Criminal Defense Attorney

A conviction for Driving Under the Influence can have dramatic impacts on your life. It carries with it mandatory minimum penalties that change depending on the level of alcohol in your body, whether there was a passenger under the age of 16 in the car with you, whether you took the voluntary breath test at the station, and your history of prior DUI accusations.

The first effect you’re likely to experience is that DOL will try to suspend your license in most cases. This happens separately from your criminal case. Even if the Prosecutor waits to file your criminal case, DOL may still try to suspend your license. Usually, this happens within 7 days of your arrest. You can contest this suspension, but please talk to us fast! If we do not challenge the suspension within those 7 days, the DOL will likely suspend your license regardless.

The Prosecutor has two main ways to attempt to prove DUIs. The first is to show that the concentration of alcohol in your body is above 0.08 or the concentration of marijuana in your blood is above 5ng/ml. This is called a per se DUI.

This can be done with a test of either your breath or your blood. The Washington State Patrol Toxicology Lab performs the Blood tests. The toxicology lab in our state uses methods such as headspace gas chromatography, time of flight mass spectrometry, Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Technique, and Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry. The toxicology lab has had issues over the years with repeated contamination, expired vials, under-drawn blood samples, and much more.

Breath testing only works for alcohol and contains far more problems. It works on the principles of electrochemical fuel cells and infrared spectrometry. The company that makes our breath testing machines, Draeger, has never released the details of how these machines come up with their numbers. Last year 21,895 people were charged with DUI in this state, the majority of them using this technology which has never been explained to the public.

And if all these things fail, the Prosecutor can attempt to convict you with an “affected by” argument. This is to say that you can be convicted if your ability to drive was affected by the alcohol or other drug the Prosecutor claims you consumed.

A competent DUI Attorney needs to understand all of the pseudoscience that will be used to try to convict you. They need to understand all of the complications of the myriad defenses and have the experience of knowing how to employ them. Jared Isaacson has been called on to teach other lawyers about all of these things for years and continues to be called upon by other lawyers to consult on their cases.

Both on the misdemeanor and felony levels, domestic violence charges carry with them specific and different consequences. The most apparent of which being no-contact orders. These are sticky and are often not given the attention they deserve. A charge of violating a no-contact order prosecutors often feel is easier to prove than the underlying charges that created them. And beyond that, they often carry stiffer penalties as the third violation of a no-contact order is a felony.

Jared Isaacson has handled domestic violence cases of all types for years.