DUI & DWI Lawyer, Mantoloking NJ

A Mantoloking DWI case is heard in Brick, not in the borough. Mantoloking Borough Municipal Court now operates under a shared-services agreement with Brick Township, and its court office and in-person sessions are at 401 Chambers Bridge Road, Brick, NJ 08723, (732) 262-1226. Routine sessions are held over Zoom and only certain afternoons are set aside for in-person matters, so read your notice for the format as well as the date. The exception is a DWI filed together with an indictable charge, as after a crash causing serious injury, which moves to the county's criminal courthouse at 100 Hooper Avenue, Toms River. Send us a photo of the summons and the notice and we will confirm where and how you are due.

Not to the charge, because N.J.S.A. 39:4-50 applies to driving while intoxicated on any New Jersey road, whatever town the drinks were served in. It matters to the evidence. One of the first things an officer asks a driver stopped on Route 35 is where the trip started and how much was had there, and the answers go into the report the way the officer remembers them. Where a body camera was worn, we compare that account with its audio, because a rounded-up number or a half-heard answer reads very differently on paper than it sounded at the window. You must hand over your license, registration and insurance card; you do not have to narrate your evening. Tell us what you remember saying.

Only in a limited way. New Jersey's appellate courts have declined to accept the eye test, called horizontal gaze nystagmus, as proof that a driver was intoxicated, because its scientific reliability has not been established in our courts; at most it supports the officer's decision to make the arrest. The walk-and-turn and the one-leg stand are different, since a court may weigh them, but where the tests were recorded it weighs what the video shows and not only the marks on the officer's checklist. On a two-lane road with traffic passing in both directions, a recording, if one exists, also shows the footing, the lighting and how the instructions were given. Ask us to find out whether one exists and request it before your first date.

It depends on the breath reading the State can prove. For a first offense at 0.08 percent but under 0.10, the license is forfeited only until an ignition interlock is installed, and the device stays on for three months. From 0.10 to under 0.15 the rule is the same but the interlock runs seven months to a year. At 0.15 or higher the court orders four to six months with no driving at all, and the interlock is required during that period and for nine to fifteen months after the license is restored. None of it begins without a conviction, which is why the reading is the first thing we test. Bring the breath-test report to the free consultation.

For sentencing, no. N.J.S.A. 39:4-50 contains a step-down: when a second offense comes more than ten years after the first, the court must sentence it as a first offense, which generally means the interlock-based penalties instead of the long license loss a true second offense carries. Two cautions. The ten years run between the two offenses, so the exact date of the earlier one matters, and a conviction from another state under a similar law counts as a prior. The earlier conviction also stays on your driving record and counts again if there is ever another arrest. Tell us the month, year and state of the earlier case and we will pull your abstract to confirm which tier applies.