Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Brisbane Magistrates Court as he represents a client charged with Drink Driving. Watch Andrew explain what happened in the courtroom, along with the outcome which he achieved and how he achieved it.
All right. Today, I was at Brisbane Magistrate’s Court, client was on his Ps, charged with what’s called over the no alcohol limit, but under the general limit. So he was on his Ps, in which instance you’re given a permissible blood alcohol concentration of zero. He wasn’t over .05, he was .032, but for a P-plater, that’s over the limit. So if he was on his opens, he wouldn’t been charged, he would’ve been sent on his way. But because he’s expected to have zero, not just P-platers, if you’re driving a truck or there’s a whole host of licence classes or types of vehicles that require the operator to have a blood alcohol concentration of zero. And if someone’s caught with any amount of alcohol in their system on a zero licence, you get done for DUI. Worst case scenario was a nine month disqualification.
You can’t get a work licence if you’re on your Ps. To get a work licence, you need to be the holder of an open Queensland licence. So if you’re on your Ps, you can’t apply. If you hold an interstate licence, you can’t apply. If you hold an international licence, you can’t apply. So because he was a P-plater, a work licence was not an option. Therefore, my job was one of getting the qualification down as low as possible. As I said, worst case is nine months, but the magistrate does have a general discretion under the Penalties and Census’ Act to give up to a lifetime loss of licence. But in practical terms, it’s a worst case of nine months. Mandatory minimum when you’re on your Ps or subject to a permissible blood alcohol concentration of zero is three months.
So, worst case today was nine months, absolute best case was three months. I got my client to do the reformatory course that we get all of our clients to do. I drafted that for David [inaudible] for him to sign, talking about what he’d learnt, got him to get character references based on the template that we provide all of our clients, guiding the referees through who it’s got to be addressed to, key points they’ve got to cover, et cetera. There’s no point in going to court with a bunch of character references addressed to whom it may concern, because the magistrate will just push them to the side and pretend they’re not there. Because if they don’t know that the person writing it knows it’s being written for court purposes, the magistrate will ignore it. But anyway, got him to get those references addressed to the presiding magistrate and stating that they were aware of the charge, however, he’s a good person, not withstanding.
I met my client at court, obviously I prepared my submissions in advance. I met my client at court, ran through the submissions that I was going to make, ran through the procedure, et cetera. Where you stand, where I stand, stand up, sit down, watch my lead kind of thing. A lot of clients have never been in court before, and what might seem second nature to me is completely foreign to them. So I try to… Well, I don’t try to, I run the client through exactly what’s going to happen, exactly what’s going to be said, well before we go into the courtroom. So as they’re seeing it unfold, it’s, “Oh yeah, I knew about this because Andrew ran me through it.”
The short version is, the client didn’t have to do or say anything other than, “Yes, your honour,” when I said it’s a plea of guilty. Again, I made submissions about the difficulties he’ll suffer while he’s off the road, why he should be treated differently to other defendants that may be in that situation, what he learnt from the course, et cetera. Short version is, I was successful in dissuading the magistrate to give the mandatory minimum three months. So, minimum three months, which was physically the best case scenario today. Modest fine, client’s very happy. I’m Andrew Wiseman, thanks for watching.