Drunk driving charges can lead to a wide range of penalties for the accused person. We wrote a post a few months ago about the financial factors involved in DUI cases, and that post gets at many of the myriad consequences that are involved when someone is accused of driving under the influence. And yet, it is still impossible to talk about these things without speaking in vague terms. Why is that?
Well, there are two reasons. The first is that there are so many different penalties that can be applied to someone who is convicted of a DUI that it can be difficult to say with certainty what an individual will face. This leads into the second reason, which is that all DUI cases are unique. There are so many different details and sets of circumstances that can be involved in any DUI case that it is nearly impossible to predict how (and which) consequences will affect you without doing a deep dive into the semantics of any given case.
Just take a look at the many different DUI scenarios that can occur and their accompanying penalties on the New York DMV website. There are vast differences from case to case and circumstance to circumstance.
What never changes, though, is that those accused of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs need to consult with an experienced criminal defense attorney as soon as possible. The punishment is too much and the stakes are too high to go it alone.