Kavan Grover Interview Transcript - Georgia DUI Lawyer

 

RJ: I’m here today to interview KG (KG), he’s a criminal defense attorney, specializes in DUI. He’s located in the Atlanta area of Georgia. How’re you doing Mr. Grover?

 

KG: I’m good, thanks. How’re you Richard?

 

RJ: Good, good. Thanks for taking the time and let’s get started. First question is what motivates you to be a criminal defense attorney and why in particular, do you tend to work on a lot of DUI cases?

 

KG: Well I think criminal law is the most interesting area of law. When I originally went to law school, I was actually planning on being a patent attorney and I soon realized that it was not very interesting and not very rewarding. With criminal law, you get to deal with regular people and despite the stigma that a lot of people have with criminal defense law, you know, pretty much everyone in society has the possibility of facing criminal charges and they have a very high chance of having a great impact on people’s lives and I think it’s really important for those people that they’re well-represented.

 

RJ: Right.

 

KG: In terms of DUI cases, it’s along the same lines. You know, all walks of society get DUI cases, they have a potentially huge impact on your life, whether it be employment consequences or emigration consequences, you know, jail time, fines, getting your license suspended; so, there is a lot to lose when you’re faced with a DUI case.

 

RJ: You just brought up one point I haven’t asked anyone about DUI and immigrationso later, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you a question about that.

 

KG: Okay.

 

RJ: So how many DUI cases do you think you’ve handled and in what time period?

 

KG: Well, I started practicing law in 2005 and I have been handling DUI cases since that time. I’d say it’s in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty to two hundred total DUI cases during that time.

 

RJ: You talked about this briefly but is there any typical DUI defendant circumstance; are there more first timers or more men than women? Any differences you noticed?

 

KG: Well, I think thatyou kind of get a huge variety in terms of people that are charged with DUIs. I’d say the majority of them are first time offenders; most people, after they suffer through the experience of going to jail and having to face the relatively harsh consequences of DUI, they avoid becoming a repeat offender, although there are some people out there that get ten or fifteen DUI arrests in their lifetime. I think, in general, there are probably more males that get charged with DUI. I think that part of it is that they’re more often than not, the driver when a group of people go out.

 

RJ: And of the clients that you had, is there any commonality in the Blood Alcohol Levels; do a lot of them tend to hit the 0.08 limit or are they all over the place?

 

KG: Well, they’re all over the place. I’ve had clients that had Blood Alcohol Contents as low as0.05 and I’ve had other people that got arrested and told me that after they took the breath test, they got released because they blew under the legal limit even though they had actually been handcuffed and taken to the precinct, made to take the Intoxilyzer 5000. You also get some cases where the person has a Blood Alcohol Content in the, in the 0.20 range or even higher. I’d say most of the cases are in the 0.08 to 0.15 range.

 

RJ: Out of the DUI cases you see, are more due to drugs versus alcohol and in a drug case, is it more complicated or harder to defend?

 

KG: Well, I think the vast majority of the cases are alcohol cases. I think studies have been done and a lot of people that are DUI are actually under the influence of other things as well whether it be marijuana or cocaine or something else but the reality of it is, there’s not that many people that take drugs and don’t consume any alcohol and for the most part, if you’re out on the road and you have alcohol, any amount of alcohol in you, the officer is going to just suspect DUI alcohol and have a hard time detecting the presence of any other drug. I would say that probably only about ten to fifteen percent of the cases I’ve seen are DUI drug cases. Most of them are alcohol cases.

 

KG: I think that even when the officers do suspect that there’s a possibility of drugs and alcohol, a lot of them will just pursue the alcohol side of it because they don’t want to have to go through the hassle of taking a person to the hospital to get their blood taken.

 

RJ: Really?. If you get a drug case though, have you found that they’re harder or easier to defend or more complicated?

 

KG: Well, it depends on the case. The Georgia Appellate Courts have said, they’ve made a ruling in the late 1990s that some judges only apply to marijuana but it was recently clarified and it says that if you are under the influence of any drug that could possibly be legally prescribed or legally used then the state absolutely has to show that your intoxication under that, based on that drug has to have made you less safe to drive for you to be guilty of DUI drugs and for any case that falls under that purview, whether it be a marijuana case or a morphine case or most classes of amphetamines, it can be difficult for the state to prove that that drug actually rendered you less safe to drive.

 

Now they have an easier time if they have a video and the person looks like they’re clearly unable to balance, having problems. But if there’s no video, without an expert that can testify that X amount of marijuana in your blood means that you’re less safe, they’re going to have trouble proving the case and really, even if they have an expert, it’s hard to know what level of marijuana will make you less safe.

 

You know, some experts won’t even be willing to say that even relatively a high amount would necessarily make someone less safe to drive so it can be a lot tougher for the state on those cases. Now, on the other hand if you’re charged with DUI cocaine or DUI for some other drug that there’s no legal use of and no way that you can possibly be prescribed that drug then there is still strict liability, I mean if you are behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and if you have that drug in your system, you’re guilty of DUI under the statute so those cases can be really easy for the state to prove although, I think they’re pretty rare.

 

RJ: This leads into another question. Have you seen cases where someone had drug metabolites in their system but maybe they hadn’t used the substance, maybe marijuana, they said they had smoked a week before or mushrooms and they had used them two days before; that kind of thing?

 

KG: Yes I think there’s a lot of cases especially with marijuana since it stays in your system for a long time. A lot of people, if they do get blood tested, they’re going to show a small amount of marijuana and absence of other evidence that’s not just going to be enough for the state to prove a DUI case.

 

RJ: So are there laws in the state of Georgia that address drivers who have a BAC below 0.08?

 

KG: Well, there’s essentially two ways you can be charged with DUI alcohol. One is DUI per se where you have over a 0.08 Blood Alcohol Content and the other way is DUI less safe and that one doesn’t require any evidence of what your Blood Alcohol Content is, but it requires that the state prove that you’re not in control of the motor vehicle and that you’re under the influence of alcohol to the extent you were less safe to drive. So if you do do a breath test and you blow under a 0.08, the state is forced to try and prove the case as a less safe to drive case you know, similar to if you refuse the test, that’s the statute that they’re trying to prosecute you under.

 

RJ: Okay.

 

KG: Now, I think the state has a lot of trouble proving cases where the person’s Blood Alcohol Content is under 0.08. I think a lot of people, you will ask a random person on the street, they would think that if they took the breath test under a 0.08 then they’re not going to be arrested for DUI.

 

RJ: I see.

 

KG: You know, I have that question come up all the time and that’s pretty much the consensus of what people in society think. In fact, you don’t actually take the breath test until after you are in handcuffs and under arrest and a lot of prosecutors will prosecute those cases and a lot of times you can get them to reduce reckless driving or reduce something else but prosecutors still tend to prosecute those cases but if you do fight those cases, that’ll take them to the jury. A lot of juries are not going to convict when they hear that the person took the breath test as requested and their Blood Alcohol Content was under the 0.08 “legal limit”.

 

RJ: That’s probably because that perception that you just said that people think that the law has determined 0.08 or over means you’re intoxicated and under means you’re not. I guess that’s what you’re saying is people’s feelings so that’s why they’d be prone to not convict someone who blew, like a 0.05.

 

KG: I think so, I mean I think it’s a, you know, it’s a bit of a fairness mark and you know, you do everything the officer asks you to do, you agree to take the breath test the officer asks you to do and in fact, your Blood Alcohol Content is lower than what the state has determined is the legal limit and yes, I just think most people feel like you should be not guilty at that point.

 

RJ: Okay.

 

KG: Of course, that being said, any time you take that case to trial you’re still at risk because legally speaking, you know, the officer is going to say that you smell like alcohol and your eyes were bloodshot and if you did the field sobriety tests, they’re going to say you failed all the field sobriety tests or youshowed sufficient clues that show you’re under the influence of alcohol. If there’s no video they’re probably going to say that you had balance problems and of course, they may say that if there is a video too but the jury or the judge is trying the case to get to see the video and see for themselves.

 

RJ: Gotcha, okay. Do you see cases where people have been sleeping it off in a car and they’re still determined to be in control of the vehicle or are there scenarios like that?

 

KG: We actually get a lot of those cases. A lot of people start driving and then realize that it’s not a good thing for them to be driving and a lot of them will go and park their vehicles. Legally speaking, in Georgia if the key is in the ignition, the car is on, then you’re in control of the motor vehicle even if it’s not being driven actively at the time so a lot of people, especially in the summer and the winter when it’s either hot or cold, they’ve got the car running and a lot of them will you know, end up having a tough case to fight. We get a lot of people, too that have their car off and they get approached by law enforcement and they get arrested, you know, the state, if you don’t admit that you drove after having consumed alcohol, in those cases, the state has a hole in their case and they can’t prove that you actually drove the vehicle after consuming a`qa1lcohol because you could have been dropped off at your car by a friend and never actually driven it while under the influence. So that’s a hole in their case, some judges won’t even let that go to the jury if the proper…

 

RJ: You mentioned earlier about immigration in DUI. So my question is if you’re convicted of DUI and you’re a resident alien or you’re in some stage of immigration, can that make you get deported or can that hurt your application for citizenship?

 

KG: Well, I want to preface this by saying that I am not an immigration lawyer. Any client that I have that is a non-citizen, I do advise them to go seek the advice of an immigration lawyer before entering any type of plea or before even taking into trial if there is a plea offer for some type of reduced charges so they know exactly what’s going to happen. But I do think that the DUI conviction definitely can have great effects on people’s immigration status and particularly, in Georgia, a lot of the jurisdictions, they use standard sentencing sheets in which if you’re convicted and given a twelve month sentence; the sentence says, you’re sentenced to twelve month confinement that may be served on probation and even though, that may be a completely probation sentence or twenty-four hours in jail followed by eleven months and twenty-nine days on probation; because of the way it’s worded, the emigration board and the Federal, the ICE they consider that a jail time sentence and because in light of it being twelve months which is the mandatory minimum on a DUI conviction, it ends up being considered an aggravated felony so..

 

RJ: Wow.

 

KG: I mean, a DUI conviction has the possibility of having that, really great effect immigration. Now some judges will work with you on that and change the form to make sure it actually reflects what they’re ordering which is probation that can help the clients out a lot when the judges are willing to do that.

 

RJ: I had never thought about that until you mentioned it so that’s why I asked so thank you.

 

KG: You’re welcome.

 

RJ: So back to more normal stuff. What’s your best tip when someone’s had one or more drinks and they’re in the process of being pulled over. What should they do and what shouldn’t they do?

 

KG: Well first of all, anytime anyone asks me this question, I strongly caution them that they should not, not have anything to drink or not drink to the extent that they’re going to be less safe to drive and get behind a motor vehicle. One, it’s a huge risk to society and two, that the consequences even for a first DUI are relatively harsh and very expensive and very time-consuming and stressful. With that being said, if you do any field sobriety tests for the police officer or the law enforcement agent that is investigating you, you’re just providing them with evidence.

 

If you give them any type of statement indicating you’ve consumed alcohol or you’ve come from an establishment where they served alcohol or you’re coming from a party; any statements like that, they can be used as evidence against you. I generally advise people that they should tell the officer that they have somewhere they need to be and they should ask if they’re free to leave and they shouldn’t do any field sobriety tests.

 

The only field sobriety tests that I would recommend is the portable breath test and I would only recommend that in the instance where the person feels that they’re going to have a Blood Alcohol Content under the legal limit. The portable breath test is only going to be admissible in court as to whether it is positive or negative for alcohol so if you have had any amount of alcohol, it’s going to be positive and you’ve taken that test, it’s not going to change anything with your case.

 

Now after they arrest you, they’re going to read to you from an implied consent card and then ask you for either a breath test or blood test or urine test and that test, if you take that test, it will be admissible and the actual number will be and of course if you blow over the legal limit or if you have a Blood Alcohol Content over the legal limit, it could be tough to defend your case so you know, generally, the case is going to get worse from you taking that test but on the flip side, if you refuse to take that test, you may be facing a one year license suspension with absolutely no work permit so there’s no right reason and I mean no right answer as to what to do.

 

RJ: Okay. So what kinds of help can you provide to people arrested for DUI? Can you possibly reduce jail time or fines or ignition interlocks, things like that?

 

KG: Yea, I mean depending on the case, a lot of the cases, we get the case reduced or even dismissed. Almost everything is up for negotiation in terms of the sentence. Now there are mandatory minimums on these DUI cases and so a lot of the times, you can’t get below the mandatory minimum but a lot of the times you can get the case reduced from a DUI to something that’s going to have a lot less consequences.

 

RJ: Okay. And this may be very hard to say but I mean, what level of success have you had in reducing some of the punishments for DUI, I guess percentage wise with clients?

 

KG: Well, it’s hard to give a percentage but you know, most cases, you’re going to have something good to argue and you’re going to be able to convince the prosecutor to give some type of reduction in any of the sentence or the type of charge.

There are some cases you get where you really don’t have any good defense and the person gave the police officer a lot of evidence against them and took the breath test or took the blood test and had a high Blood Alcohol Content or had illegal drugs in their system. Sometimes there’s just cases that are hard to defend and hard to get any type of reduction but I’d say, in terms of the cases where the person does have a good legal defense, we’re highly successful in getting the consequences of the charge reduced if not dismissed.

RJ: And this leads into the question… what do you believe are the pros and cons of having a private law firm like you versus a public defender or his defending himself in a DUI?

 

KG: Well, I think that when you go out and hire a private attorney; one, you get to choose someone that you feel comfortable with and two, you’re going to get someone who’s dedicated to your case and whose going to do everything they can to represent you and keep you informed of what’s going on and do the right investigation for your case.

In terms of public defenders, there are some very good public defenders out there. If you are lucky enough to get one of those people, you might be just as good off with that public defender as you are with a private attorney. But in reality, there’s a lot of public defenders that are brand new attorneys who are doing that just to get experience and they don’t have the experience that other attorneys have and at the same time, they’re very overworked so they don’t have the time to dedicate to your case.

When we take a case on, we do a full investigation and we immediately request the police report, we request any video that there is, we request the 911 call or CAD report regarding the case, we request the officer’s post records to see what type of training they have. If it’s a breath test case, we request the records regarding the Intoxilyzer 5000 to see if its had any problems, to see if it was calibrated correctly.

 

If it’s a drug test, we take the time to call the lab and discuss the results with the person who did the test. So when you have a private attorney, if you have a good attorney that does the right investigation, you’re going to get everything done properly and quickly. I would never recommend representing yourself on one of these cases, there’s just, the law’s just too complex; there’s a lot of science behind DUI law.

 

Most of these cases are aggressively prosecuted and you’re not going to get offered a reduction if you don’t have an attorney and if you’re going to try and try and win a motion or trial, you need to know one, science behind DUI law and two, you need to know DUI law and then three, you need to know Georgia and criminal procedure and evidence laws which if you’re not trained in all of those things, it’s going to be very tough to do a good job properly defending yourself.

 

RJ: Yes that I understand too. I mean you look under every stone; you request records of this, that and the other. I mean, you really full court press of anywhere you can find evidence to challenge so now I understand personally why it’s better to hire a lawyer.

 

RJ: So what insights have you learned into people’s behavior, their reaction to being arrested for DUI? What human insights have you gained into the whole process?

 

KG: Well, I think, first of all, most people, if they haven’t received advice from a DUI attorney in the past; they cooperate with everything the law enforcement asks them to do. They do all the field sobriety tests, they do the breath tests, they, a lot of people think that they’re going to be able to talk their way out of the DUI charge and most of them are unsuccessful.

 

I think, most people think that they can tell the officer they’ve had one or two drinks and that’s the end and the officer is going to take them for their word and stop their investigation but everyone, everyone reacts differently to being stopped by the officers, I mean, you certainly get some cases where people refuse to say anything to the law enforcement officer, so there’s a wide variety of reactions that people have.

 

RJ: And it sounds like from what you said earlier, the less you tell them the better because they are not your friend and everything you say, they’re going to use as evidence I guess.

 

KG: Yes, that’s definitely true. I mean, anything you give them is going to be evidence against you.

 

RJ: Okay. And you may have answered this already but is there a particular story you hear from your clients over and over and over like ‘I only have two beers’ or ‘The police did this’ or..?

 

KG: Well, yes, I mean, it’s pretty standard that you hear, ‘two or three drinks’ that a lot of these people are pulled over for failure to maintain lane and they insist that they did not fail to maintain their lane and unfortunately, a lot of these cases, there’s no video and there’s no way to refute the officer saying that the person did fail to maintain their lane.

 

Although, a lot of the officers in this area that are doing DUI cases do have video in their vehicle so you do have the opportunity to see what was going on. Most of the time, the people did fail to maintain their lane at least once. I actually think that if you are driving down the road, between midnight to 2AM or 3AM, there’s light traffic, there’s probably not a car next to you. Most people are going to fail to maintain their lane at one point or another whether they’re intoxicated or not. Just because you’re not worried about crossing that line, very small touching of the center line or going over the center line can be enough to get an officer to pull you over.

 

RJ: So I guess you answered another question; is there any physical circumstance where people are, what time of day or anything that tends to make them get arrested for DUI more and I guess the answer would be if you’re out driving between midnight and 3AM, you’re more likely to have a problem.

 

KG: Yes, I mean, most of these DUI cases, they occur at night.

 

RJ: Okay.

 

KG: So most of them involve someone’s gone out whether to a friend’s house or to a party or to a restaurant or to a bar and they’ve had a few drinks and they’re driving home. The local DUI task force officers, they work a shift, generally it’s 10PM to 6AM or 8PM to 4AM; that’s the type of shift when they’re working because that’s when they expect most of the DUI arrests to occur. Now, there are all sorts of cases, I mean, you get people that are completely intoxicated in the middle of the day, you get some people that go to sleep after a night of heavy drinking and get pulled over in the morning and they still have a pretty high Blood Alcohol Content.

 

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

 

KG: Well, that’s, that’s a loaded question.

 

RJ: It’s true.

 

KG: I think it’s a difficult question to answer. I think that for most people that receive a first DUI arrest, they’re going to think that the punishment is pretty harsh. By the time you pay it, get arrested, pay an attorney, go to court, have to go back to jail to finish out your jail sentence, have to pay court costs, do DUI school, do community service, do drug and alcohol evaluation and treatment and face the driver’s license suspension; you’ve gone through a lot of punishment and you’ve spent a lot of money and dealt with a lot of stress and spent a lot of time dealing with it so it can be a harsh punishment for first DUI.

 

But with that being said, we see so many second and third and fourth DUI arrests that obviously that punishment wasn’t enough because it didn’t stop people from continuing to go out driving while intoxicated so, on a second DUI and of course, the punishment you’re going to get varies greatly depending on which court you case is in but on a second DUI in this general area, you’re often looking at somewhere between three and thirty days jail and that’s if you are going to resolve the case prior to a trial. If you have a trial and lose, there are some judges that will give you sixty or ninety days jail just on a second DUI.

 

RJ: So what do you see as the future of DUI in terms of the number of offenders and the punishment levels?

 

KG: Well, I only see the punishments going up. There’s a huge stigma against DUI out there in society and they still make so many DUI arrests so I don’t see any legislature ever reducing the punishments for DUIs. In Georgia, a few years ago they amended the DUI law and now, if you get a fourth one within ten years; of course, all four have to be after the law was enacted but if you get a fourth one in ten years, it’s going to be a felony so you’re going to risk becoming a convicted felon just based on DUI cases but yes, I don’t see the punishments ever getting less severe. Judges are under pressure to make sure that people are properly punished so that they curb their behavior in the future and the legislature doesn’t want to have to answer to the people and the press as to why they’re making DUI laws less strict.

 

RJ: So what would you say makes your firm unique in providing DUI defense and what personal statement do you want to make to everyone that’s going to be watching this video?

 

KG: Well, it’s hard to say why we’re unique but on every case that we handle, we strive to get the best result possible for the client. I have spent years, learning law and doing training and getting myself educated in evidence law and DUI law and the procedure and looking for every way possible to attack these cases and defend these cases as best as possible.

 

As I mentioned earlier, we do a very thorough investigation. From the minute we get hired, we’re out there requesting records, we’re doing an open records request, filing motions and getting everything we can to see if there’s any way possible to defend the case and I feel like we do a very good job communicating with our clients.

 

We email everything that comes in to the clients that day and I’m always open to meet with the clients or talk to them by phone whenever they need to so we give a very full defense and we always trying to get the best result we possibly can on every case.

 

RJ: Thanks for taking the time to do the interview. I appreciate it.

 

KG: You’re welcome Richard. I enjoyed it. Thanks for interviewing me.

 

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