The only thing worse than taking legal advice from a convicted felon or a person currently incarcerated is listening to your drunken friends tell you how to avoid getting caught for drunk driving, or listening to that same drunken friend tell you exactly what criteria automatically classifies as DUI or DWI in court.
"Yeah man, if you leave your keys in the ignition, even if you are in the back seat, you are SOOO DUI, automatically, BUSTED dude!"
Well, your friend, and lets just call him Brad, has a tiny kernel of truth that he is expanding to unjustifiable proportion. For example, you will be legitimately busted for DUI if, like in the case where the the DeKalb County police responded to a report of a single car accident where the car in question was found resting against a raised curb blocking the entrance to an apartment complex, and the driver was found slumped over the wheel, passed out and drooling on himself, and when revived via smelling salts, the only words out of his mouth were to say that he was "fucked up." Yes indeed, the cop also found the keys in the ignition, but that particular fact was one of many, like the beer bottle found on the passenger seat, that sealed the fate of the Defendant in that case.
Despite what Brad tells you, the single fact of your keys being in the ignition are not determinative of your committing the crime of driving drunk in Georgia.
Those keys in the ignition may be particularly relevant to finding that you are guilty of drunk driving if you are, for example, found parked at a rest stop behind the wheel of your car, with its hood still warm to the touch, but that drunk driving determination will be a no-brainer if you tell the police that you were just out drinking with a girlfriend after having a fight with your wife, then go ahead and consent to not only the rigged field sobriety tests, but the breath tests as well.
The facts of the matter are that there is no one circumstantial fact alone that will be determinative of you being doomed to being found guilty of drunk driving, but some facts are more damning than others.
Some day, you will find a less dangerous way of getting around when you are drinking, but hey, until then, a West Georgia DUI lawyer has to eat too.
Thanks for the post Mr. Walters. I personally have never gotten a DUI. However, my favorite singer George Jones got a DUI once on a riding lawn mower. As the story goes, his wife wouldnt give him the keys to the Cadillac cause he was drunk again so Ole Possum just took to the John Deere and putted his drunk ass all the way up to Sue Ellen's Bar & Grill. He was busted later that night for driving his John Deere on the road and swerving into yard after yard. And when he got into a yard he would engage the blade laughing like a crazy man before he would swerve back into the road. He scalped half the county before the law arrested him. Thats one country badass
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