OWI charges were dismissed in a Lansing-area-OUIL/OWI case for a Nichols Law Firm client. “The client’s breath test was right at the borderline of .08,” said attorney Mike Nichols. He added, “the client was wise and did not take the PBT (preliminary breath test) at the scene.” The only evidence that the officer had on which to arrest the client was the fact that the driver side tires straddled the center-lane after a turn. “The client did very well on the standardized field sobriety tests, creating the obvious question of what probable cause did the officer have to base an arrest decision, said Nichols, an expert in Michigan-OWI-OUIL and author of the Michigan OWI Handbook for Thomson West publishing.
The accused citizen was allowed to plead to a civil infraction for careless driving and refusing the pbt. “3 points on his driving record and a fine of several hundred dollars still beats a criminal conviction for OWI in my book,” Nichols said. The accused citizen had fulfilled all of the obligations that he would have been required to do had he been convicted of OWI, which expedited the negotiations and made it much easier to work out the case so that criminal charges were dismissed. |