{"id":2963,"date":"2024-04-05T16:46:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T20:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-195849-4032129.cloudwaysapps.com\/driving-while-license-suspended-or-revoked-a-return-to-forever\/"},"modified":"2025-01-07T09:44:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T14:44:59","slug":"driving-while-license-suspende","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.randalawyers.com\/blog\/driving-while-license-suspende\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving Without a License (A True Story From 2 Michigan Courts)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As practicing criminal defense lawyers who concentrate in DUI and driver\u2019s license restoration<\/a> cases, my team and I spend all our time in the Greater-Detroit area courts of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and the surrounding counties. A key part of that is handling loads of DWLR (Driving With License Revoked) and DWLS (Driving With License Suspended) cases.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ll see, this area of the law is very much related to the larger driver\u2019s license restoration process. To begin our review here, note that a suspended license charge and a revoked license charge are essentially identical, and covered under the very same law (operating vehicle if license<\/a>, registration certificate or vehicle group designation suspended, revoked, or denied). We\u2019ll examine the penalties in the next section below.<\/p>\n

To help explain, we\u2019re going to look at an interesting and somewhat recent pair of DWLR cases our law firm handled for a client, one local, and the other in a city outside the Greater-Detroit (hereafter referred to as the \u201cdistant court\u201d). Our experience there reinforces the reason our law firm generally restricts the criminal and DUI part of our practice to the Metro-Detroit area.<\/p>\n

In the interests of diplomacy, I won\u2019t say where this \u201cdistant court\u201d is located, other than to point out that it was NOT in the Greater-Detroit area outlined above.<\/p>\n

Our Client\u2019s History as an Unlicensed Driver<\/h2>\n
\"police<\/figure>\n

Our client hired us to handle two Driving While License Suspended, Revoked or Denied (DWLR) second-offense cases: one here, in Metro-Detroit, and the other in that \u201cdistant court\u201d mentioned above. His last DWLS\/DWLR conviction occurred more than 10 years before he hired us. In total, he had four prior DWLS\/DWLR convictions.<\/p>\n

Those occurred because his Michigan driver\u2019s license had been revoked due to several prior DUI convictions, the last of which occurred about ten years before the arrest in this case. Before these DWLR cases, our client was actually eligible, time-wise, to file a formal driver\u2019s license restoration<\/a> appeal.<\/p>\n

About nine years earlier, after his last DUI, our client left Michigan and obtained a license from his new state. To be clear, that could not happen currently because all 50 states and the District of Columbia now use the National Driving Register<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, any suspension, revocation or hold in one state will prevent a person from getting a license in any other state.<\/p>\n

About 5 years before his most recent arrest for DWLR in the \u201cdistant court,\u201d our client had come back to Michigan to visit family. He wasn\u2019t here long before getting pulled over in a local, Metro-Detroit city, and because his Michigan license was revoked (even though he had one from another state), he was charged with DWLS\/DWLR. 2nd offense.<\/p>\n

He then returned home without taking care of this Michigan matter and all but forgot about it \u2014 until he came back a second time and got arrested for DWLS\/DWLR again, this time in the jurisdiction of that \u201cdistant court.\u201d<\/p>\n

When his LEIN (Law Enforcement Investigation Network) record was run, it came up that he had an outstanding bench warrant<\/strong><\/a> for his failure to take care of the older DWLS\/DWLR case pending in the Greater-Detroit area. This meant he was then facing 2 cases \u2013 the first and older, local one, and the second in the \u201cdistant court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fighting For Reduced Jail Time<\/h2>\n

As the saying goes, \u201cTiming is everything.\u201d Sometimes, however, the wheels of justice grind away on their own schedule, and that\u2019s what happened here. The timing didn\u2019t work out because it would have been preferable for his local case to be handled first, since we knew we could work that one out very favorably.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the case in the \u201cdistant court\u201d came before the one in the local court.<\/p>\n

Thus, we had to travel out there and work a deal with the local prosecutor there before handling the local case. To be fair, he seemed understanding about our client\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n

We pointed out to the prosecutor that the driving record made clear it had been over ten years since our client was last convicted of any traffic offense<\/strong>. However, he would not budge and allow our client to plead to a \u201cnon-reporting\u201d offense. Instead, that prosecutor would only agree to reduce the charge from a second-offense DWLR to a first-offense DWLR.<\/p>\n

The potential penalties for a 2nd offense are much more severe, so that was definitely a good break. That\u2019s clear enough just by looking at the key differences between a first offense and second offense charge under Michigan\u2019s motor vehicle code:<\/p>\n