Legal Question in Criminal Law in Tennessee

Only a fool has himself as a lawyer!

You will be best off to have a lawyer to represent you in court. The issues you want answers to are state-specific questions. So toddle off to a lawyer's office. If you cannot afford a private aty, then the ourt will appoint one to you to defend the criminal charge.

DUI in Tenn., Live in Miss., wanting to represent self in

There is no way you can PREVENT Tennessee from looking back for old DUI's in other states, but there ARE ways to reduce the odds it will happen. In Tennessee the look back is TEN YEARS, and for DUI 2nd there is a MANDATORY minimum sentence of 45 days in jail -- day for day, with no way to get around it, though it is possible to do about four weeks of that in a drug & alcohol treatment facility, and for DUI 3rd the minimum time you will spend in jail is 120 days, and for each added offense the court can and often does increase the number of days to serve. In Tennessee there is no reduction for good behavior or anything else in the number of days to be served on a DUI. Tennessee's sentencing provisions are bvery harsh.While you can ASK that your priors not be considered.... it's a lot like a mouse calling the cat's attention to his existence and then saying, "Hey, big guy, now that you know I'm here, you won't eat me, will you?"DUI cases CAN be won. I have won several, and much of my practice focuses on DUI... but you ONLY win them by knowing how to effectively cross-examine the officer, knowing the law, knowing the science behind the tests and how to make the tests look untrustworthy, sometimes only by using an expert witness, and doing any of this without knowing your way around a courtroom.... is not very likely.I suggest that you EITHER contact an attorney who does a good deal of work in the area, or that you get ready to do some jail time and to lose your license for a year if a first offense, and two years if a second offense.The problems of representing yourself go beyond the fact that you don't know the law -- I would not even represent myself on a DUI. You need someone who is detached from what happened and can view the law and the evidence without the emotional bias you would bring to your own case.