Allowing An Unlicensed Driver Case Dismissed

The owner of a vehicle ended up in a tight spot when she was charged with a first-degree misdemeanor crime for allowing an unlicensed driver to drive her car. The person driving her car had been pulled over, and when stopped told the officer he had been given permission to use the car. In Ohio, allowing an unlicensed driver to drive your vehicle is the same level criminal offense as an OVI or an assault.

The vehicle owner was worried about the possible consequences of a misdemeanor conviction and hired the Columbus Criminal Defense team to represent her in court. We went to a pretrial on the owner’s behalf and noticed that there was something familiar about the name of the officer who made the charge. It turns out the officer had recently been arraigned in federal court for substantial child pornography charges.

Those charges likely would keep the officer tied up in court for quite some time and he likely would be unavailable to testify against the vehicle owner. The U.S. Constitution guarantees every defendant the right to confront his or her accuser. If the officer wouldn’t be able to be cross-examined at the trial for the charge of allowing an unlicensed driver to use the owner’s vehicle, the owner’s constitutional rights would be violated. We were able to use this argument to convince the prosecutor to dismiss the case. The vehicle owner would not have a criminal conviction on her record.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome in your case. Individual results may vary based on the facts, injuries, jurisdiction, venue, witnesses, parties, and other factors. The results and client testimonials provided are not necessarily representative of the results obtained by all clients or their satisfaction with the firm’s services.