Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Townsville Magistrates Court as he represents a client charged with Drug Driving. Watch Andrew explain what happened in the courtroom, along with the outcome which he achieved and how he achieved it.
Right. Today, I’m at Townsville Magistrates Court, client was charged with seven offences arising from two different incidents. One of them was drug driving, relevant drug present. There’s two types of drug driving. The more serious is driving under the influence of a drug. Lesser is relevant drug present, meaning you’ve had it at some point, it’s worn off. That was the case today. Worst case was a nine month disqualification, mandatory minimum one month. There was also six drug possession and paraphernalia and utensils, and all that kind of stuff. There’s been multiple court dates arising from these two different intercepts. We’ve basically had to, over time through various adjournments, roll them all into one date, which we did today. Look, technically he was eligible to apply for a work licence. He hadn’t lost his licence in the last five years and he was the holder of an open Queensland licence. But he wasn’t going to lose his job, so there was never going to be a employer affidavit given. No-one was going to sign to say he was going to lose it.
So my job was one of getting it down as low as possible. Also, given he’s studying, I’m not going to get into details, but a degree which leads to professional membership in the future. There can be difficulties when there’s convictions recorded, both for the driving offence, which is a traffic offence drug drive, but also the quasi-criminal possession and all the other charges. So what I’m getting at is, my job was to try and get no eviction recorded for, not just the possession and quasi-criminal charges, but also the driving offence. Look, long and short of it is, I was able to get him the mandatory minimum one month disqualification, that obviously starts today. Doesn’t drive for a month, in a month he gets his licence back. I was able to get fines only for the remaining charges. And I was also successful in getting no conviction recorded for all offences, both the criminal and the driving offence. Client’s obviously very happy. I’m Andrew Wiseman at Townsville Magistrates Court, thanks for watching.