DUI dismissed and still a revocation?

[Nik]

Here's a new one. Last year when I was in and out of the hospital, a woman who has been like a mother to me most of my life, had just remarried after being divorced 38 years, and 23 days after the wedding he died of a heart attack. I was too sick to travel to IL so my family left me and a friend was going to check on me over the course of a few days. I went to bed and woke up a day later in jail. No idea what happened, but I tried telling the jailer to please get me to the hospital or notify my Dr. because I was very ill and was told to "shut up, or you're just going to make it worse on yourself". My family is notified one they got to IL and drove straight back after the funeral and they took me to the ER and I was rushed to a specialty heart hospital with life threatening heart failure and double pneumonia. I came to several days later in the section where they keep the organ donors before they are cut up. A week later I was transferred to regular ICU and was discharged at the end of the month. Turned out it wasn't a alcohol or drug related thing, I had suffered a severe complication called hypokalemia which was causing the heart failure, pneumonia, hallucinations, memory loss, disorientation and a whole slew of other problems, in addition to the illnesses I was already suffering from. After spending the last year battling these, I finally started to level out and was finally able to be well enough to go to court. My attorney met with the state's attorney before the trial and showed him the medical records and drug test and the state dropped all the charges. That was the criminal side, now I had to deal with the DMV. I call them up and explain what happened and they said sorry, but if you missed a court date there is nothing we can do. I told them I could show where I had been in the hospital, they said too bad. So I called the DUI department and was told to call the top guy in the state because they hadn't dealt with anything like that. I ring him up and lay out the whole case, I explained that I wasn't looking at driving again I was just trying to clear my name, he said that because I had missed the court date, the only thing I could do to get the revocation taken off was to complete 6 months of ignition interlock on a car. I said I don't drive and am 100% disabled, can I just install it on one of the cars and pay the fee? He said no, if you do that we will come and arrest you for NOT driving because once you get an ignition interlock you HAVE TO drive it. I'm at my wits end with these guys and their stupid rules and regs. It looks like I'm screwed no matter which way I go.

[bulletproof]

lawyer up....

[Nik]

7500 to file the first appeal....

[68scott385]

sounds like some bullskunk KY would come up with

GOOD LUCK with this

[JOES66FURY]

Call the local media....amazing what they can get done when they expose stupidity.

Also, you may want to do some research about free legal help. There is a program here that groups a bunch of lawyers who are interested in doing pro-bobo work together and they meet up a couple times a month. You take your case to them and they will work it for you.

[TheSilverBuick]

Call the local media....amazing what they can get done when they expose stupidity.

True.

[Pumpkin]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't! Won't be getting any better any time soon. I wish you the best though. Worst case scenario, have it installed, blow and have somebody else drive it around for awhile and repeat?

[Barry Donovan]

this may need a local politician, go from there.

I have a driving record that did not match my character, it was then I learned I was a target. All politics from there.

I even have an oui with a brain injury...ended up on a jail closet floor with my face in the drain that leaked gas upward.

some kinda stroke...and then magically the fat slob of a cop (I do not like fat cops, reminds me of a slumlord wheezing to climb the stairs and demand something from a tenant)

I had exactly over a double on some blood content. I knew something was up then..

anyway, back to my own pretentious life supremacy...
a judge caught on yet again, things went back to normal. the second time, I too was all done, did not care if I had license.
ended up working out in the end, ambiguous.. the pain that popped inside my head was the relief (still never diagnosed).
been running on that nature ever since.

when the bullshit gets too deep, your one time misunderstood ill might spread to the abuser(s).

[dieselgeek]

reminds me of when I had some crazy senile cop pull me over in my driveway claiming he had chased me for miles (felt sorry for the guy, he was either on some kind of drugs or having some kind of alzheimer's attack or... ? it was just too weird!).

i got an attorney and won, the case was thrown completely out. It was beyond bizarre. A year later I was stopped because there was a warrant for my arrest, the state showed I had skipped the court hearing, my license had been suspended, and I had a pile of hefty fines and the warrant... WTF? My attorney was baffled, took ANOTHER YEAR to get straightened out. The biggest hassle was the DMV. It didn't matter what we got the county attorney to say (he wrote them a letter explaining it was a court records screwup)... they didn't care, they had a blast making my life miserable, pretty much openly admitting it.

Good luck to you and much more importantly, a prayer for improved health headed your way!

[Beagle]

fwiw, I've found a trip in to the office for a face to face helps a lot of problems get resolved. The distance of phone/email/mail correspondence makes it a lot easier to experience gov't employee indifference.

[Nik]

Well, I guess I made a couple of right phone calls today. I ended up calling an old friend who works at another DMV and explained what was going on and she gave me the phone number and a name to call that they use on complex DMV legal stuff. I called and spoke to the lady and she was nice, but firm, and suggested I just get the ignition interface in it and then not use it since I don't drive. I told her that was what I asked about and was told I would get arrested for it, when she asked who told me, I gave her the lead guy over at the DUI program's name that I had been speaking with, and then gave her his explanation on why I would be found guilty of bypassing the system. We talked a little bit more and than thanked her for her time. I ended up asking an attorney who lives on the opposite side of the state to ask him about lawyers who do pro bono work and he said that even if I found someone to do the legal work for free, I would still be expected to pay all filing fees and for the expert witnesses they would have to call and that that would be a minimum of 2500-3000. F%$K! So I was just sitting around pissed for several hours when I decided to call and find out how many miles I would have to drive each month to do it, the installation tech gave me his answer and than I called the main guy back at the DUI program and asked him if that number would be correct cause I didn't want to get two different answers and then end up getting arrested for listening to the wrong one. He told me he had been thinking about me cause of a phone call he got that morning from their legal team. It seems my friend gave me the direct line to the agency's lead attorney. LOL. He told me that the lady I had been talking to was the one who would have been directing the state's defense if it went to trial. He said they discussed the whole situation and told me they both wished there was an easier legal means of getting before a judge because of the unique circumstances of my case. He told me if I was willing to just pay for the interlock than they wouldn't worry about how much the vehicle was used, and if there were any problems in 6 months when the program was finished, to just call him back and he would take the lead and get it finalized. Sweet! I told him the only reason I even wanted to clear it up instead of just surrendering my license was in case I was ever in an emergency situation with one of the kids and I ABSOLUTELY had to drive. So, it looks like it will cost me a total of 80 bucks a month for the nest six months, but then everything should be good to go.

[silver_bullet]

glad to hear that it worked out for you... maybe there's hope for the system when common sense prevails....

[Pumpkin]

Good deal, glad to hear that.

[Monk]

Great ending.......good stuff

[SuperBuickGuy]

Never mistake the difference between administrative law and constitutional law. The insanity of what you went through happens a lot - most people don't realize that there can be several court cases on the same series of events or circumstances. DUI is a good example of it, a person is arrested or cited for DUI; that file goes to both the DMV (administrative law court system) and to the State Court system (excluding if you did it on federal lands or indian territory). That means you have TWO cases to fight. Here's the rub, most times the DMV hearing comes first - and it is possible (even more likely in some cases) to beat the DUI charge there. That gets you your license back. Then you go to Court and lose - but you still keep your license because another judge ruled that you weren't drunk. Yep, you still have to go to all the other stuff that the legislature requires - but you get to drive there.

However, I'm curious.... you woke up in jail, great - but how did they get you for DUI? Generally DUI means a method of conveyance, and impairment.... so how'd those two boxes get checked?

when they gave you the citations and such - did they give you the paperwork that said your license was suspended and what to do about it?

It's certainly an interesting case - but, this may surprise you, it's not really that novel. DUI means driving while impaired - drive knowing you have seizures and do nothing about it... and that's a DUI as well, no drugs or alcohol required.