County
Affordable Interlock
325 N Main St.
Spanish Fork, UT 84660
Telephone: (801) 562-5111
Toll Free: 1-888-488-0484

Consumer Safety Technology
Contact: Ask for Sales
Scot Lewton, Dave Arringdale, or Tracy
Pettyjohn
10520 Hickman Rd., Suite F
Des Moines, IA 50325
Toll Free: 1-877-777-5020
www.intoxlock.com
email: slewton@cstinc.com
Orem Circuit City
360 W University Parkway
Orem, UT 84058

S&S Interlock
Contact: Scott Thompson
285 W 200 S
Pleasant Grove, UT 84062
Telephone: (801) 785-4606

Weber County
Best Interlock
Contact: Patrick Kennett
860 W Riverdale Rd., Unit A2
Riverdale, UT 84405
Telephone: (801) 644-1600

Consumer Safety Technology
Contact: Ask for Sales
Scot Lewton, Dave Arringdale, or Tracy
Pettyjohn
10520 Hickman Rd., Suite F
Des Moines, IA 50325
Toll Free: 1-877-777-5020
www.intoxlock.com
email: slewton@cstinc.com
Riverdale Circuit City
Road Shop
1093 W Riverdale Rd
Riverdale, UT 84405

Washington County
Affordable Interlock
155 N Bluff St.
St. George, UT 84770
Telephone: (801) 562-5111
Toll Free: 1-888-488-0484

Consumer Safety Technology
Contact: Ask for Sales
Scot Lewton, Dave Arringdale, or Tracy
Pettyjohn
10520 Hickman Rd., Suite F
Des Moines, IA 50325
Toll Free: 1-877-777-5020
www.intoxlock.com
email: slewton@cstinc.com
Foreign Auto Service
257 W St George Blvd
St George, UT 84770

Out of State

Alcohol Sensors International
Contact: David Gannon or Joseph Lively
3911 West VanBuren
Phoenix, AZ 85009
Toll Free: 1-888-786-7384

Smart Start
Contact: Jim Ballard
4850 Plaza Drive
Irving, TX 75063
Toll Free: 1-800-880-3349