First time in court

I have never been inside a court. Never even been called for jury duty. All I know about court is from TV shows like Law & Order and Judge Judy. Walking in is like airport security, take off all metal, put it in a bin and walk through a metal detector. Belt included, but you can leave your shoes on. Don't bring in a cell phone with a camera or any type of drink, they will send you back out. Then there are all these plexiglass windows for different things, few occupied, and a cubical farm behind them. Theres a billboard with the different judges and printouts of the dockets with names and times under each along with some codes for each name that probably mean something to someone. My name was on the docket under my judge for the correct time that I was supposed to have my plea.

My lawyer showed up and knew a whole bunch of people who worked there. He got the police report and we sat down and reviewed it. It was pretty standard stuff for an OWI. I was to plead guilty and hope for reduced points on my license and minimum probation time. Fines and court costs not reduced however. The judge even recognized my lawyer and said "always nice having you in my court", which was a tiny relief. The whole judge thing went really quick, I had to say "I understand" about 10 times and finally "yes, I'm guilty".

After that we had to check in at one of the windows where there was a really backwards and complicated profiling test I had to take. All of the questions where in a book, each one multiple choice, in normal book order but the answer sheet was in columns going down and then from right to left. Completely backwards. Many of the questions were really weird too, like "When was the last time you thought about suicide? O Within 1 month. O Within 1 year. O Within the last 10 years. O Often. O Never. WTH? And if you weren't super careful with the backwards-columns thing it was really easy to pick the wrong circle to fill in. I learned later on that I had indeed answered, or filled in the wrong circle on a couple of the questions. One was something about a prior felony which I'm sure I meant to answer no as I've never have anything more than a speeding ticket, but they asked me about it. The other that they (or the computer) said I answered wrong was "How many months did you work last year?" and I answered "12", which isn't incorrect... I never got an answer as to why that one was flagged.

I had to sign papers on my license restriction and got a copy of the dos and don'ts. Basically, for 3 months I can drive to and from work, to doctors or hospitals and to court or mandatory meetings/appointments. Anything else I need to have a signed note as to what and why or else I go to jail. I didn't take any chances with this. If I had to go get parts for work I typed up a quick note with the date and where I was going and had the boss sign it. It's interesting to note that my cell phone, the only number I ever give out on any of this paperwork, got two really weird texts from two different people right about this time. The text just had a download button, but they weren't from anyone who would ever send me a download and one of the people never even text me. The download just had a progress bar and I never let it finish as I didn't know what it was. I checked with the contacts who it was sent from and they had nothing, they never send me any text on that date. Really odd. I went and virus checked my phone, turned off GPS and tightened up security on it thinking how easy it would be for the cops to track my every move with my phone. Just a stop at CVS for a pack of gum and I'm in violation of my restricted license! Boom, more money! I'm speculating here.

Other papers to sign was weekly drug testing I now had to do, which I got nervous about. I have a Medical Marijuana card, which is legal in my state, and use weed pretty much every night so I asked my lawyer about it. He said I need to talk to the prosecutor or the testing place about it. So I asked again at the prosecutor window and they said to make sure I show my card to the drug testing place. The drug testing place is called JAMS and I didn't have any option to choose a different place.

No new costs at this point, surprisingly.

What driving with a .100 BAC and later testing positive for weed got me.

Here is a summary all the crap the court has put me through.

• When all is said and done I will have been drug tested about 100 times ($10 each).
• Holiday BAC (blow in a hand-held) testing ($5 each time) 5 to 8 times, both am and pm, on various holidays including the super bowl. Plan nothing but that on those holidays.
• (PRE-TREATMENT) I had to attend a mandatory 3 day pre-counseling class ($60) that trained you how to find and manipulate your way into substance abuse counseling. Counselors seem to be wary of people who are court ordered to go to counseling so you need to not entirely tell the truth to get in the door, and then tell them you are court ordered so they can report to your PO. This class is worse than useless and I recommend not using anything they say and just ask your PO to recommend one or pick one from the court list because anything else won't be accepted. 
• (LIFE ADJUSTMENT) Go to 12 sessions of counseling (mine is $50 each).
• (AA - NA) Find and attend AA meetings two times a week and have someone there sign your AA attendance sheet for the court. ($1 donation each time) This runs the entire length of my 18 month probation and is quite frankly, hell. This is highly religious in nature and my personal take on it is that replacing something that makes you stupid with something designed to keep you stupid is just plain stupid. Aside from that, going to the same group all the time, I'm getting to know some of the people and most of them are pretty cool.
• Visit my parole officer (PO) once a month so they can copy my drug testing and AA meeting sheets and set the next date. Mine is friendly enough and so far straight-up about answering any questions I have. I always try to come up with questions each time I visit, usually stuff I already know the answer to, but just to confirm and double check so I don't get in any more trouble. After all the court fees are paid off my PO switched to every other month reporting in person. Then in the off months I filled out the report sheet, scanned that, my testing and AA sheets and email it to him. You can fax, email or snail mail around the middle of the month.
• 50 hours community service ($15 per day). You pay for this in your court fees so usually by the time you get to doing this it's already paid for. They give you a log sheet with a raised seal on it, treat it like gold because it's the only record you'll have of your service hours. Pick a place from the list of places, but pick wisely as some of them can suck. I chose a church and it usually consisted of a lot of cleaning and moving things around. I heard from others that the state parks are a workout (shoveling sh*t), High Schools are not bad and the police and fire stations are a nightmare.
• The cost total will be about $6000 when all is said and done.

So far all of the people I've met in AA that have had a DUI have had more than one DUI, not a lot of them, not even most of them, ALL of them! 

Just 3 or 4 beers is all it takes to blow a .08 and that's all they need... BAC Charts

Some tips I've learned along the way:
1) Keep all of your paper work. Especially stuff you have had signed. PO's will try to take your paper work. Ask them to make copies and let you keep the originals. Reason is: if you don't have it, someone else can loose it, and you'll have to do it all over again.
2) Stay positive. It's a big bunch of bull shit but take it in stride and try to always talk about it in a positive light. Negativity will only make things worse.
3) Your PO isn't always going to guide you. I've heard many stories of people violating their probation due to being late with community service because they forgot about it or didn't get their sheet from the PO until late in the sentence. Be it sketchy stories or PO's jerking around, either way it's in your best interest to stay on top of things.
4) Stand your ground in AA, there are a lot of people who will pounce on you if you seem at all weak or insecure. They want to help but really they want to sell you the AA bible and get you into their religion. If that's your thing then fine, if not you will have to fend them off all the time. It sucks to be court ordered to put up with this kind of conflict and walking on egg shells at every meeting so you don't offend their delicate religion. For me this is by far the worst punishment of this whole ordeal.
5) If you have a Michigan Medical Mariana card get it revoked. It is beyond useless and you cannot buy a gun nor get a CPL if you have it.
Send a written request along with your card and a copy of your photo ID to
MMMW
P.O. box 30083
Lansing, MI 48909

They will send a letter back in about 2 weeks.