Kansas DUI lawyer Jay Norton discusses the typical timeline in a Kansas DUI case, including how long it takes to get through the administrative driver’s license process and when you might have an issue with your driver’s license, how long it takes to get police reports, videos and other information in a typical DUI criminal case, continuances and when you can expect to have your case completely resolved under normal circumstances.
AI Transcript:
0:00 Hi, I’m Jay Norton, Kansas DUI attorney, and I want to talk to you in this video about the timeline that you can expect for a typical DUI case. 0:11 Every case is a little bit different. Some go really fast, some go really slow. But typically, at least with me, there’s a process, there’s a procedure, there’s kind of a general timeline that you can expect to follow in these cases. 0:29 If you got arrested for a DUI, typically they give you a ticket. Some charging document. It tells you that you’ve got a court date. 0:37 A lot of people think that that’s the court date. That’s when things are going to be decided. That’s almost never the case. 0:43 The first court date is what they call an arraignment. It’s just to see if you show up. It’s just to see if you are going to hire your own attorney or you’re asking for a court appointed attorney. 0:53 And then, you know, plans are kind of made from there and the case gets scheduled out. So when somebody hires me, the first thing that I do is request the administrative hearing. 1:02 I do that in writing. I send that to the Department of Revenue, certified, return receipt requested, and I fax it and get a fax confirmation back so we’ve got proof that that they got it. 1:12 That’s the first thing that I do typically and as soon as we do that, then your driver’s license is going to remain valid until we can have a hearing. 1:19 That hearing is going to be two or three months down the road and could be even longer than that. So, as soon as we request a driver’s license hearing, that kind of puts the driver’s license stuff on hold for two or three months. 1:32 And even if we have the hearing then and you were to lose, then any suspension or restriction of your license wouldn’t start until 30 days after that. 1:40 So, your driver’s license is going to be valid typically for three or four months at least after you get arrested for a DUI. 1:48 In the criminal case then, you know, once we’ve requested the administrative hearing, the next thing I do is I enter my appearance as your attorney in whatever the jurisdiction is, the city municipal court or the county district court enter my appearance as your attorney, a lot of times we will move the 2:02 court date from whatever is on the ticket because that’s just kind of a cattle call thing, move it to a time and a date that I’ve got scheduled in that city to go in and see the prosecutor about the cases that I have there, and then I will start requesting the discovery, requesting the police reports 2:19 , the videos, the audios, all the records on the breath test machine, or any information about the blood test, we’ve got to round all that stuff up, you know, every jurisdiction is a little bit different, some get you that stuff right away, some it takes forever. 2:33 Some, you know, people mail you this stuff, the other ones can send it to you online, or they have, you know, evidence portals where you can go in there with your account and you can download stuff, but it takes a week or so typically to get police reports. 2:49 And sometimes it can take another week or so to get the videos. So, you know, at that point, we’re three or four weeks into this thing, once I’ve sort of rounded up all of the evidence. 3:02 It also takes me a while to watch the videos because I watch every single video in every single one of my clients cases and I make a handwritten transcript of that video while I’m watching it so that I know at what time things occur in that video, that may be important so that I can refer 3:21 to that. Watching the video is the most important part of one of these cases. You have to watch the video because that’s going to show what happened. 3:30 You know, the police reports is kind of the officer’s side of the story and the driver, defendant may have their side of the story, but the video is going to show what actually happened. 3:39 And with in car camera videos and body camera videos, everything should be on video from the time that the person was stopped or contacted by the police until the time that they were released. 3:51 And so there’s two or three hours or more of video in every single one of these cases. And so it takes me a while to watch that. 4:00 I got to find the time to watch that. So it may be another two or three weeks before I can watch the videos. 4:06 So now we’re, you know, six weeks, eight weeks into the case. And once I’ve watched the video, then I’m gonna let you know that I typically will then make that video available for to you in Dropbox. 4:21 Typically is the way that I do it. I don’t like to send the video to my clients until I have watched it because it takes me a while to find the time to watch it, but I will watch it before anything happens in your case. 4:33 But if I sent it to a client, they watch it immediately and then they call me up and say, what do you think? 4:37 And you know, I don’t know because I haven’t seen it yet. So I wait until I’ve seen it. Then once I’ve seen it, I make it available to you. 4:43 So, when you hire me, I enter my appearance as your attorney, I’m going to continue that first court date, you know, a month or so. 4:51 And then I show up and probably at that point, just going to continue it again for another month or so. 4:56 And by that time, hopefully I’ve seen the videos and reports and things like that. And it’s sometime around then that we get notified by the Department of Revenue about the administrative hearing. 5:06 I like to do the administrative hearing before we make decisions about what we’re going to do in the criminal case. 5:12 Like I said, the administrative hearing is a lot of times two or three months down the road. So I’ll go to the administrative hearing. 5:19 Now we’re, you know, two or three months into the case. At that point I’ve got the police reports. I’ve got the videos. 5:26 I’ve watched the videos. I’ve gotten all the records on the breath test, blood test, urine test. And now I get an opportunity to sit down and cross examine the officer. 5:34 So once the administrative hearing is done, you know, we’ve gotten all of the written documents. We’ve got all the video and the audio and the photographs. 5:41 We’ve got all that. And I’ve had a chance to cross examine the officer. Now we’re in a position to make a decision about what to do in a criminal case. And so it’s after that a lot of times that then I’ll go sit down with the prosecutor and talk to them about the case and 5:58 figure out what the options are either continue it again, set it for a trial, you know talk about diversion, try to get them to dismiss it, whatever the situation may be. 6:09 but on a first time DUI it can be a four to six month process. And on a second or third time DUI you know we’re Almost always going to trial or setting it for trial in those cases and it’s more like a six to twelve month process for a second or third time DUI. 6:24 So those are kind of the the typical timelines. Of course we can make it go faster, we can make it go slower depending on what the case might need in order to get it done the right way. 6:34 Umm. We don’t want to needlessly delay anything but on the other hand I don’t want to rush anything. I want to have the time to flip over every rock and look underneath it and if there’s something there then I’m going to see it. 6:46 I’m going to know what to do with it and we can use it to to its maximum potential hopefully in the case but it takes time to do these things the right way. 6:56 They’re not going to get knocked out at the first court date.