Act like you’re applying to the Ivys and put together the most detailed résumé possible. Academic records—especially if those are halfway decent—verification that you are a solid citizen with a job, proof that you volunteer to read to the kids at the public library every Saturday, anything that makes you look like a modern Mother Teresa who was temporarily blinded by life’s injustices and made one stupid mistake. Demonstrating the valuable and positive ways in which you contribute to society matters, because a DUI has a lot of moral and political weight to it. If this is your first DUI, you want to prove you aren’t the kind of boozehound who will keep knocking them back long after you’ve fallen off the bull. If this isn’t your first stumble into the rodeo ring, it helps to prove you’ve seen that you are of value to others and have a lot to lose.
Say you win, or the case is thrown out on a technicality—it goes away, somehow, and there are no substantial penalties to you, if any at all. Hooray. Figure out what you did wrong in the first place and don’t repeat it. And pay your attorney, because they could use a deep tissue foot massage after the song-and-dance they performed to keep you out of trouble.
Say you lose. We’ve already covered that, at least a little. Hopefully your attorney has been managing your expectations, because a lawyer who isn’t up-front about the shitty outcomes you might be facing isn’t giving you the best possible representation. They aren’t doing themselves any favors, either, because disillusioned clients are bad for repeat business.
Having said that: there’s a chance you won’t spend additional time in jail, since first offense DUIs are often misdemeanors. True, that could still mean a whole six months in the clink, and differences in jurisdiction matter a great deal here—but a first arrest won’t necessarily result in a ton of jail time. I’d love to reassure you more than that, but every prosecutor has a different little shoulder devil, so the way they leverage the available penalties against you, even if it’s your first time, will be a little unpredictable. If your blood alcohol was super high, it will affect the penalty, and if you ran over a kid, a nun, or an unleashed pet, you’re pretty boned and will probably face felony penalties.
Very reassuring, I know, like a warm, fuzzy blanket that smells like a corpse. But wait, back to fines. There are fines incurred when you lose a case. Maybe pretty low (think mid-triple-digits), but they’ll be coming. The really prickly stuff, the little legal cold sores that are going to keep flaring up for the rest of your life, will be—in addition to having a record—dealing with driver’s license issues. Your license might be suspended for as few as ninety days for a first-time booze cruise on the autobahn, and potentially years for repeat customers.
More semi-good news for the freshman at DUI High: plenty of states now provide less jail-happy alternative punishments. These might include treatment programs, antidrug-or alcohol-education-related community service, and restitution (if, God forbid, your DUI was acquired after first responders discovered you stumbling away from some kind of traffic accident).
To brighten your day even further: there will be plenty more fallout from the DUI-Bomb, including difficulties with car insurance—getting any at all, for instance—and the fact that some places won’t even hire a job applicant if there’s a DUI on your record.
This is some gloomy stuff, but I’m going to hold out the hope that you don’t need any of this information yet, and maybe it’ll make you hesitate a beat before lining up those five kamikaze shots to take the edge off your drive home. Fact is, I want you to have fun! But there are plenty of ways to have fun that don’t involve you risking your life and the lives of every evening jogger south of your own personal Bourbon Street. Mini-golf, for example. Or laser tag. I know a guy who can hook you up with a few free rounds, if you’re looking to unwind.
Drinking is a great American pastime and I salute your right to practice it to your heart’s content if you so choose! Tip one back for Saul Goodman the next time you darken the door of your favorite Palace of Hooch. But if someone offers to buy you a glass of wine after you’ve hit your limit? Say “no way, rosé” and drink a glass of water.
Driving after you’ve guzzled down one too many burning gulps of that Fireball can give you the legal equivalent of gonorrhea, so try to avoid that pain and irritation by taking cabs or utilizing a rideshare service. This is one instance where I’ll welcome the business, but kind of wish there was no need for it in the first place.
And if you insist on driving yourself: peel off that “Bottle on Board” bumper sticker, stick some Visine in your glove compartment, maybe invest in one of those portable breathalyzers—even if it’s not that accurate, you’ll at least appear to have made an effort to not drive under the influence. As always: if the cops pull you over, your first best move is to keep your lips zipped and contact an attorney as soon as you can.
Our physical needs and desires are part and parcel with having skin, bones, dopamine receptors, and uvulas (those little waggy thingies that hang in our throats, for you future Ken Jennings out there). It’s a fact of life that sometimes, our needs can’t be easily, efficiently, fancifully, etc. (depending on the proverbial hole you need filled) addressed at home. An essential as established as human civilization itself—occasionally we just need to be intimate with another warm body. If it requires exchanging money and treating that intimacy as a paid service, maybe that’s what rubs your Buddha, or maybe your Aphrodite….
Not shockingly, this nation founded by Puritans has been pretty slow to recognize this exchange as a viable manner of human relations. Outside that paradise of gambling and ghost towns known as the Great State of Nevada, paying someone to partake in a heated match of the horizontal hula tends to remain illegal.
Short of the violence too often inflicted on sex workers by malicious clients, soliciting is a fairly victimless crime for both the client and the companion. But much like a DUI, it can lead to a cruelly enhanced public profile for the unfortunates who get busted for partaking in the oldest profession in the world. “Johns” arrested for the crime of rocking the Cash-Only Casbah can end up with their names and even faces in newspapers.
Let’s do a little walk-through of what a solicitation case can be like. Common traps set by law enforcement, how to use those traps to your advantage, how to proceed with your case—here’s the whole shebang. Statistically, it’s a pretty safe assumption to believe that if you’ve landed in this solicitation snafu from the client side, you’re probably of the male disposition. That’s not to say that ladies don’t have needs—I can’t even count the many and varied combinations of bedfellows that money can buy—but this example is going to stick with the plain vanilla male client/female provider scenario.
Most legal terminology is more confusing than a barking cat. Words heard in other parts of life take on shades of meaning that confuse and torture non-lawyers. “Solicitation” is that kind of word. Like, a guy who shows up at your door trying to sell magazine subscriptions to Popular Mechanics, Vibe, or Soldier of Fortune is soliciting business from you. He’s probably irritating unless you like to listen to hip-hop while you and your Devil Dog buddies decide whether charcoal or propane might make a better backyard grill, but he’s not necessarily doing anything illegal. On the other hand, if someone catches an ambulance-chasing lawyer passing business cards around an emergency room, that’s legal solicitation (that’s not to say allowed-by-law solicitation, but a still-illegal form of solicitation of the lawyerly variety), and it can land my colleagues in a big world of ethical excrement.