Client was called in by a passerby who was concerned he was sleeping in his vehicle and would not wake up.  The ambulance ultimately contacted the police when the client was awoken and smelled like alcohol and was in their opinion intoxicated.

The client was not very happy to see law enforcement.  Because he wasn’t driving, he wasn’t complying with the requests to step from the vehicle or listen to the officer’s commands.  This made the case start out challenging because the client was charged with not only Operating While Intoxicated with a test result of .13, but he was also charged criminally for resisting arrest.

Client was referred to Chirafisi & Verhoff and we got started.  First thing was the administrative review hearing.  At that hearing we were able to confirm that the officer had no idea how long the client had been sitting in his vehicle.  That fact made the test result irrelevant. 

We were able to convince the district attorney to dismiss the criminal resisting and then were left with the OWI charge.  The first offer was reckless driving, the client rejected that offer as well as an inattentive driving ticket. 

The client decided to resolve the case for an ordinance violation for obstructing for not obeying police commands when he refused to exit his vehicle.  He didn’t lose his license for a single day, did not have to do any alcohol classes.  Overall, he was very happy with the result.