North Carolina DWI

Bill Powers – DWI DUI Defenses – Automatism

The attorney for a Charlotte woman whose blood alcohol level was almost three times the legal limit says she may have actually been a victim in the case that landed her in jail charged with DWI.

A UNC-Charlotte police officer found the woman passed out behind the wheel of her car parked near a utility building on campus.

She was wearing only a black bra, and in two tests her blood alcohol level was .24 and .23.

But her attorney, Bill Powers, said she may be one of a growing number of women in the Charlotte area who have had their drinks spiked then end up charged with DWI.

“These cases are ones where people don’t want to admit that something happened to them,” Powers said.

Powers could not talk about the case specifically, but he has represented several other cases in the last 18 months where women say someone spiked their drinks in a bar or club and they ended up drunk behind the wheel of a car, with no idea of how they got there.

The law calls that Automatism, where someone isn’t conscious of what he or she is doing, and is not, therefore, responsible.

“It is scary. It’s scary to think about, that you can be in a bar somewhere and someone puts something in your drink,” Powers said.

Prosecutors don’t comment on pending cases, but a former prosecutor who is now a defense attorney said it is a tough case for a defense attorney to prove.

“You have to show that she became intoxicated involuntarily which then led to unconsciousness essentially,” Mark Foster said.

Bill Powers – Mecklenburg County Justice Academy – Guest Speaker

Bill Powers – Guest Speaker

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Justice Academy.  Defense Perspectives of DWI Arrests, Standardized Field Sobriety Testing & Trial Techniques.  Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Cornelius & UNCC Police Departments.  SFST Training & Certification Program. 

November 15, 2011 6:00p.m., Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fine Collection Program – Courthouse Information

832 East Fourth Street, Suite 4000
Charlotte, NC 28202
Office: 704-686-0240
Fax: 704-686-0321

The purpose of the Fine Collection Program is:

To hold accountable convicted defendants who have been assessed monetary sanctions and placed on unsupervised probation;

To improve the credibility of the judiciary through the collection of monetary sanctions in unsupervised probation cases;

To remove from the courtroom the unseemly and time-consuming bartering over payment terms;

To proactively pursue the collection of monetary sanctions for the target population;

Ameliorate overcrowding of the jails due to non-compliance; and
Improve the monetary collection rate for the target population.

The department performs the collection of most court levied fines and costs in the amount of $200 or more for those who have been placed on unsupervised probation. The department employs phone calls, warning letters, violation notices, and orders for arrest to compel delinquent payments. The coordination and enforcement efforts of this department ensure accountability on the part of the defendant and maintain the credibility of the court.

Mecklenburg County – Courthouse Daycare

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Court House Daycare Center: Larry King’s Clubhouse

Larry King’s Clubhouse: Children’s Play and Care Center, Inc. is a free, drop-in childcare center for children between the ages of 6 weeks and 12 years of age whose family members are conducting business at the courthouse or serving as jurors. Additionally, the center cares for children who are at the courthouse because they are witnesses or are the subject of child neglect or custody proceedings. The center provides a safe, secure, and enriching environment for children.
Larry King’s Clubhouse offers quality care, including developmentally and culturally appropriate activities, on all days that the Court is in operation.
The infant toddler room provides care for a maximum of 10 children, ages 6 weeks-2 ½ years. The preschool school-age room provides care for a maximum of 19 children, ages 2 ½ –12 years. Learning centers include art, music and movement, computer, blocks, dramatic play, books and puppets, manipulatives, and activities for school-age children. Morning and afternoon snacks are provided.
Operating hours are 8:00 am until 5:00 pm, with an hour recess at lunchtime when court is not in session. If families must return to court after the lunch break, they pick up their children for lunch and return them to the center after lunch. Children are admitted as needed throughout each day via an enrollment interview conducted by a staff member. Reservations are encouraged and can be made by calling 704-686-0285.

A culturally diverse staff includes an executive director, two lead teachers, and two assistant teachers. All staff members have early childhood backgrounds, undergo thorough criminal background checks, and are certified in CPR and first aid.

Larry King’s Clubhouse is located on the second level of the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, 832 East Fourth Street, in Suite 2510.

Larry King’s Clubhouse is a not-for-profit agency, governed by a board of directors. Donations are accepted.

STEP Court – Mecklenburg County – DWI Treatment Information

Drug Treatment Court in Mecklenburg County

The Drug Treatment Court program is a non-traditional court sponsored program aimed at stopping the cycle of abuse of alcohol and other drugs related to criminal activity. Begun in 1995, the program offers substance addicted defendants charged with non-violent offenses an alternative to incarceration. Program participants are held accountable for their behavior in a rehabilitative environment that provides a holistic approach to substance abuse while ensuring the safety of the citizens of our community.

Program participants are referred by their attorney or by the sentencing judge. Participants are screened prior to admission to determine their appropriateness for program participation. Upon acceptance, participants are assigned a case coordinator who works with them for the duration of their program participation, which is minimally one year in length. The case coordinator assists program participants with the myriad of problems that they may be faced with in their lives outside of their substance abuse issues. They meet regularly with program participants to assist in modifying behavior changes and assist participants in gaining appropriate access to needed services (i.e. medical, social, employment, and housing).

The Drug Treatment Court Program currently operates 6 court programs (2 District Courts, 2 DWI Courts, 1 Superior Court, 1 Family Court, 1 Juvenile Court and 1 Mental Health Court).

Bill Powers Speaks at Substance Abuse Parent Symposium Hosted by Charlotte Christian School

Bill Powers on Secured Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring SCRAM in North Carolina DWI

Alcohol monitoring devices poised to spread in wake of new law

When strapped to a leg, device can detect use of alcohol anytime – not just when drinker gets behind the wheel

 

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SCRAMx alcohol monitoring device

Bill Powers is a tech geek. That may set him apart from other lawyers, but he thinks his Bar comrades need more than a passing interest in the evolving technology of alcohol detection to adequately defend their clients in court.

Not that continuous alcohol monitoring, or CAM, is anything new. It’s been used sporadically in North Carolina since 2005. What’s new is a recent legislative push that figures to expand use of the technology across the state.

Investment banker Bruce Roberts of Brevard-based Rehabilitation Support Services was a part of that legislative push. Rehabilitation Support Services’ authorized service partner is Alcohol Monitoring Systems, the maker of SCRAMx, an alcohol detection device.

“We lobbied the legislature heavily this year,” Roberts said. Rehabilitation Support Services was involved in promoting legislation that includes CAM as condition for sentencing or pretrial release in certain alcohol-related offenses.

With the passage of “Laura’s Law,” and other legislation, device makers and purveyors of CAM devices may have hit the jackpot. “Laura’s Law” toughened penalties against repeat driving-while-impaired offenders and mandated use of CAM in certain instances.

But increased use of CAM may come at a price, said Shelby attorney David Teddy, and criminal defendants may be the ones paying it, if they can.

How CAM works

Various state statutes use the term CAM as a generic reference to alcohol detection technology. But SCRAM — Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring – is a trade name used by AMS, the company that first developed and patented the now familiar SCRAMx bracelets.

The devices are secured around a person’s lower leg, near the ankle, using a combination of infrared light and a probe to ensure – based on skin density and temperature – that it is affixed to a human body. The makers of SCRAMx chose the lower leg as a detection point because it poses the least interference with daily activities, Roberts said.

Roberts said the human body passes about one percent of consumed ethyl alcohol through perspiration. “The amount of alcohol burned up through the skin is predictable and proportionate from sweat glands spread across different parts of body,” he said. The SCRAMx devices contain an electro chemical fuel cell that creates an electric current. Roberts said the electric current in the device measures the number of ethyl alcohol molecules produced from a person’s sweat glands and sends the data to a computer.

Powers said he tried a SCRAMx bracelet out when the devices were first introduced in North Carolina in 2005. “I tried to mess around with the thing every way I could,” he said. He tried placing a piece of bologna between the device and his skin, but he received a call a few hours later indicating that the device had been subject to
tampering.

On another occasion, Powers said he drank alcohol. “I received a call telling me how much I drank,” he said.

Bruce Roberts and attorney Bill Powers

Powers said the value of CAM is that it can be maintained 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The often-used ignition interlock device, by contrast, prevents a driver from starting a car if, based on a single breath, the presence of alcohol is detected. That’s useful from a public safety standpoint, Powers said, but it doesn’t help a driver who wants to prove that he or she has abstained from drinking over an extended period of time.

CAM can be useful to practitioners in at least three phases of driving-while-impaired cases, Powers said.

In the pretrial phase, a magistrate or judge can make a driver’s release conditional on use of CAM. A judge can also require CAM as a condition of a person’s probation after a DWI conviction or plea of guilt. In some instances under “Laura’s Law,” signed into law by Gov. Beverly Perdue this summer, use of CAM is mandated for repeat DWI offenders.

CAM technology can also be used in N.C. Department of Motor Vehicles license restoration hearings to prove a driver has abstained from using alcohol for a period of time. Legislation passed in 2009 [G.S. § 20-19(d) and (e1)] provides that 120 days or more of CAM-verified sobriety will be accepted by the DMV as evidence of abstinence for approval of conditional drivers licenses. Powers said CAM evidence is being used increasingly by applicants in DMV hearings to win conditional restoration of licenses.

Powers said defense attorneys need to fully familiarize themselves with CAM-related statues and CAM technology. Aside from “Laura’s Law,” the Justice Reinvestment Act, which becomes effective on Jan. 1, 2012, will enable courts and probation officers to require that convicted offenders submit to substance abuse monitoring, which may include CAM.

The N.C. Department of Corrections has endorsed expanded use of CAM for alcohol-related crimes.  The department issued a request for proposals late last year to private vendors for electronic monitoring technology.

“In the past, CAM was used on ad hoc basis,” Powers said. “Now it has been legislatively approved and in some instances mandated.”

Cost concerns

Roberts said the SCRAMx device costs $75 to install and $12 per day of monitoring. He said as the volume of usage goes up, the price may go down.

He said the Justice Reinvestment Act promotes incorporating and maximizing use of so-called “community-based sanctions,” or criminal sentences that provide an alternative to detention state prisons. Compared to the costs associated with detention, Roberts said, use of CAM is cheap.

Teddy said that where CAM is used as a substitute for jail time, it saves money. But an active prison sentence is usually reserved for offenders with multiple DWI convictions, and Teddy is concerned that CAM use will become a feature of virtually all DWI cases, even those involving first-time offenders.

Some defendants, he said, simply won’t be able to afford CAM, especially in these difficult economic times. Teddy said the costs associated with CAM will be piled on defendants who already face significant fines, increased court costs, and costs associated with probation and community service. Teddy said it will be difficult for unemployed defendants or those living in poverty to pay those costs.

“We’re going to get to the point where people simply can’t afford to comply with conditions placed on them by a court,” Teddy said.

Roberts said the problem of indigent defendants bearing the cost of CAM is a major issue. “There will have to be a balance between the benefits of enhanced rehabilitation and public safety versus the costs of criminal justice,” he said. “As use of this technology

Turning Away from DWI Checkpoint & Reasonable Suspicion in North Carolina – Quick Tips & Caselaw Starting Points for the Legal Practitioner

“[w]hen an officer observes conduct which leads him reasonably to believe that criminal conduct may be afoot, he may stop the suspicious person to make reasonable inquiries.” State v. Pearson, 348 N.C. 272, 275, 498 S.E.2d 599, 600 (1998). “`[T]he police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts, which taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant [the] intrusion.’” State v. Thompson, 296 N.C. 703, 706, 252 S.E.2d 776, 779 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, 906 (1968)), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 907, 100 S.Ct. 220, 62 L.Ed.2d 143 (1979).

[A] legal left turn at the intersection immediately preceding a posted DWI checkpoint, without more, does not justify an investigatory stop. We emphasize, however, that it is constitutionally permissible, and undoubtedly prudent, for officers to follow vehicles that legally avoid DWI checkpoints, in order to ascertain whether other factors exist which raise a reasonable and articulable suspicion that an occupant of the vehicle is engaged in criminal activity…. Thus, if [d]efendant was seized solely based on a legal left turn preceding the DWI checkpoint, that seizure was unconstitutional.          Id. at 296, 515 S.E.2d at 492.

Although a legal turn, by itself, is not sufficient to establish a reasonable, articulable suspicion, a legal turn in conjunction with other circumstances, such as the time, place and manner in which it is made, may constitute a reasonable, articulable suspicion which could justify an investigatory stop. As the United States Supreme Court recently stated in Illinois v. Wardlow, ___ U.S.___, [527 S.E.2d 924] 120 S.Ct. 673, 145 L.Ed.2d 570 (2000), “flight—wherever it occurs—is the consummate act of evasion: it is not necessarily indicative of wrongdoing, but it is certainly suggestive of such.” Id. at ___, 120 S.Ct. at 676, 145 L.Ed.2d at 576.

NOTE: There may be other facts and law relevant to the issue. Readers should not base any decision on the information provided herein and are specifically advised no client-lawyer relationship has been established. Put simply, seek the advice of competent counsel without delay to discuss the particular aspects of the case, factual scenario and historical background

WHY: The content herein is provided for educational purposes and should not be inferred as applying only to DWI / DUI criminal defense. In fact, it may be equally relevant to claims of personal injury involving accidents and the consumption of alcohol or more simply, to the daily practice of law.

Bill Powers lectures on such issues on a regular basis with the intent to educate, to be fair, to be accurate and to encourage, open, honest and scientific discussion on the subject. Bill Powers is managing partner of Powers McCartan, pllc.

Bill Powers of Powers McCartan, pllc Announces Personal Injury Law Affiliation with Daisley Law, pllc

Bill Powers of Powers McCartan, pllc announces affilation with Dailey Law, pllc. 

“If you, a friend or family member has been seriously injured, we’d like to help.” 

Focus on matters involving Impaired Driving. 

Powers McCartan, pllc and Daisley Law, pllc are separate legal entities.

Bill Powers Comments on Ambien Defense