First, let's understand what an ALR hearing is. In most DWI cases, when you are arrested, a cop offers you a breath test. If you turn down the breath test, or "fail" the breath test, the cop seizes your driver's license and give you a notice of DL suspension.
The notice tells you (in incredibly fine print) that you have to decide within 15 days whether or not you wish to request and ALR hearing -- a hearing to decide if your DL will be suspended. If you do nothing, the Department gof Public Safety gets to automatically suspend your license 40 days after the day of your arrest.
Sometimes people accused of a crime aren't thinking quite clearly when they come to court.
Here is my personal top ten list of stupid things I have witnessed people do in court (please don't make the next list):
1. Wearing a huge marijuana leaf belt buckle to a sentencing hearing in a possession of marijuana case (The judge busted the deal);
2. Wearing a blue shirt, blue sweater, and blue pants to a jury trial in gang-related stabbing case where the defendant said his defense was "It couldn't have been me -- I'm a blood, not crip." (He was convicted.);
3. Absconding five minutes before the the punishment phase of a felony jury trial (The jury foreman told me afterwards that they would have given probation if he hadn't run off. Instead the jury gave him seven years prison. The cops caught him two weeks after the trial.);
4. Showing up to a pretrial hearing in a Resisting Arrest case and calling a male bailiff a "bitch" in open court because he asked the defendant to turn off her cellphone (She was taken into custody for contempt of court);
5. Showing up drunk to a driver's license suspension hearing in a DWI case;
6. Making out in the back of the courtroom during court;
7. Sneaking out of the courthouse during a jury trial announcement docket in order to go down the street to Sonic ("Mr. Friesenhahn, sometimes you just gotta have a strawberry shake.");
8. Confessing to me five minutes before I was to put him on the stand in his jury trial, "I forgot to tell you that I'm really guilty";
9. Accidentally dropping a condom on the courtroom floor in front of the bench while a female judge was presiding;
10. Whispering in my ear, after turning down a deferred adjudication (against my advice) in a possession of controlled substance case where he was accused of vomiting up a balloon full of heroin onto the floor of an emergency room, "Let's make 'em sweat."
OUT OF COURT HONORABLE MENTION
1. The guy who called me on the phone and told me that he needed his case rescheduled because he and his wife had had a fight the night before, she had kicked him in the groin, and now his balls were so swollen that he was unable to walk (The court rescheduled his case.)
Don't forget to read the fine print on pretrial diversion agreements. "Pretrial diversion" is a special program, which is offered by a prosecutor, that allows a person to voluntarily sign an agreement to be supervised by a probation department.