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We may have passed the point of no return. Court costs are now more than the fine amount for a McHenry County DUI. You see in McHenry County we charge costs EXCLUSIVE of fines, in Kane County for example there is only one fine amount, from which costs are deducted.
In short: Fine $1000, plus court costs of $1,210 = total costs of $2,210
That's right you get more punishment from the costs than you do from the fine. Nice system, very nice.
Ray Flavin
From time to time clients will ask me why I practice in McHenry County exclusively. Other times people will attempt to hire me for other county DUIs, and become upset that I don't go.
The reason that I don't travel to Other counties, is first: In order to represent someone for DUI you have to be able to estimate with accuracy what will happen to a case, so that you can inform the client what the likely outcome of a case will be. This takes knowing the judge, knowing which courtroom and knowing which prosecutor will be handling the case. Without this knowlege how would you inform your client on the case?
Secondly: I primarily work on DUI cases in McHenry County. This work is full time all by itself, as a result if I were to take more cases from different counties it would dilute my effectiveness.
Lastly: I want to know how this case looks from a jury point of view. What the local quirks in the system are, and I want to know where the weak spots are. In another county I would have no idea. Is this a case where a threat of a jury trial would be effective in resolving the case, or do I have to take it to trial?
It's so important to know where your at in a case.
Ray Flavin
As many of you know, DUI law changes way too much. The Illinois Legislature has changed DUI law every six months for the past decade. They can't seem to keep their hands off of it.
There is a proposal before the legislature which will require all those who receive a Judicial Driving Permit to have a device in their car which requires them to blow to start their car.
Now this is another stupid idea for a variety of reasons:
1. For those suspended three months the JDP is only 60 days long (that's a big hassle to have a driver get one of these devices installed for this short of a period).
2. Most of my clients avoid a JDP by having the suspension thrown out (so they avoid that hassle all together).
3. There are better ways to control driving (see my JDP idea below)
The bottom line is that state legislators will get no argument from anyone (except me) when unnecessarily tinkering with the law. In fact, they can tell the voters that they got "tough on DUI" for the ten millionth time (when all they did was fowl the law up and make it easier to beat, again).
Ray Flavin
