Steven R. Tinsley, Orlando DUI Lawyer Interview

 

Richard Jacobs from myDUIAttorney.org sits down with Steve Tinsley, a DUI attorney out of Orlando, Florida.

RJ:  What made you choose to handle DUI cases and what made you practice this area of law?

ST: I do criminal defense, and DUI is a major area of criminal defense.  It does have the advantage of being one of them.  In some jurisdictions a DUI is like a death knell.  The judges expect you to plead, the state expects you to plead, and for the people that don’t plead there are very severe consequences.   Orange and Osceola county are places in Florida where DUIs can be won and are won on a regular basis, and the judges quite frankly don’t punish you for losing, in some jurisdictions you walk away from a losing case feeling like you’ve been punished for merely asking for a trial. 

RJ:  How many DUI cases have you handled and in what time period?

ST: I’ve been in private practice since 1987 and I don’t count them but I know I’m well over 500 DUI cases. 

RJ: So what is unique about the law in the counties you serve and in the state of Florida as well?

ST: In Osceola County and in Orange County at this point in time and a few other counties in Florida the courts have ruled that the breath test results are not admissible in evidence.  So that a person who gets stopped for DUI and takes a breath test and gets whatever score they’re going to get the attorney for that person will file a motion, and the courts will enter an order that tells the state at the state attorney’s office that during the course of the trial they are forbidden to make any kind of references to breath test results, so it’s a very big deal for that reason, the DA for the 9th judicial circuit which is Orange and Osceola County has instituted a DUI diversion program.  So for first time DUI offenders with no car accidents with no prior driving criminal charges who didn’t have children in the car, they would be offered a diversion, which takes 14 months, it’s pretty expensive and involves virtually everything a person on probation would do.  When it’s done, the DUI charges are dropped and that was virtually unheard of up until the courts started throwing out these breath test results .

RJ: What’s the consequences of that, are arresting officers going more toward blood tests, or what else are you seeing that’s a result of this change?

ST: Well in Florida, arresting officers can’t draw blood unless there’s been an accident that’s involved death or serious bodily injury.  There are some very minor exceptions, but that’s the primary basis on which blood is drawn.  When a police officer makes a stop for a DUI they do the normal investigation, which involves the standard field sobriety test exercises, the questions that they try to encourage the driver to answer and after the arrest they demand a breath test.  The breath test is taken and it gets circumvented in Orange and Osceola County . 

Now, every DUI has two components.  A person is arrested for DUI and charged with a criminal charge, the state of Florida versus that person for DUI. At the same time in the vast majority of cases there’s a civil administrative suspension of the driving privilege which takes effect the night the person’s arrested.  A person charged with DUI in Florida has two cases pending against them, not one.  The breath test results will still be admissible at the civil hearing so there are still consequences for taking a breath test, however, in the criminal case it’s greatly improved.  Now in Florida, a person who is arrested for DUI and takes a breath test goes to trial and wins the trial, not only wins the trial, but as a result of winning the trial the civil administrative driver’s license suspension for unlawful blood alcohol level is then retroactively removed from their driving record.  So in Orange and Osceola County right now, regardless about what you think about the accuracy of the breath test machine, you take the breath test, you go to trial, you win the trial, the driver’s license suspension will come off your record retroactively.  Now the situation changes when the courts reverse this position and make the breath test admissible in court.  And people, when they go out to dinner or whatever they’re doing that involves consuming alcohol outside their home, are probably not going to be consulting local legal to determine whether or not their breath test results are going to be admissible if they get a DUI later that evening. Absolutely the best way to avoid the issue is not to drive a motor vehicle after consuming alcohol.

RJ:  Is there a typical circumstance of the people that come to you that were arrested? Do you get more men than women, more first time or repeat offenders?

ST: DUIs tend to have a very predictable series of events. Now these are DUIs that don’t involve collisions. They all invariably involve an officer who has a problem about the way someone’s driving.  They may be going too fast, which indicates impairment, or they may be going too slow, and they’ll say that indicates impairment.  Their lights may be on in an area that’s well lit, and they’ll say that alcohol has affected their vision and they’ll have a problem with that.  They may not like the way the car stopped, maybe they stopped too far past the stop bar, maybe they stopped too soon, maybe they’re moving too much inside their lane, maybe outside their lane.  There’s going to be a complaint about the driving.  Police officer activates their lights and the driver is pulled over.  Police officer’s usually going to have a problem with the way the person’s pulled over, pulled over too soon, pulled over too late, didn’t like where they pulled over, didn’t like the way they pulled over.  There’ll be something in the report that says the way they pulled over indicates possible impairment.  They’re going to ask for license and registration, they’re going to report that the person appeared to be confused and slow in his motions and when they finally gave them the license and registration they also gave them a coffee card. 

 

The officer’s going to say they went to their car, ran their information, came back to the car where for the second time could smell the odor of moderate or strong alcoholic beverages. The officer’s going to ask them to step out of the car to do some field sobriety exercises.  The report’s going to say the officer didn’t like the way the person got out of the car, they were ungraceful, they leaned in against the car for support, doesn’t matter whether this is a pick-up truck that’s two feet off the ground, if the person gets out of the car holding onto the doorknob, they’re going to say that it’s because they’re impaired.  The reports going to say that if the person gets out of the car and is leaning against the car it’s because they’re so impaired. They’re then asked to do field sobriety tests which they uniformly fail to pass and the person’s placed under arrest.

 

The person’s then asked a variety of questions usually before the field sobriety exercises about where they’ve been, where they are going, how much they’ve drank, when they ate, how much they ate. They’re going to be asked about to be asked about their medications, and when the arrest is made they’re going to be told that they need to take a breath test, and if they refuse, their license is going to be suspended for six months to a year and a half.  In Osceola county, the sheriffs vehicles have breath-testing equipment inside the specially dedicated DUI vehicles.  They also have printing equipment, they have videos inside the police cars, they have videos outside of the police cars, digital recording devices on the police officers themselves and if you watch the videos you’ll frequently see the officer’s hand resting on some kind of device on their belt, which is the device that allows them to turn the recording on and off as they basically arrange for the screenplay that’s going to later be recorded on their motor vehicle and later played for the jury’s consumption.  That happens in at least 65% of the DUIs I see.  Some variation of the facts I’ve just recited. 

RJ: It sounds like you’re very familiar with what goes on and your clients must say “how did you know that”

ST: Well first of all when I meet a new client, this is not a case involving a collision, I tell them what I expect the police report to say before I read the police report and after you’ve seen the first five or six hundred of these, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there’s a pattern here.  In Orange and Osceola County, the police use a form which is literally fill in the blank.  It types out that the officer could smell the “blank” odor of alcoholic beverages coming from the person and the officer is encouraged to write in “moderate,” “strong,” or sometimes “slight”.   The officer’s going to say that when the person is in the back of the police car, the officer went about doing the duties outside of the car, and when he got back in, the interior of the car is now reeking of the smell of alcohol which has been coming off the person who has been locked in the back of the car all this time.  The newer vehicles have very high quality in car videos so when the person’s put in the backseat of the car, they are being recorded both video and audio. So you’ve got some people back there who are literally praying, some people are calling their girlfriends asking for help and a variety of other scenarios. 

 

One of the most amazing cases I had was a person whose natural response to police officers on a bad or good day was getting in the back of the car and questioning the police officer’s sexual preference, and just being as big a horse’s ass as he possibly can and it never occurred to him that a modern police car might be able to record all this so it could be shown to a jury later on possibly with popcorn.  A person under arrest needs to be on their best behavior.  Treat the police officer with respect, he’ll probably treat you with respect.  Now keep in mind, the police officer’s going down the checklist.  One of the reoccurring matters in DUIs is that police officers want you to talk, everything you say is being recorded, virtually any kind of explanation you give is going to be recorded as something that gives an indication of exactly how impaired you are by alcohol. There’s almost no innocent event that isn’t somehow going to be related to your consumption of alcohol.  If you say you had two, you have to imagine the jury and the police officer hearing six. And the phrase “a couple” should only be used by people who have a death-wish that we haven’t discussed.   There are alcoholics that think the phrase “a couple” excuses having half a dozen drinks and it’s stereotypical and there are a lot of people out there who have drinking issues and their family gets on juries and someone says the phrase “a couple” I can’t imagine any worse language they could use, especially if they’ve only had two.  It’s not illegal to drive a car after consuming alcohol in the state of Florida so it’s only illegal to drive a car if you’re consuming alcohol to the point where your breath alcohol is above a .08 or where your normal faculties are impaired so it’s a judgment call. Every liquor store, every restaurant, every bar in town has got a parking lot.  You can’t open up a bar without putting in a parking lot, so the problem with this is, the person who’s out drinking has got to make a judgment call and one of the first things that are affected by alcohol is judgment. 

 

So bottom line is, you can have beer with your dinner, a beer, or maybe two beers, spread it out over time, mix it with food, leave perfectly sober, be totally unaffected, have a breath score well under the legal limit and yet, smell like alcohol. Police officer pulls you over, and imagine, all he’s got to do is smell alcohol and then the show is on.  Step on out of the car, why don’t you do these field sobriety exercises, they’re going to have you looking at pens, they’re going to give you these field sobriety exercises, which are designed to confuse you, designed to mislead you and which will give the police officer the conclusion that they’re looking for.  For instance, a person’s frequently required to balance on one foot while they count to 30, so one foots raised in the air six inches, they’re told to look down at the ground, keep their hands to their side and count to 30 by one thousands.  I’ve got two cases pending right now where the person actually balanced on one foot, with his hands to his side, looking down at the ground, he counted to 30 using thousands and never, ever budged.  The officer’s report says he failed the field sobriety test because he swayed while he was balancing on one foot for 30 seconds.  In my opinion, if you can balance on one foot for 30 seconds and sway you should get extra points for that.

 

That’s where the video comes in, a video of this event allows you to show the jury, police officer says the person is swaying, what you have is a person balancing on one foot.  I don’t know about you sir, but I can assure you I cannot balance on one foot for 30 seconds on my very best day.  When the person’s asked to do the field sobriety exercises, they’re asked to do this walk and turn exercise,  they’re asked to first get in position where one foot’s in front of the other, heel to toe, hands to their side with their feet in this weird position, the police officer proceeds to give about 15 instructions about what he’s got to do every step along the way. Most people think the walk and turn exercise is a demonstration of how well you can balance, you can’t blame someone for thinking, this is my chance to show them I have good balance, but in fact they’re also being required to keep their hands to their side,  they’ve got to be looking down taking each step starting with the foot that the officer tells you to start on, and then when you make your next step you have to touch heel to toe or come within half an inch, you have to stay on the line you’ve got to count the steps out loud, some of these lines are 3 inches wide so some people are thinking they’re walking along the edge of the lines, or along the middle of the line, some of these lines are painted on the highway which when you get close to them you realize they are about a quarter of an inch off the asphalt and are actually elevated somewhat.  When you get to the last step which is the ninth step, you don’t just turn around, you don’t pirouette you have to leave one foot on the line and take a series of little hopping steps and then reposition yourself on the line and go back the other way.  If you do any two things incorrectly during the course of all this, you fail the test.

RJ: This sounds pretty ridiculous…

ST: Well, you don’t have to walk a line to get a driver’s license.  I’m 56 years old, I can assure you that my balance would not allow me to do that exercise on any given day.  My balance isn’t that great to begin with, I’m also 56 years old and I’m over 300lbs. So, go figure. But I didn’t have to do that to get my driver’s license, I don’t have to touch my nose to get a driver’s license, I don’t have to balance on one foot to get a driver’s license.  What the officer’s also do is this thing where you stand still and watch the pen and they move this pen around – this exercise is called the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test – and what they’re looking for is a little, tiny flicker in your eyes when your eyes have been extended to a certain angle and that little flicker while you’re following that pen is the “nystagmus”.  Now there’s vertical nystagmus, and there’s horizontal nystagmus.  You can cause someone to have a nystagmus by merely causing them to overextend their eyes that’s too far or too great.  Keep in mind you usually have police cars in the near vicinity usually with flashing lights, so keep in mind there’s a close relationship between brain function and eye function. 

 

I know someone who had a problem with their feet as a child, and this person literally had their toes twisted in and they’re non-symmetrical and there’s clearly something wrong with the way they stand and it was corrected with eye-glasses of all things.  The number of things that can go wrong with your brain as reflected in your eyes is much broader than the average person realizes.  So the police officers been told, Listen you’re an expert in this, you do this the way we tell you to and you’re going to be able to say that they have failed a test which is used to indicate impairment by alcohol and then they come in the court and then they repeat that with all the sincerity of someone who’s recently converted and it’s an ugly situation because this all happens on the side of the road and the law in Florida is that you can’t refer to these tests as “tests” they are merely exercises that give the law enforcement officer and the jury the opportunity to view the person’s ability to do the normal things that people do every day to indicate whether they are impaired or not. So they’re called “Field Sobriety Exercises” not “Field Sobriety Tests”.  I want to assure you sir, that if you get pulled over in Florida and they didn’t like the way you did your exercise, you’re going to fail that exercise, and when you fail that exercise, it sounds like a test to me. 

 

You’re going to be able to tell when you’ve failed because they’re going to put handcuffs on you right after that.  Bottom line is, when they ask you to do these exercises, they’re asking you to do things that they’re going to use against you  later on.  In Florida, you have a right to refuse field sobriety exercises at this point in time, there’s a split decision in some courts as to how that’s to be treated later on. But I would not be willing to do field sobriety tests even if it caused me to be arrested because I know, right now, stone cold sober exactly what my performance in these exercises is going to be and it will not result in any favorable result for me.  Now you have a young man who’s in perfectly good condition with the reflexes that comes with being 23 years old, another story altogether.  But you have to listen to what the police officer says because every single detail’s going to be recalled and if you get any of them wrong it’s not because you were overly focusing on balance when in fact you should have been thinking about whether your feet were a half inch apart, it’s going to be you failed to do this because you’re so impaired by alcohol. That’s what the jury’s going to be told later on.

RJ: So how would you refuse the tests?

ST: Well that’s part of the problem.  The thing is this, I’ve made the decision in my life that I don’t get behind the wheel of car if I’ve had a single drop of alcohol there are never any exceptions to that. Period.  Even though it would be legal for me to do that.  If I think I’m the subject of a criminal investigation by any police officer, I’m extremely inclined to tell the officer, “I’m not going to answer any questions until I speak to my attorney”.  Now just so happens I am an attorney, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get to have an attorney if I want to consult with one. And when I’m the one that’s under the gun, I’m going to talk to another attorney and see what he’s got to say about that.  The US Supreme Court has ruled that a person who’s been stopped and investigated for DUI doesn’t have a constitutional right to an attorney while this investigation’s going on. 

RJ: Really?

ST: Yes, isn’t that special. If you were being investigated for marijuana, you’d have a right to an attorney.  If you were being investigated for shooting into a house you’d be entitled to an attorney.  But with DUIs when you ask for an attorney, technically you don’t have a constitutional right to do it.  My theory is when I woke up this morning, I had a right to an attorney, and I’m going to stick with that until someone tells me to my face differently.  If I’m not allowed an attorney, I’m going to have to tell them I’m not going to answer anything until I do speak to an attorney.  And, in my experience, that results in the almost immediate arrest of the person.

The situation there is we’re not talking about what you have to do to avoid being found guilty of a crime, what you are doing there is the few things in your power not to constitute testimony against yourself.  Police officer wants to know when you’ve eaten.  Well, I haven’t eaten the whole day.  Well I can smell alcohol which means that you’ve been drinking on an empty stomach.  How do you think that plays out in court?  There is no innocent answer to that question.  And when you’re the one that’s under the gun, your focuses tend to change a little bit.  So the first and foremost thing is, if you’re outside your home and you’re consuming alcohol, you need to find another way home.  Two, it’s a crime to lie to the police. They’re allowed to lie to you, they’re allowed to trick you, they’re allowed to manipulate you into doing things that a reasonable person under other circumstances would know right up front not to do.  But if you lie to the police officers that’s going to be another crime, and when it’s found out it’s also going to indicate exactly your state of mind and your recognition that you were in fact DUI and that you’re so concerned about it that you’re willing to commit another crime – lying to the police officers – in order to avoid being punished for your criminal activity.

So, listen to the question, and in my opinion, if you think you’re being investigated for any kind of criminal matter do not answer any questions until you speak to your attorney.  What you have to know is in Florida, there’s a major exception for that when you’re involved in a car accident.  If you’re involved in a car accident, or the motor vehicle that you own is involved in an accident, there’s a formal law that requires you to answer questions and then supposedly these questions are not going to be used against you until the police officer says, OK, I’m now changing hats, I’m stopping my traffic crash investigation where you have to answer questions, I’m now beginning a criminal investigation and they read you your Miranda rights.  At that point in time you have the right to remain silent.  Now exactly when these events take place can be extremely important in a DUI case.

And for the person who’s been chatting away, just answering all the questions right and left, they might be disappointed to find out later on that the officer remembers giving you rights sometime before you remember having being given them making some of the things that you said admissible in evidence.  One of the sinister things in Osceola County right now and Orange County as well is that every deputy sheriff’s car, every Kissimmee police car, had built in videos, every single one of them.  And periodically you hear about these videos not working but in the vast majority of virtually every DUI there’s a video that frequently shows the driving, even before the blue lights get turned on.  

 

There’s a period of time when those videos stop becoming available, and you ask the officers in court on the stand, Why isn’t there a video?  They’ll say things like, Well, it wasn’t working, it was being worked on, it was malfunctioning and in that situation in Osceola County it’s turned into we don’t have videos in our car anymore.  So all the events that take place on roadside up until they decide to turn on the video in our car which has it specially installed, all of that’s not recorded.  So when you have your trial, the police officer’s going to show up in court, he’s going to have a nice uniform, he’s going to be quiet, respectful  and professional, he’s going to have professional looking documents and laptop, and he’s going to come in there and testify about how he’s been vigorously serving and protecting up a storm usually against your client and he’s going to say, I saw this, I heard this, this is what happened and when he’s asked where is the video of all these events he’s going to say something like, Budget constraints have caused us to no longer have videos in our car. 

The consequence of this is that, when the officer says “You were swaying” and there’s no video of that your defense is going to be something along the lines of “Na-uh” or “Says you” and that’s  not really the defense you want to start off with if you can avoid it.  So the police car videos protected the citizens and gave the jurors an actual eye-witness view of what happened.  It gave the courts the security and confidence to know that the sentences that it’s imposing is actually based on events that the trier or judge can actually see and appreciate.  Now it comes down to a clean-cut, well dressed police officer, coming in and saying, I saw all this stuff and the person who’s there alone by himself with no witnesses isn’t going to be able to say, That’s not true. I was standing on my feet, I was not swaying, I was just shifting my weight between one foot and the other. Then that plays out in front of the jury, the lack of video’s a big deal.

I would want to have a video in every policy car in my jurisdiction and it’s almost sinister the way they are taking videos out of these cars.

RJ: So what kinds of help can you provide to someone who’s been arrested?  For instance, can you reduce their jail time, license suspension, things like that?

ST: Well, when I meet with a client, in the vast majority of DUI cases, 95% of them or better, there are two cases pending against a person.  One is the criminal case, state of Florida, jail time driver’s license suspension, community service, significant fines, that sort of thing.  The other case is the administrative driver’s license suspension and your DUI ticket, in the majority of cases is a temporary driver’s license that’s only good for ten days.  That ticket says that if you want to challenge that driver’s license suspension you have to challenge it and apply for a formal review within ten days of receiving the ticket.  Now the vast majority of people don’t have a clue what a formal review is, I can assure you if you want to go it alone, you’re going to have a great time, it’s just going to tie you in knots.  I know lawyers who don’t know what it is.  What it is is an administrative proceeding with a special proceedings officer that works for the DMV who’s going to decide whether or not the police officer had reason to believe that you either refused a breath test or that you had an unlawful blood alcohol limit and if they determine that you refused the breath test you will lose your license for a year or eighteen months or if it’s a first offence and you took a breath test up to six months. That procedure has to be completed within 10 days and then the paperwork is submitted. 

 

When someone comes to my office to meet with me, I keep the forms in my office, even if they don’t hire me, I help them fill out the forms, tell them what they’ve got to do, where they’ve got to apply for the review if they’re going to get the money together to try to hire a lawyer.  But that process of applying for a review also causes the majority of people to receive another temporary driver’s license, good for business purposes only, it’s good for another 42 days.  So the client comes in to see me, first thing we do is try to figure out when he was arrested, is he eligible for a permit almost always that’s the case, and so we calculate the ten days from his arrest up until how long he can drive on the ticket, then we arrange for him to deliver the papers he needs to the DMV so that just prior to the ten days of driving on his ticket, he gets another license good for 42 days.

 

And during that course of the 50 or 51 day time period, we get paperwork together to find out what we can do to save the driver’s license.  The hearing procedure for saving that driver’s license is designed for the government and it’s designed for the driver to lose.  The person who hears it is a lawyer who is employed by the bureau of administrative reviews, forms are checked by the people at the DMV, and it’s going to be very rare that your suspension is going to be sustained.  

RJ: What insights have you gained into people’s reaction when faced with a DUI?

ST: They’re frequently very surprised. Now, there are people who come to see me who admit that they were impaired, who shouldn’t have been driving, and they frequently say something along the lines of “I’ve screwed up seriously, help me through this” and that’s what I do.  There are other people who come through here who are mortified.  I had a trial last week with a man who was stopped fir DUI by a DUI specialist, a specially trained drug recognition expert with a deputy sherrif’s  outfitted car specially equipped to do everything you can do for a DUI case.  Was released by that specialist, he drove literally three blocks and one car length’s away and was literally stopped by two officers in the same cloud who asked him to do field sobriety exercises. 

 

The client asked more than once, Why do I have to do this, I’ve just done this for a deputy sheriff DUI officer.  After the second time around the officer said, I’m going to take that as a no, and arrested him right on the spot.  This man thought that he could talk to the police officers and have a conversation among equals.  Police officers are really, you know, the very best police officers are trained to take control of the situation.  It is not a conversation among equals, it is a conversation with a police officer who’s got power and is not going to give up one iota of it, and a person who may be very well having their first adversarial conversation with a law enforcement officer, and they are frequently surprised and mortified by how the system really works.

 

For instance, a person who’s been told to respect the police officer, answer the questions truthfully, all of a sudden forgets that he has the right to remain silent or that he should remain silent.  The police officer is allowed to lie to him say, I want you to step out of the car to make sure that you’re going to be OK to keep on driving, and this is from a police officer who knows in his heart and soul that you’re not going to leave anyway except in the back of his patrol car.  Police officers are allowed to misrepresent facts, they are allowed to lie to people, and trick people.  A person who’s talking to a police officer expects the police officer to listen and to at least take into consideration what the person has to say.  Many times what they have to say, the police officer just flat out disregards because it’s not part of what they’re doing.  With these DUI investigations they have these prepared forms, this procedure they go through, which is very similar to what butchers use to make sausage. 

 

It is taking stuff and shoving it in one end of a grinder, and what comes out, they call it a DUI.  They don’t care what you say or what you do, they want you to keep talking and just keep doing what they tell you to do, and when it’s all done, they’re going to be able to present you to the court as another example of how they have saved the citizens of Orange and Osceola County from the horrors that this person would have inflicted.  There right often enough, but for many of these people, they’re just mortified to realize that nothing they said, nothing they could do was going to change the outcome of the case. So I got people who come in here who are deeply offended, and deeply upset, because they thought this was a system that was designed to find out what’s true. 

 

In fact, police officers are people who are trained to be heroes, these are people who think about being shot protecting citizens, going into burning buildings and what not.  And they are basically heroes in waiting.  However, when they think that you’re a bad guy the rules change and it’s a whole other ball game.  And when they think a person’s been driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs they want you to give answers to confirm that, they’ve already decided you’re guilty.  So now they want you to say as many things as you can possibly say that can be used against you to establish that they saved Osceola County from the errors that you were about to have done. And they don’t care what you really say, what they care about is that you keep talking. 

RJ: So I guess the saying that they are not your friend, that anything you say can be used against you is never more true.

ST: Well it is untrue. In a DUI investigation you don’t have the right to an attorney and they’re not going to tell you that you have the right to remain silent, and will many times tell you, you have an absolute right and duty to keep talking, and answer the questions. And most DUI cases, they need the person to talk.  And a person who thinks they can talk their way out of it will invariably say things which will be used against them later.  It doesn’t matter how clever you are.  Most people don’t understand the technicalities and the details of a DUI and they will say things which they think is helping on one end which is just killing them on the back end.  So bottom line is, if you think you’re being investigated for a criminal charge you should remain silent and wait until you can speak to an attorney because in most cases you’ll be arrested right on the spot.

The thing is you won’t know that you’re going to be hoping and praying that there’s some way to get out of this, you think the officer’s going to see the light, that you can be sent on your way and you’ll be safely at home in a short period of time, they’re hoping they can say things and do things to make that happen, and the more you struggle in quicksand the further you sink.  So you don’t know in advance that you’re going to be arrested and there are officers who say, I frequently do investigations, find people who are not impaired and send them on their way, I find that extremely rare.  I saw one last week in a trial we had, the police officer actually stopped someone, did the investigation, and then let the person drive away. I haven’t seen one of those for a really long time. Of course he was arrested three blocks later and went to jail supposedly because he refused to do field sobriety exercises.

RJ: So do you feel the current DUI punishments are too harsh or too lax and why do you feel that way?

ST: I don’t know. Get back to me after someone’s driven over one of my children or driven over one of my friends on a 3rd time DUI.  I drive on the roads every day and I’m depending on other people to drive in a predictable manner and not kill me.  The reason why the DUI punishments are so stiff is because for a long time you could kill people with cars and DUIs and get away with it and do minor punishment and be out drinking and driving in a short period of time later.  Alcohol is a dangerous drug, and when people drive on it the consequences are brutal.  So on one hand, I see people who are never going to make this mistake again, they come into my office and they are mortified beyond reason. And even if they’re innocent, they’re going to say “He smelled alcohol on my breath, I put myself in a situation where the officer could at least think I was DUI even when I’m not. “  And when they hear about the attorney’s fees are, and the punishments are, and what the administrative consequences are, they look you right in the eye and say, this aint never going to be a problem again because they are smart people and they don’t want to go through this again. 

There are completely other ways of looking at it, I’ve got some people who don’t get it, and they’re driving on the roads with us and they’re driving big heavy trucks, and when they make the mistake, they’re going to take your whole family out, so you know, you tell me about the punishments and penalties.  It’s dangerous, America is where the highways are extensive, you can’t live in Florida without being able to drive.  And losing your driver’s license is the same thing as economic castration around here.  On the other hand, if you can’t be trusted on the road then I go both ways on it.  I don’t want to see my clients hurt, I want to see them get back on with their lives as fast as possible.  But on the other hand you have to be there when your client is trying to explain why he drove his car into the back of a tractor-trailer, crushed his girlfriend in the front seat, and hear their explanation for why that was OK, when they’re alcohol level was .3. I’ve had this conversation on one occasion recently, and it’s the end of his life, not to mention her.
Very serious stuff is what I’m saying.

RJ: OK, my last question is, what makes your firm unique in providing DUI defense and what personal statement do you want to make to all potential clients reading this interview?

ST: I’m not sure that our office is unique.  On one hand, I’m located next to a liquor store so there’s probably some serious irony there.  On the other hand, I’ve been doing this for around 25 years. I’ve been defending people on DUIs for around 23 of them.  I take this seriously.  My job is to protect my client the best way I know how and to make sure they understand what it is that I’m going to try to accomplish for them, and to tell them to their face in no uncertain terms, in a manner in which they’re not going to get confused later on where I think they stand.

Another lawyer may well look at the same set of facts and say, Well I’m going to be able to do something else with this, and they may be right.  My job is to protect these people the best way I know how and that’s what I do. Frankly, we take cases to trial around here, we win trials, we lose trials, but we don’t drop it.  My client’s not always happy with the way things work out but I believe that my clients are happy with the way I handled it and they’re not disappointed in their choice of attorney and that’s the best I can do.

You asked me earlier about what my percentages were in my win-loss ratios.  It doesn’t make any difference, I could win 100% of them, doesn’t mean the next one’s going to be a winner and the next one’s going to be making a mistake if they think their case is going to work out the way the ones did that came before.  In the criminal justice system, it’s the State of Florida and all the resources that they can bring to bear, against you when they pull you over on the side of the road in the middle of night-time and our job is to make sure that the clients position is fully and fairly represented. 

 

And a person who comes in here and says he’s not guilty and he wants a defense, there are things that can be done. 

And in Orange and Osceola County there are good judges, I’m very happy with the vast majority of our police officers, and the judges in this area have a history of not imposing a stiffer punishment for people merely because they went to trial and lost and that is hugely important. There are jurisdictions where they tell you straight up, if you lose at trial, I’m going to give you such and such a penalty and you turn to the judge and say listen, there’s nothing about this DUI that’s different to any other DUI, there’s nobody been hurt, there’s no kids in the car, there’s no driving on the sidewalk, etc,  and the judge will look you in the eye and say, there’s going to be a penalty for losing, which is illegal but it’s happened in my career many times. 

In Orange and Osceola County the judges have strong policy – if you want to exercise your constitutional right to a trial, you don’t get punished for that and that’s the closest you’re going to get to having a fair fight, and so you get to put on your case.  If you get charged for a DUI, you have witnesses, you’re going to need to be able to locate the people who were with you immediately before you started driving, you need to know the names and the addresses of the people who were in the car with you. Your lawyer’s going to need this information. Keep your restaurant receipts, credit card transactions. Do not text while you drive, however, you may find that your handheld cellphone has got important information about your case that you had no idea was out there. 

Give you an example, there’s a navigating device made by a company called Garmin. You plug it into your cigarette lighter and it will tell you how to get places and when you turn it off, it’s still keeping track of where you’re at, you can contact Garmin and ask them where you’ve been for the last six months and they’ll tell you, because this machine continuously tracks where it’s at. So it’s possible for us to calculate speeds sometimes using that information.  Modern cars have got GPS components in the air bags and in the anti-skid breaks of all things so an issue may come up about how fast you were going, and the computer in the hood of your car may be destroyed, but you may discover that the airbag has your defense wrapped up in it.  It’s becoming a whole new world out there and the nice thing about DUI cases from a defense attorney’s stand point is that there’s something you can do about it.  As opposed to standing on the side of the road with a police officer saying I couldn’t help but notice a marijuana cigarette sticking out of your shirt in which case the defense on that’s going to be a little trickier.

 

Watch Steve Tinsley Interview HERE >>