#179 Wynnum Drink Driving

Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Wynnum Magistrates Court as he represents a client charged with Drink Driving. Watch Andrew explain what happened in the courtroom, along with the outcome which he achieved and how he achieved it.

All right. Today I'm at Winton Magistrates Court. Client was charged with high range drink driving. Reading at 0.229. More than four times the legal limit. The worst-case scenario for a reading of high range, high range starts at 0.15, obviously, 0.229 is well and truly past 0.15, but for high range the minimum is six months. But when you're that far past the minimum. If you go to court trying to get that, you can end up with two years or maybe some kind of worse penalty. Probation or suspended sentence or something like that. If you go there asking for an unreasonable outcome for a reading that's just so high, 0.229. Worst case is lifetime. Technically the minimum is six months, but we see, not our clients, but we see people at court represented or otherwise getting 18 months to two years plus, for readings like that. Even with no history. If you do have history obviously, the penalties increase, but my client today had no history of drink driving or drug driving.

It was her first offence. She's got no history, but really did the job at this time with that reading, 0.229. We always say to clients, we see people every day of the week that we're not acting for, getting 18 months, two years and above for readings like this, without history. But we always say to clients, we'll gun for 12 months. If we can get it lower than that, it's a massive bonus. If we can get it close to that, but not quite on 12, meaning 12 to 14, it's an acceptable outcome. But 12 is that magic number we always go for. Sometimes we've got it as low as eight, sometimes 10, but 90% of the time we obtain a 12 month disqualification for this reading.

When you go to court you, generally, when you got a lawyer, you go on pretty quickly. But sometimes, for whatever reason, you have to wait a bit and you can see other people with lawyers, and sometimes people without lawyers. Sometimes unrepresented people are able to speak to the prosecutor because they've got to pick a kid up from somewhere and they can push in. But generally, if you've got a lawyer, you go before people who don't have lawyers. But the point I'm getting at is I see represented and unrepresented with readings like this. And I see the outcomes they get. And the starting point is always 18 months on a good day, generally two years. And a lot of the time, much more than that. But obviously people who have engaged a specialised drink driving lawyer are hoping for something a bit better than that. We always target 12 months.

We get all of our clients to do a reformatory course that could be done online. We get all of our clients to get character references based on a template we provide. There's an online form we get our clients to fill out that prompts you, as the client, to give us the key information we need in order to put the magistrate in your shoes. A lot of the time there's mental health issues or a death in the family, everyone's got their own story. And a lot of the time people go to court, the magistrate doesn't hear it. Whereas we're very good at succinctly and quickly, in a timely fashion, painting a picture of who you are, what's been going on, and why this has happened. And that online form prompts you to give us answers to questions we need to formulate that sort of scenario that we put the magistrate in.

Once we had the police brief, the responses from the client, and her responses from the online course she'd done, I prepared my submissions, met the client in court this morning. I was somewhat overreaching. Sometimes I'm a bit cheeky with my submissions, but if you don't ask, you don't get. I did for a number of reasons push for a window of 10 to 12 months. I was overreaching. I knew that, but sometimes you just got to go hard. There was a bit of to and fro. There was quite a bit of resistance from the magistrate, a bit of resistance from the prosecutor. And I had to go to quite a number of steps to try and distinguish my client from the average punter who goes to court.

And that went on for quite a bit, but I was ultimately successful at saying, "Look, this isn't the average defendant who doesn't take matters like these seriously. Here's all this evidence that she's taking seriously. She's taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. And Your Honour can be confident that Your Honour won't see my client before the courts again for this type of offence." Ultimately I was successful in dissuading the magistrate not to go past 12 months. I did put a window of 10 to 12 there, but I explained to the client that if we get 12, it's a good outcome. And I didn't seriously expect to get any less than that. But sometimes you just got to have a crack. So 12 months disqualification. Client is obviously very relieved.

Just to confirm that reading again, 0.229. More than four times the legal limit, almost five times. 12 month disqualification, an appropriate fine which can be paid off by state penalties, enforcement registry. Client is extremely relieved. I'm Andrew Wiseman at Winton Magistrates Court. Thanks for watching.