A successful real estate professional from Brooklyn owned a second home on Shelter Island. One night, driving on the island, he was arrested for DWI, and the case landed in Shelter Island Town Justice Court. He came to me terrified about one thing above all: his professional license and the career he had spent years building. A conviction could have ended it.
The situation was difficult. He had a prior DWI arrest on his record, so the District Attorney refused to reduce the charge to a non-criminal violation. Most attorneys would have told him to take the best plea he could get and hope for the best.
I do not work that way. I went through the prosecution’s handling of the case line by line, and I found a flaw serious enough to challenge the entire prosecution. I filed a motion to dismiss. The motion was granted in its entirety, and the case was completely dismissed. No conviction. No mark on his record. His license and his future stayed intact.
When your career depends on the outcome, you do not want a lawyer who negotiates from weakness. You want one who knows this island’s court, reads every page, and finds the flaw the prosecution missed.
