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North Carolina Teens Face Criminal Charges For Burning Opossum

Published on: January 9, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Attorney J. Bradley Smith answering the question: “What are the long term effects of being convicted of a crime?”

Three teenage boys in Tobaccoville, North Carolina are now facing serious criminal charges after police say they received a tip that the trio had burned an opossum alive and videotaped the attack.

Authorities say they received a tip last month that 18-year-old Kalob Hubbard and two other young men, a 17-year-old and a 15-year-old, recorded an attack on an opossum that ultimately died after being set on fire. Police investigators say that the attack took place in late October or early November and that a video of the incident was posted by one of the teens on Instagram.

Hard as it is to believe, by making the video publicly available on the Internet the boys appear to have provided the police with precisely the evidence they need to arrest and charge them with animal cruelty. Police say that now that the boys have been arrested and charged the video has since been taken down and will only be shown again if necessary during the criminal trial, with the sheriff’s office maintaining a copy as evidence.

Drunk Iowa Man Arrested After BAC Levels Top The Charts

Published on: January 7, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Attorney J. Bradley Smith answering the question: “What happens if I am convicted of a DUI or DWI in North Carolina?”

A 28-year-old from Iowa City, Iowa recently set records after being arrested for drunk driving. The record was not the number of times he’d been arrested, but was instead the amount of alcohol in his system.

Levi Carter was arrested for driving drunk last Friday at around two in the morning. A passenger tipped off the police to Carter’s intoxication after the two drove off the road and crashed into a street sign. The woman called the cops saying that she’d been injured and needed the assistance of law enforcement.

When cops arrived, the woman told officers that when she at Carter’s home she found him pacing around his basement talking to people that were not there. Carter was unable to hold himself upright and smelled strongly of booze. When police approached Carter he claimed that he was not intoxicated, saying that he had only had two Bud Lights to drink all evening.

Despite his protestations, Carter was unable to perform a standard eye test or any other aspect of the routine field sobriety tests. Cops then got out a Breathalyzer machine and had Carter give a breath sample. The first reading registered a 0.467 BAC. The subsequent tests appear to have broken the machine, with the results only coming back as “HI.” The stunned police officers slapped Carter in handcuffs and took him to jail to sober up. Carter has unsurprisingly been charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated.

Charlotte Drunk Driving Plea Deal Rejected And Approved By Two Judges Within A Few Hours

Published on: January 2, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Attorney J. Bradley Smith answering the question: “Are breath test results always accurate?”

In an odd drunk driving case out of Charlotte, a judge in Mecklenburg County recently accepted a plea deal for a driver only several hours after another judge rejected the identical deal.

The plea deal involved a sad case where a passenger was killed in the car driven by Bairon Sandoval. The accident took place last February and Sandoval was initially charged with felony death by vehicle, DWI and lacking a valid driver’s license. His criminal defense attorney was able to reach a deal with prosecutors who agreed to reduce the charge to involuntary manslaughter in exchange for Sandoval serving between 10 and 20 months behind bars.

Sandoval had admitted that he and several friends had spent the evening drinking in a bar prior to driving home with a friend, 20-year-old Tatiana Rivera. Rivera was killed and two other innocent victims were injured in the accident that occurred after Sandoval ran into a tree near the intersection of Tyvola and Old Pineville Roads. Police officers tested Sandoval’s blood and determined his BAC was 0.10 percent, slightly higher than the state’s 0.08 percent legal limit.

Given that the plea deal had been reached between the prosecutor and Sandoval’s attorney, all that remained was to have a judge sign off on the deal, something that is typically only seen as a formality. Such deals are commonplace and save both sides significant time and money, reducing the risks that are inherent in a criminal trial. Despite the deal already being in place, one judge initially disagreed with the plea arrangement, saying that he was not willing to sign off on such a light sentence given that Sandoval’s drunk driving had directly led to another person’s death.

LAPD Announces New Oral Swab To Test For Drugs

Published on: December 31, 2013 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Attorney J. Bradley Smith answering the question: “What happens if I am convicted of a DUI or DWI in North Carolina?”

The Los Angeles Police Department made a surprising announcement recently when an official revealed that officers would begin carrying portable devices that can check drivers for drug use. Officials with the police department say that the tool will be rolled out to combat increased instances of drugged driving, often due to medical marijuana usage.

q-tip Charlotte Criminal Lawyer North Carolina DWI Attorney.jpg The new tools, which are swab-testing kits, will be used primarily during DUI checkpoints and in jails to test those who have already been arrested. The department intends to pair the devices with breathalyzers and subject drivers at checkpoints to both a breath test and mouth swab to detect the presence of drugs. The test has been designed to screen for the presence of methamphetamine, cocaine, benzodiazepine, methadone and THC, a component of marijuana.

An LAPD spokesperson said that officers would ask drivers to consent to a swab of their gum line. After the swab has been collected, the tool will then read the fluids and immediately alert officers to the presence of drugs. Previously, such a test would require blood samples taken by nurses, which would then be sent off for analysis.

Police officials have said that the growing prevalence of medical marijuana dispensaries has pushed the department to consider new strategies to detect impaired drivers. Law enforcement authorities say that driving under the influence of drugs, known as drugged driving, is just as dangerous as drunk driving and it will be an important priority of officers in the area to limit the ability of drivers to engage in similarly risky behavior. Officials with the city attorney’s office have said that nearly 600 DUI cases that were filed against LA drivers in the past year concerned the use of drugs, a number they want to see increase given the new technology.