Reply #108: Okay, here goes

[XanaDUer]

I'm not a lawyer , and this happened over 15 years ago. Poor or not, you need to hire your own attorney. This happened to a friend, and I had to loan him $2500 to do so. We were friends with the guy's wife, and that was the discount price.

You know you screwed up. It happens. People do dumb things all the time, and it would be a shame to jettison your future b/c of this. Of course, don't do it again and, as someone said up thread - you really need to get that light thing fixed. You'll keep getting pulled over after dark.

So, my friend hires the lawyer, who pleads to something or other, no court date, and my friend has to complete rehab 12-step and, supposedly, his record was expunged of this. Not sure what the deal in your state is, so, if you are smart enough to be in grad school, you need to do some of your own research on this as it applies to your state. And, once this occurs and is over, you'd better run your own background check, on yourself, just to make sure what turns up before you apply for any jobs or whatever. Keep records of everything. Buy a file just for this incident, 'cause you're gonna be the King or Queen of paperwork for quite a while. Get everyone's name you speak to regarding this.

Not sure what the neighborhood has to do with this, though. Yeah, being poor sucks and, if you were the kid of the mayor, you'd probably be let go with a laugh and a warning. We don't live in that kind of world tho, when you're poor. Best of luck.

EDIT - Typo.