Drink Drive Lawyers – Julia Coffin
When is a case not about winning or losing?
So often, as specialist drink drive lawyers, we receive calls from people desperate to avoid a criminal conviction, sometimes they accept they are guilty of the offence and are looking for a loophole whereas others are very clear that they did not commit the offence.
We will never suggest that you pursue a defence unless we believe that you have a good chance of success, but ultimately our job is to make you aware of your chances of success and then act on your instructions to us. We will always be honest with you about your chances of success.
We were contacted by a client, charged with Drink Driving, due to appear in Croydon Magistrates Court. Our client was desperate to save his licence and avoid a conviction. We reviewed the prosecution papers and advised him the police had done everything correctly, however from speaking to him it appeared he may have grounds to try to avoid the disqualification while pleading guilty to the offence. The courts call this Special Reasons and these specific reasons relate to the offence itself not the offender. Our client told us that he had been to see friends and asked for a drink and his friends gave him a beer but with added vodka in it – vodka he was unaware of consuming.
We put forward a spiked drinks argument to the court, asking the courts not to disqualify our client as the excess alcohol in his system was not something he intended to consume. Unfortunately in this case the courts did not find Special Reasons – their judgement being that our client had asked for “a drink” and had not specified it’s content and as such did not meet their strict criteria.
They did however accept that he had consumed alcohol he did not appear to intend to and as such sentenced him to the minimum penalty the law allowed, a significant reduction on that suggested by his breath alcohol level.
To some this may seem like a loss – he wanted to avoid the conviction and we advised him to plead Guilty. He was still disqualified at the end of it. But the disqualification was significantly less than he would have been given had he not gone through with the Special Reasons application. And at the end our client was happy because he knew he had tried – and more importantly that we had always been with him during the process.
If you are charged with an offence give our drink drive lawyers a call on 01623 397200 – we promise to listen to your story and answer your questions open and honestly.
