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Wednesday, October 17, 2012
By Michael Nichols
Categories: OWI
If you are stopped by a police officer and arrested for drunk driving, the officer better be able to justify the arrest ... if your lawyer is Michigan drunk driving attorney Mike Nichols. Nichols recently showed what "committed to results" means when a commercial driver -- facing a career-ending drunk driving charge -- won his life back with the dismissal of his drunk driving charge in Ludington.
"The police stopped this man, claiming that he was weaving through downtown Ludington last summer," said Nichols, author of the drunk driving book for Michigan lawyers by West Publishing. Nichols added: "the only problem is that we obtained the video from the officer's dashboard camera which showed nothing of the kind."
The result? The Nichols Law Firm team filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the 4th Amendment of the Constitution was violated because the officer did not have a sufficient basis to make the traffic stop. "Any police contact of a vehicle, which is initiated by the show of the authority of law implicates the 4th Amendment and therefore, the Supreme Court precedent set out by a case called Delaware v Prouse controls the officer's right to restrain your liberty," says Nichols. He added, "in this case, the officers were unable to justify the show of authority - either based on reasonable articulable suspicion of drunk driving or based on the higher standard of probable cause that a traffic violation occurred."
The man was thrilled "I can't thank you enough," he said after the hearing. Nichols practices statewide in defending those charged with drugged and drunk driving from his Lansing-area office building. He is also a professor of DUI Law and Practice and forensic evidence at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing and is also the co-author of the update for the "DUI Mathematics" chapter for West Publishing. Contact the DUI attorney who is committed to results at mnichols@nicholslaw.net or by calling 517.432.9000.