Miami DUI Law Blog

As Christine Ferretti and Josh Katzenstein report for the Detroit News, former Miss USA Rama Fakih, the first Arab-American Miss USA winner, won't have to spend any time behind bars after she was arrested and charged with driving under the influence.

On Dec. 3, the 26-year-old was pulled over by the cops on suspicion of drunk driving when she failed to use a turn signal while changing lanes and was weaving. The police appeared to have administered a breath test, which registered roughly twice the legal limit.

Brian Fung, writing for the Atlantic, begins his piece with what by now is probably common knowledge: that yakking and texting on your mobile phone while driving is roughly equivalent to the effect of the .08 blood alcohol limit for impaired driving.

But what's surprising are the research results conducted at the University of Washington, which appears to have uncovered a link between drivers who are "attached" to their mobile phones and the occurrence of car wrecks.

The link involves addiction.

"The state is very lucky no one was killed," says the complaint.

We've written about police misconduct involving DUI cases. As defense attorneys, we know how important it is that you protect your rights, especially in light of the fact that the police don't always follow the rules. But this will be the first time - and perhaps the only - that we write about police misconduct involving a so-called "death race."

In an opinion piece published by the Herald-Tribune, the author writes that alcohol-related car wrecks that result in fatalities can lead to "life-altering" consequences for the accused driver, like DUI manslaughter charges, which carry the likely possibility of significant time behind bars.

And these consequences exist even for those drivers with no criminal records.

The author touches on an issue that we seldom read about in the news: car wrecks caused by drunk driving obviously impact the lives of those killed and their families, but they also seriously impact the lives of people accused and convicted of DUI manslaughter.