There’s a lot of confusion around this issue in New York. Think about it. You’re in the police precinct. You’re scared. You’ve been arrested, you’re brought back to the police station, and you’re asked by a police officer to take a chemical test. You’ve maybe never been in this situation before, and you start thinking, “do I have a right to ask an attorney what I should do before I decide whether to submit to this test?” Well, the answer is, sort of. You don’t have the same kind of right to a lawyer that’s covered in the 6th Amendment. The state doesn’t have to actually bring you a free lawyer, and they don’t have to delay testing indefinitely. They don’t have to just let you hem and haw over whether to contact an attorney or to try to reach an attorney forever. But New York does recognize what’s considered a qualified right to an attorney in these situations. It’s been interpreted by courts to basically mean, in the olden days, a phone and a phone book. Today, it might mean access to your cell phone for a period of time in order to access some contacts or look up an Attorney’s name that you have. So you do have an opportunity to contact an attorney, but it’s small and limited, and it doesn’t give you the right to put off delaying that decision on whether to take that test forever. So what it means is that you can choose at the moment to try to reach out to an attorney for a private conversation to determine whether it’s in your best interest to submit to a chemical test. But if you can’t reach one or you don’t have someone to call or you’re trying to call someone and they’re not answering, it’s not as if the police need to actually bring you a free lawyer, just a phone and a phone book.
March 28, 2024
The surcharge system in New Jersey is an additional penalty imposed on individuals who have committed certain traffic violations or
