About
This website is about the other side of the story….
For years we have read DUI press stories about the "slaughter on the nation’s highways", watched tragic stories of promising lives cut short by drunk drivers. Pressure groups such as MADD have been wildly successful in fomenting public hysteria and, with no politician daring to oppose them, pushing through ever stricter laws and harsher punishments. As a result, we are repeatedly assured, the number of "alcohol related" traffic fatalities continues to drop dramatically.
My name is Lawrence Taylor. I’m a lawyer in Southern California. I defend those accused of driving under the influence. I see the other side of the story every day.
I see the politicians stumbling over themselves to prove who is the toughest on drunk drivers. I see the judges nervously watching members of MADD in the audience as they pass sentence in a DUI case. I see the the steady erosion of our Constitutional rights in DUI cases, a phenomenon that has come to be known as "the DUI exception to the Constitution": illegal DUI sobriety checkpoints, forceful and violent seizure of blood, no right to see a lawyer, double jeopardy, denial of the right to jury trial, presumptions of guilt, defective breath tests blindly accepted into evidence, scientific facts banned by law from the courtroom, routine violations of due process and basic fairness in trial….all because "the ends justify the means."
But there is a cost to this perversion of the American system of justice. There are unseen victims: you and I. And I would like to talk about that. I invite your comments….
So, you ask, who is this guy? And what makes him such an expert? The following is from promotional materials for a seminar at which I recently spoke:
Lawrence Taylor is the most respected DUI attorney in the country today. A former Marine and graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (1966) and the UCLA School of Law (1969), he served as deputy county counsel, deputy public defender and deputy district attorney in Los Angeles before entering private practice. He was the trial judge’s legal advisor in People vs Charles Manson, was Supreme Court counsel in the Onion Field murder case, and was retained by the Attorney General of Montana as an independent Special Prosecutor to conduct a one-year grand jury probe of governmental corruption.
Turning to teaching, Mr. Taylor was a member of the faculty of Gonzaga University School of Law, where in his second year he was voted "Professor of the Year"; served as Visiting Associate Professor at Pepperdine University Law School; and was appointed Fulbright Professor of Law at Osaka University in Japan.
Lawrence Taylor is also the author of over thirty articles and 12 books, including the standard textbooks on DUI litigation, Drunk Driving Defense, 8th ed., and California Drunk Driving Defense, 4th ed., and over the past 25 years has proven a popular lecturer on trial tactics and techniques at over 200 legal seminars in 38 states. He was one of the original 10 founders of the National College for DUI Defense, later serving as its Dean. On July 25, 2002, at Harvard Law School, Mr. Taylor was presented with the College’s "Lifetime Achievement Award". He continues to be 1 of only 2 DUI attorneys in the United States with a biography in Wikipedia.
Serving Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange Counties, Mr. Taylor limits the practice of his 4-attorney DUI law firm to drunk driving defense exclusively.
Jon C. Ibanez, attorney-at-law.
Mr. Ibanez graduated from University of California, Santa Cruz and earned his law degree from Western State University, College of Law where he graduated with a certificate in criminal law studies with honors.
Mr. Ibanez currently practices criminal defense as a solo practitioner as well as an Of Counsel Associate for several criminal defense firms in Los Angeles. Mr. Ibanez has defended cases ranging from simple misdemeanor DUI cases to DUI murder cases.
In addition to the practice of criminal law, Mr. Ibanez is also an adjunct professor at Westwood College where he teaches paralegal courses and criminal justice courses.
