Lisa Pelosi: The first and foremost important that you get along with the attorney that you’re interviewing that you feel that you can trust them, you feel that they are someone who will answer your phone. A phone call is a good sign with just the attorney is 24 hours and the attorney will pick up the phone for 24 hours. Then you know that when you call them, they’re going to be there for you and that that’s an important thing.
Other than that, you want to deal with someone and ask someone what percentage of cases they handle that are criminal cases because some attorneys handle five and six areas of law. I handle only criminal cases. Also, I would want to ask a perspective attorney that I was going to hire what … If they’re a trial attorney, how many trials they’ve done.
It’s Good to Hire a Criminal Defense Attorney Who’s a Former Prosecutor
Interviewer: You do have experience as a prosecutor, correct?
Lisa Pelosi: Yes, I’m a former prosecutor. Yes, I’m a former prosecutor who handled every kind of criminal case including drunk driving cases. I’ve done just many, many trials both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. I also do federal cases which usually don’t entail drunk driving cases, but I do federal work as well.
Interviewer: What have you observed over the years as a former prosecutor? What do you know about what a prosecutor will do? What will a prosecutor look for? What will a prosecutor probably use against someone in a DWI case?
Lisa Pelosi: They’ll look at how the stop was made. Was the stop justified and then they’ll look at the paperwork that’s involved in the drunk driving or there’s a protocol that’s pretty extensive. The prosecutor will want to make sure that that paperwork is in good order.
The Prosecutor Looks for Any Incriminating Evidence Whereas a Good Defense Attorney Looks for Mistakes that may Help the Client
A good defense attorney is going to look at the paperwork and know where mistakes were made in the paperwork which will help the client. The prosecutor will also look at any video that’s done by the arresting officers which is a common practice in drunk driving cases.
It’s imperative that defense attorneys review those videos because often times police officers will write an individual they stop, “Eyes were water and their speech was slurred.” Then when a defense attorney looks at the video, the person’s eyes were not red and their eyes were not watery and their speech is perfectly fine. The prosecutor is also going to weigh that evidence as well.
Notable Examples of DWI Cases in New York
Interviewer: Are there any particular DWI cases that you can recall that you can share, and what ended up happened with the case?
Lisa Pelosi: I dealt with a case where they did a road block stop, a checkpoint stop in New Your state and a client blew, it was a young college student whose reading was above drunk driving percentage in New York state and when he was pulled over, he clearly was intoxicated, except when we went to trial …
When we went to hearing, the protocols were not adequately and properly followed by the police department who put the checkpoint together and I have the whole case dismissed which was really important for the young man who was trying to … Who just graduated from college and would accepted a job in the financial world and because the case was dismissed, he was able to keep the job.
Had it not been dismissed, he would have not been able to proceed with working in the financial world. That was a case that I enjoyed working on and had a really good result with.
