Fred Woods Interview Transcript- South Carolina DUI Lawyer

 

Richard Jacobs from myDUIAttorney.org sits down Freddie Woods, a DUI attorney out of South Carolina.

 

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

 

FW: Well ever since I was 9 years old, I knew I wanted to become a lawyer.  First thing I did was make sure I got out of high school really well, in terms of my grades.  After that I went to college, I attended Grad School, then I went to law school and I finished at 25 years old.  Being a lawyer was a way for me to help society in some way and also for me to be able to make a good living for myself and do something that I thought would be good for me and good and respectable.
In regards to DUI law, it is a subset of criminal law.  I only practice two types of law, one being criminal law, the other being personal injury.  Personal injury is usually auto-wrecks and accidents, things of that nature.  Criminal law is murder cases on down to traffic tickets.  A subset of criminal law is DUI law.  DUI law is the type of law that is best matched to my skills and abilities to be able to help people.  It allows you to be able to do a large number of trials very quickly, it allows you to be able to interact with prosecutors, interact with juries and helps to get your name out there as well. 

 

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

FW: I typically handle about 300-400 DUI cases a year. That equates to around 4,000 cases in my career.  I’ve been practicing over 14 years.  So DUI is definitely something that I handle a large number of cases for on a continual basis.

 

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?

 

FW: The way it breaks down is about 50% of the people are first-timers.  They’ve been arrested for a DUI First. In most cases they’ve never ever had another criminal case, they’ve never been arrested for anything else and they just kind of slipped up and got arrested.

 

The other 50% are people with DUI Second, Third or Fourth offences, and they’ve really done this over a long period of time and it kind of coincides with times that they’ve been depressed or times that they were having a good time and were out drinking and partying and ended up having a DUI.  But most first time offenders do not become repeat offenders.  In terms of demographics, age I would say between 20 and 30, more men than women, probably 60% men 40% women.

 

RJ: In terms of the level of intoxication, do you see a lot that are close to the .08 limit, or do you see some that are a lot higher?

 

FW: Usually I see people that are between .08, which is the legal limit, and .15. After .15 it starts to become a very serious charge and you can get some serious jail time for it.  So generally they fall between a .08 and .15 in terms of their intoxication level.

 

RJ: Out of all the cases that you’ve done, have a large percent gone to trial or have most plea-bargained or settled out of court?

 

FW: About 80% have settled out of court. The other 20% are cases that go to trial.  Out of the 20% that go to trial, usually by the time we impanel the jury, and we let the prosecutor know that we’re serious, a lot of times we can get an offer out of that.  Out of the hardcore cases that do not change, we take them to trial and it normally lasts between 1-2 days. 

 

RJ: What would you say is unique about the laws in the counties you serve and also your state?

 

FW: There are 46 counties in the state of South Carolina.  Of those counties there are 3 large metropolitan areas.  Those areas being Greenville, South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, which is the capital city, and Charleston, South Carolina, which is down on the coast.

 

The way that it works out in terms of counties, there are counties where the majority of the DUI action happens.  And that is in Greenville, which is near the top of the state, and near the border with North Carolina, that also happens down around Charleston where it’s a big tourist area and a lot of people will party way too much down there, and it also happens in the capital city of Columbia.  Columbia has a number of different colleges and universities, and that’s where we see a number of our college kids get in trouble for DUI.

 

So that the way that it shapes up is in the 3 metropolitan counties, we see a lot of activity.  In the smaller, more rural areas, Bedford, Andersen County, Cherokee County, for example, all throughout the state, we don’t see as much activity.

 

RJ: What would be your best tip for someone who has just been pulled over and has one or more drinks, what should they do, what shouldn’t they do?

 

FW: The first thing they should do is remain calm.  A lot of people when they get pulled  over get very nervous and you have to remember, the police officers are going to be looking for changes in the tone of your voice,  they’re going to be looking for nervousness, they’re going to be looking for you to be excitable and irritated.  Those sorts of things show them that you’ve done something wrong.

 

Where there’s drinking, or there’s drugs in the car, or something you’ve done wrong, the first thing you need to do is remain really calm.  The second thing you need to do is answer only the questions that are asked of you.  If you answer other questions and you tell them everything about where you’re going, everything about where you’ve been and everything that you’re going to do the next day, it doesn’t really help your case.

 

It only helps your case if you answer the officer respectfully and you tell him exactly what you’ve been doing in terms of “I’ve only had one drink tonight” or something like that if he asks you.  I don’t usually tell people to lie, I don’t want them to, I want them to be truthful, but I don’t want them to do anything that hurts their case.

 

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?

 

FW: Well, getting an attorney is probably the best thing that you can be able to do.  And I’ll give you an example. If you end up getting say a DUI First, it’s going to cost you between $2,000 and $4,000 just in the fines that they carry.  After that, your SR-22 insurance that you’ll have to get will be for 3 years and that will dramatically increase your insurance rates.  Sometimes we’re seeing rates as high as $3,000 every six months, for even a basic car such as an ‘05 Honda Accord. So what you want to do is look at it from the standpoint of what is giving me the best benefit, and the best benefit is to be able to get an attorney.

 

For example, how can attorney help you?  If you have a charge for example for DUI First, and you get the minimum charge, it’s going to be around $400. The base bottom minimum is that, there’s nothing else that you would have to pay.  If it’s not a DUI it becomes a different charge which is a DUAC or reckless driving charge, the fines and fees can be even less.

 

One thing we can do is reduce the charge of a DUI down to a DUAC if there would be sufficient evidence to convict someone of a DUI. Why is that important?  If you have a DUAC, it goes on your driving record, not on your criminal record.  So you can’t be barred from any jobs, you do not have to answer ‘Yes’ if they ask if you have a criminal record because you don’t you just have a driving record that may be particularly bad.

 

If you want to be able to get a charge for reckless driving as opposed to a DUI, we can do that too.  A reckless driving charge carries $445 as a total minimum fine, there is no jail time, there is no probation, there’s nothing else that you would have to do, there’s not even a requirement that you have to attend any programs such as the Alcohol and Drug Safety Action Program known as ADSAP here, so there’s a lot of things that an attorney can be able to do to help you.
So on your own you’d have between $10,000 to $20,000 in total fees, increased insurance and kind of major problems.  With an attorney, you’re looking at $10,000 or less depending on whether you have a DUI First though a DUI Fifth.

 

RJ: You mentioned a “DUAC” I haven’t heard that term; can you talk a little bit about what that is?

 

FW: Sure. DUAC is Driving Under Alcohol Concentration. That means that maybe you didn’t have a DUI, Driving Under the Influence.  You had a DUAC, which says that you may have had alcohol in you system, but it may not have impaired you driving.  That’s the essence of it.  The important procedural thing about a DUAC is that it goes on your driving record, it’s kind of like a high fine ticket, as opposed to going on your criminal record which can stay with you for life.

 

RJ: So what percentage of success have you had with your clients in terms of getting punishments reduced? 

 

FW: Tremendous success. I can tell you personally we’ve had a lot of people who’ve been very pleased with what we’ve done. One thing that we did for example for a client, I won’t give her name but I’ll just say “KC”.  For this particular client, with the initials KC, she was looking at a very serious DUI. She had basically hit a light pole, she didn’t know where she was, the officers came to her and said “Do you know what’s going on?”, she really didn’t. She didn’t answer their questions, she failed the Field Sobriety Tests that they gave her on the spot. After that they charged her with DUI.

 

They believed that to be an open and shut case. Procedurally, the arresting police officer is required to be able to come to all court appearances.  The officer on the first one didn’t show up and instead sent a supervisor.  Without the actual officer there to say what he saw or what he smelled or what he encountered with this particular client, we were able to do a motion before the judge to have that case totally dismissed.  The judge granted that. Mainly in part because there was a lack of evidence, in that the officer did not show.  That case was a total dismissal so the client wasn’t responsible for that at all.  And I’m happy to say that that client didn’t have any sort of relapse, at least not yet for the last four years.

 

RJ: This may be hard to say but is it wise to take a DUI case to trial, or is it better to settle or try to get a plea-bargain if there’s a non-aggravated set of circumstances?

 

FW: Well, it’s pretty simple. Let’s say that you get a DUI case and you didn’t hit anybody, the officer just stops you on the side of the road, asks if you’ve been drinking, you maybe didn’t have a breathalyzer test because you refused to blow, the best thing that the lawyer can do is be prepared for trial.  Send them a jury trial request, ask for a pre-trial or preliminary hearing beforehand to talk about the case and have an opportunity to negotiate that with the prosecutors,  and the at that level when they know that you’re serious and they know that you’re willing to take a case to trial, it helps you leverage.

 

A lot of prosecutors are very young, and they have only been prosecutors for one to five years,  and this is their first experience they’ve had prosecuting a case, and it is a scary proposition to them to go up against an attorney that’s been practicing for ten or twenty years or so on a case.  So a lot of times they’ll settle with you, but of course it is true that if you plan to take a case to trial, be prepared to go to trial and win.

 

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

 

FW: There’s a large range of reactions people have to being arrested.  The biggest reaction they have is shock and amazement.  They can’t believe that they are being pulled over on the side of the road. When they are pulled over and they realize they have a DUI.  If the officer ends up charging them with a DUI and doesn’t let them go, then they don’t realize that they are in a world of hurt, they think “Well, I’ve got a DUI, how bad can it really be.”

 

And they don’t know that it can be up to $20,000 plus and tons of fines and fees, it can have ramifications for their license, where they won’t get a license for a year or more, they can also have ramifications with their jobs, many jobs, especially banking jobs and insurance jobs, good well-paying jobs, require you to have a clean criminal record, if they find out you have a DUI, they can fire you because of it.

 

RJ: Is there a particular story that you hear over and over from your clients?

 

FW: Yes, the biggest story I hear most of the time is there must be a speed-traps out there or they see there’s a sobriety checkpoint or something like that, and the answer is “yes, there are”.  Many counties which are border counties, for example, Lancaster county here.  Lancaster is on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina, a large amount of the revenue that they receive is from drivers who have driving infractions, for speeding through the town, where it may be 15 mph posted and it went down from 35 mph to 15 in one sign, really, really quickly, or they caught people on the highway, or they actually have sting operations where they want to be able to, as they say, “make the road safer”.
What they really do is arrest as many people as they can for things as small as improper lane change, or they looked like something was going on, and they see if they can make a case on them.  A lot of times they’ll get people right down the street from a popular bar and they’ll have a checkpoint to see if people are drinking or they’re driving.  So there are a lot of speed traps, especially in the border counties of South Carolina and North Carolina and also between South Carolina and Georgia.  So the biggest things I hear is “Are there speed-traps?” and the answer is “Yes.”

 

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

 

FW: That depends.  For drunk drivers, people who are chronically drunk, and who go out there and hurt people, or kill people, and do it over and over – I don’t feel that the penalties or fines are excessive.  I wouldn’t want anything to happen to a member of my family, I don’t think anyone else would want something to happen to their family, so you want to get drunk drivers off the road – people who make it a general habit of driving intoxicated.

 

On the other hand, for people who have a DUI who were maybe driving under the influence and had two beers and maybe came from a popular bar or restaurant and they were trying to drive themselves home and had been out for a long time and didn’t feel impaired I feel that it can be very harsh to have a DUI first to go on your permanent criminal record and to have something that you have to explain from the age of 25 on the rest of your life.

 

Who you are at that moment may not be who you are five years from now, so I think it should be something where you are allowed to have a punishment, the punishment may result in a fine and maybe some classes, but something that deters the behavior, not something that punishes you merely because you got a charge. 

 

RJ: What do you see as the future of DUI, the laws, the number of people offending?

 

FW: This is also pretty clear cut.  People are going to drink, they’re going to have a good time, they’re going to get in the car when they had too much, their thinking is impaired, so they’re going to drink, and when they drink they’re going to try to drive.  So I think there’s going to be DUI cases for a long time to come, there’s not going to be prohibition again and an outlawing of liquor, and there’s not going to be a situation where people don’t find some means of becoming intoxicated, so I think that you’ll see DUI cases for a long time to come.  I do believe that the fines and penalties will continue to increase, especially in a bad economy, a lot of municipalities and jurisdictions find this is a way to be able to raise revenue.

 

RJ: What is the ballpark cost of a DUI with your firm from start to finish, and I know it varies!

 

FW: It varies, but generally it’s between $2,000 and $10,000.  At our firm we have flat fees depending on your situation, depending on what you blow.  So for example, let’s say that you blow a .08, which is the legal limit, the flat fee is $2,000, and you blow a .13 as your DUI First, this is DUI First I’m talking about, it’s generally about $3,000 just for the attorney’s fee.  If you have a DUI Second and it’s between .08 and .15, that’s another level, DUI Third is another level, on up to where you have a DUI Fourth, it’s going to be about a $10,000 case.

 

In the case of anything that’s a DUI Third or above, you get something called “habitual offender” – that means that you continually violated the driving laws of the state, and they require you to go to jail for a minimum of one year, up to five years, so in those cases it’s very difficult to be able to get the judge to see to give person another chance when they’ve had a fourth DUI, and maybe they’ve had 3 other DUIs in their life, so you know, those cases are more difficult, they take more attorney time, so they cost more.

 

RJ: 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?

 

FW: Well, I’m glad you asked that question about what makes us unique. First of all, we run an all Mac platform here so we’re able to communicate with our clients a lot faster in terms of the technology. In terms of other law firms that are 9 to 5, we’re 24/7.  As opposed to other law firms that take breaks, we don’t, we’re 365 days a year.
Instead of another law firm that may have one location, we have 4 locations and we also offer state-wide service.  So to recap, we have statewide service in all 46 counties, four law offices to be able to serve you better, 24/7 capability, you can chat anytime on our web site to be able to get information from us, you can put your information in and get an immediate call back, you can speak with an attorney online all hours of the day or night

 

If you need immediate help at 2 in the morning, or if you’re in jail and your family wanted to find an attorney to come down to the jail, we have that ability so, in terms of being faster to get to our clients, and also being able to communicate with our clients, I think we’re probably second to none.

 

Watch Fred Woods Interview Here>>