Drugs affect people differently depending on their biological makeup, body weight and other factors. Those who just started taking a new drug are sometimes caught off guard because they did not know it could cause impairment, or they are surprised at how strong the effects are. If their driving is affected and a police officer happens to notice, even legal drugs can result in DUI charges.
]]> In one recent case, a man's impaired driving on the way home from a doctor's appointment resulted in a fatal car accident. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for DUI and vehicular homicide.According to news sources, the Georgia man was driving home after visiting his doctor in a nearby town, approximately 30-35 miles away. During the visit, the doctor prescribed a powerful narcotic called Fentanyl. In this case, the drug was to be administered using a stick-on patch.
For unclear reasons, the man put the patch on his skin before driving home or at some point early in the trip. Witnesses to the crash say that the man was driving erratically and he crossed the center line while trying to pass a logging truck. It was then that he struck the victim's vehicle.
There could have been many factors at play in this crash, including the fact that it occurred during a rainstorm. But evidence of several powerful drugs in the man's system likely proved influential in his conviction.
Check back later this week as we continue our discussion about this case and the DUI risks associated with legal drugs.
Source: Jacksonville.com, "Patterson man gets 15 years in DUI death of Kingsland child abuse investigator," Terry Dickson, May 13, 2012
]]>Despite intense planning and preparation, a DUI case can sometimes be won or lost based on something as simple as court attendance by the arresting officer. For DUI defendants in Pennsylvania and across the country, this loophole can be advantageous, but it can also leave their case in an uncomfortable state of uncertainty.
]]> According to news reports, a situation like this recently occurred in North Carolina. Reports estimate that as many as 20 DWI cases and 70 other traffic violations were dismissed because the state trooper involved did not show up in court to testify.The reason for his absence wasn't entirely clear, but two probable theories were reported. First, the trooper is currently on administrative duty due to an unrelated felony charge. In some cases, law enforcement officials are not allowed to testify in court while on leave.
Another possible explanation is that he did not know about the court date. News sources report that the highway patrol, for unknown reasons, never delivered a subpoena from the district attorney's office to the state trooper.
Whatever the reason, the trooper's absence resulted in the criminal cases being dismissed, at least temporarily. This may seem like a lucky break for all those facing charges. However, an attorney who commented on the case said that these defendants could be left wondering about the status of their case for up to two years when the statute of limitations finally expires.
He added: "One way or another, these cases have to come to some type of conclusion. It's completely unfair to send 90 people home thinking the case is over, and have them worry for how many years now, without knowing if the case is really over."
Sources:
digtriad.com, "Wayne Holyfield Misses Court, DWI Cases 'Dismissed'," Mark Geary, May 1, 2012
digtriad.com, "Wayne Holyfield No Show In Court; 90 Traffic Cases 'Dismissed'," Faith Abubey, May 1, 2012
But participating in an Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program is often quite expensive, and not every defendant has the money to pay the costs. While Bucks County and Montgomery County have policies allowing indigent defendants to stay in the program, other Pennsylvania counties in the region may not be so lenient.
]]> Bucks County adopted a new system last year to waive ARD costs and any owed restitution for defendants who can prove that they are indigent (too poor to pay). Montgomery County also waives some fees for indigent participants.But according to a recent news article, this is not the case in six other counties in the region. In Northampton County, for instance, defendants who haven't paid costs in full are brought in for probation violation hearings. Some county officials estimate that about 25 ARD participants are kicked out of the program each month.
Officials in many counties say they will work with indigent defendants to help them find a way to make their payments. However, for some, the costs of ARD can still be a deal breaker that leaves them with a criminal conviction on their record.
While there may be no easy answer, this problem does raise significant questions about fairness and equal treatment under the law. The district attorney for Northampton County says: "That's a concern of mine, because we don't want unequal justice here in the county. We don't want to have a program where rich people get in and poor people are left out."
Source: Morning Call, "In ARD program, justice comes at a cost," Riley Yates, April 14, 2012
]]>We recently wrote that part of a good DUI defense often includes obtaining an independent third-party analysis of the defendant's blood sample. Why is this important? Because one incompetent employee can cast doubt over literally thousands of DUI cases.
]]> This recently occurred in Colorado. More than 1,700 blood-alcohol samples are now being retested after it was discovered that one employee had accidentally or intentionally misreported several test results.In a recent news article, one lawyer shared part of the email he received from the state Department of Health. It read: "On Friday March 9, 2012 it was brought to my attention that several blood samples analyzed by [A particular lab technician] were reported outside the appropriate reporting range." The lawyer added: "It means that the reliability of the samples and the results that we've gotten from the Department of Health are called into question."
The employee has been fired, but some 1,700 blood samples must now be audited to determine which are inaccurate. As of late April, about 250 samples had been retested. Of these, 10 were found to be inaccurate.
To some, that may not seem like very many. But it is important to remember that each of those 10 blood samples represents a real person. Each is a DUI defendant who could have been wrongly convicted because of the carelessness, incompetence or corruption of a single lab technician.
It will be interesting to see how many more inaccurate samples are discovered, and whether these will result in a high number of appealed cases.
Source: CBS Denver, "Samples From DUI Cases Being Re-Tested," April 20, 2012
]]>In a recent case from New Jersey, a 29-year-old woman was able to reduce the charges from her DUI arrest earlier this year. On the night of her arrest in January, an officer gave the woman a breathalyzer test after she failed a field sobriety test.
]]> Her breathalyzer test results showed a blood-alcohol content of 0.21 percent, which is nearly three times the legal limit. However, there is no way to know what her actual BAC was because the woman has a pierced tongue and she took the test with a tongue stud in her mouth.Her defense attorney noted in court that state law prohibits blood-alcohol testing with foreign objects or materials in the mouth. After discussing this contention with the prosecutor, it was decided that the breathalyzer evidence should be thrown out.
The prosecution did have other evidence against the defendant, including the results of the field sobriety test. The woman chose to plead guilty to reduced charges.
If the breathalyzer evidence had been included, the defendant could have faced a potential fine of $300 and a license suspension for seven months. Without that evidence, her fine was reduced to $256 and her license was suspended for only three months.
Even when it is clear that law enforcement has made mistakes, DUI defendants are not always able to completely beat the charges against them. However, a good criminal defense attorney can help individuals present the best possible case and may be able to get their charges reduced.
Source: Mount Olive Chronicle, "Tongue stud helps woman reduce drunk-driving charge in Mount Olive," Phil Garber, April 30, 2012
]]>And if you find your mug shot or arrest record posted online, it is safe to assume that most people have already found you guilty. For anyone wrongly charged with DUI, this public humiliation can be as damaging to their reputation as a DUI conviction.
]]> In many states, mug shots and arrest records are freely posted on law enforcement websites. However, enterprising individuals have discovered that by creating sites to republish these mug shots, they can make money by offering to remove the information - for a steep fee, of course.In some professions, reputation is everything. For instance, a teacher in Florida was horrified to discover her mug shot on several websites the day after she was arrested for first-offense DUI.
In a desperate attempt to protect her professional reputation, she paid a total of about $850 to have her information removed from several websites. In one case, the site kept her information posted for 15 days after she paid to have it taken down.
These websites are technically legal, but just barely, many legal scholars say.
Commenting on the practice, one law professor said: "First, it's close to extortion, although not quite because there is not a threat to harm reputation, but to improve it. Second, it's fraudulent in the sense that there is little value in paying to have the mug shots removed from the commercial site when they can be googled on a sheriff's department website."
It's true that arrest records and mug shots are often freely available public information, and it's also true that an arrest is not the same as a conviction. But for many of us, it may as well be. Public knowledge of an arrest often leads to reputation damage which we may not be able to recover from.
Anyone charged with a DUI has a lot to lose, both personally and professionally. While you are not guaranteed a fair trial in the court of public opinion, you are innocent until proven guilty in the criminal justice system. A qualified criminal defense attorney can help make sure your rights in this arena are protected.
Source: ABC News, "Businesses Charge Hundreds To Remove Mug Shots Online," Susanna Kim, April 23, 2012
]]>Unfortunately, even small traffic violations can carry expensive fines. And what can you do about it? Most drivers assume that even if they try to fight the ticket, it will be their word against the officer's. If only we as drivers had the credentials and authority to mount an air-tight defense in the courtroom.
]]> For all drivers who have felt this frustration, a recent news story may just provide some hope. Earlier this month, a physicist at UCSD in California was able to use his professional expertise to convince a judge to throw out a $400 traffic ticket.The man had been cited for a "rolling stop," or a failure to completely stop at a stop sign. Rather than sharing his own version of events, the physicist wrote a four-page defense arguing that he couldn't have done what he was accused of doing, because his alleged actions would have defied physics.
The full explanation would probably be over most our heads. But a local news story had a short summary, given by the physicist.
He said: "Therefore my argument in the court went as follows: that what [the officer] saw would be easily confused by the angle of speed of this hypothetical object that failed to stop at the stop sign. And therefore, what he saw did not properly reflect reality, which was completely different."
This kind of defense strategy is not likely to work for everyone. Clearly, this man's profession and training lends him credibility as well as the ability to craft a persuasive argument, albeit one that is hard to understand.
But at the very least, this story should be of some comfort to anyone who has tried to fight a bogus traffic ticket and lost. It shows that sometimes, the little guy does win.
Source: MSNBC, "Man uses physics to fight $400 traffic ticket," Monica Garske, April 15, 2012
]]>As spring continues to unfold, teens are getting ready for prom, graduation and summer trips which may or may not involve the illegal consumption of alcohol. To reduce the possibility that teens will make poor decisions and choose to drive drunk, educators and safety advocates are using goggles that simulate "drunk vision" to teach teens about this issue.
]]> Students are asked to put on the goggles and follow a series of commands. At certain levels of impairment, it becomes obvious that no matter how hard you are concentrating, intoxication weakens your ability to do even the most basic of tasks.One high school baseball player described his inability to catch a ball made of soft foam. Even though the ball was more than three times the size of the baseballs that he plays with every day, he could not make a simple catch of the large foam ball with the goggles on.
Students are also asked to complete a field sobriety test during the drunk-goggles exercise. Again, regardless of their mental focus, the ways in which the goggles simulate the body's response to alcohol helps teens to understand that it is not about desire to complete the task when impaired, but the body's ability to complete it.
Hopefully creative teaching methods like the drunk-goggles exercises will help teens avoid drunk driving and all the consequences that such behavior leads to.
Source: The Anniston Star, "'Drunk goggles' teach prom-goers about dangers of impaired driving," Laura Johnson, Apr. 14, 2012
]]>If administered incorrectly, blood tests and breathalyzers can easily register a blood-alcohol content that is too high. This has been a widespread problem in parts of Pennsylvania and other states over the last few years. As a result, hundreds or even thousands of DUI cases needed to be reexamined.
]]> While many DUI defendants will want to independently examine the evidence that will be used against them, this is not always possible. In a recent case from Minnesota, a man suspected of drunk driving had consented to a blood test which showed he had a BAC of 0.11 percent. As in Pennsylvania, the legal BAC threshold is 0.08 percent.The man's attorney requested the blood sample within three months of his client's arrest, presumably because he wished to have the blood independently tested. However, they were told that the sample had been destroyed.
Because prosecutors were unable to turn over this important evidence, the trial judge ruled that the blood sample evidence should be excluded. An appellate court later upheld that ruling.
Prosecutors attempted to argue that it was the defendant's responsibility to prove that the blood evidence which was destroyed could somehow have exonerated him.
However, the appellate court judges disagreed. The court's ruling, in part, stated: "The right to determine whether evidence is 'favorable to an accused' does not belong to the state: the state may not determine what evidence is definitely, probably, or possibly not favorable and then destroy it after the accused has specifically and in writing requested that it be preserved without violating due process."
It is important to remember that in our criminal justice system, the burden of proof rests with the accusers, not the accused. We are all innocent until proven guilty, and proof becomes much more difficult when prosecutors destroy their own evidence.
Source: TheNewspaper.com, "Minnesota: Court Rules Police Cannot Destroy DUI Blood Sample," March 29, 2012
]]>Certainly, many drunk driving charges are levied against well-meaning and safety-conscious drivers who have just a little more in their system than is acceptable. In order to avoid these situations, it is important for parents to teach their children about safe alcohol consumption and the consequences of varied levels of impairment.
]]> A new study related to this issue was commissioned by the Century Council. The Century Council is a non-profit organization funded by distillers. The mission of the council is to combat underage drinking and drunk driving.The study has determined that over the past decade, parental influence has become a significant force in the ability to influence children's eventual drinking habits.
A startling 83 percent of children and teens aged 10 to 18 cite their parents as the primary influence on their decisions related to drinking. This statistic has increased nearly 25 percent over the past ten years.
Parents are thus significantly more influential to this particular behavioral decision than peers, friends, siblings and teachers.
More parents are talking to their kids about the consequences of driving impaired and drinking in general. Hopefully this shift in primary influences will help keep our next generation safer than the one which came before it.
Source: UPI, "Parents are main influence on kid drinking," Apr. 14, 2012
]]>Pennsylvania state police then pulled the 49-year-old man over again around 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning as he exited the Interstate. In his first arrest police reported the suspect's blood alcohol content was 0.08 percent 30 minutes after he drove the school bus.
]]> A BAC of 0.08 percent is the legal limit for driving under the influence under normal circumstances, however for a driver of a commercial vehicle, 0.08 percent is four times the state's legal limit of 0.02 percent. There was no report of what his BAC level was in his second DUI charge.A conviction on a second or third DUI offense can have severe consequences beyond losing your job as in this case. Penalties can include house arrest, substantial fines and even incarceration. A second DUI conviction is likely to stay on your permanent record and a third charge of DUI or DWI could result in a felony offense and a one year prison sentence.
Court records do not indicate if the suspect has an attorney, however with so much at stake when you are charged with multiple DUIs it can be extremely helpful to contact an experienced DUI defense attorney before speaking with the authorities or facing a judge. It is important to learn what your rights are and what might be the best strategy for responding to the charges in your particular situation before you enter a plea.
Source: WBRZ.com, "PA. School Bus Driver gets 2 DUI's within 17 Hours," April 2, 2012
]]>The 25-year-old Eastern Pennsylvania woman had been arrested after an officer found her drunk and in the driver's seat of a car that was double-parked on the street in front of a house. She and two others testified that she was only retrieving bags from the car while the actual driver (who was sober) had gone to unlock the house.
]]> Convinced by this evidence, the jury acquitted her. However, the judge remained unconvinced and convicted the defendant on a general-impairment DUI charge, which is considered a minor misdemeanor charge.Last week, the woman's attorney asked the judge to dismiss the conviction. The request was denied and the defendant was sentenced to between five days and six months in prison.
The case is being appealed, and the only good news to come out of the courtroom last week was that, until her appeals are exhausted, the defendant will not have to serve her sentence.
In light of the injustice already suffered by this young woman, this small break is actually quite significant. Even before the trial began, another judge ordered the defendant to surrender her driver's license. This was done despite the fact that the woman had yet to be tried or convicted.
Hopefully, the defendant's case will receive a more reasonable and fair decision when appealed to Superior Court.
Source: The Morning Call, "DUI defendant, acquitted by jury, convicted by judge, won't be jailed pending appeals," Riley Yates, Apr. 4, 2012
]]>As such, police in nearly every community are on high alert for illegal behavior from college students, whether it be underage drinking, DUI or a host of other traffic violations.
]]> Because Pennsylvania's high school students go on to attend college all over the country, and because not every student comes home for spring break, increased DUI enforcement during spring break is really a nationwide issue.In a recent news article, a police officer in Georgia shared this message: "We want you to just be cautious. Obey all traffic laws. And to the parents, if you have children remind them about their safe driving habits and make sure they're not violating the laws."
College students who don't drive while at school may have allowed their driver's license to expire or their auto insurance coverage to lapse. Law enforcement is checking for these violations as well. And students who get pulled over for speeding may find themselves in additional legal trouble if police discover these other violations.
The police officer quoted earlier also said: "That's one of the big concerns we have that people and drivers are driving around town without insurance. That really puts a strain on other drivers and other citizens in the city."
It is important to remember that no matter where an alleged DUI incident or serious traffic violation occurred, these charges can follow you back to school and may affect your enrollment eligibility. That's why college students charged with DUI over spring break may wish to seek the help of a qualified criminal defense attorney.
Source: WALB News 10, "Spring Break breeds bad drivers," Stephen Abel, Mar. 29, 2012
]]>Other factors can also affect the accuracy of breathalyzer test results, including certain pre-existing health conditions a suspect may have. In one recent DUI appeal, a defendant argued that his false teeth may have led to a false breathalyzer reading.
]]> Unfortunately, the man's DUI appeal was unsuccessful. Late last month, the Kansas Court of Appeal upheld the man's DUI conviction stemming from a 2008 traffic stop. During the stop, the man submitted to a breathalyzer test that registered a blood-alcohol content of 0.24 percent, which is about three times the legal limit.But the defendant wears false teeth. This is important because there have been previous cases were defense attorneys successfully showed that dentures can sometimes allow substances such as alcohol to stay trapped in the wearer's mouth. If the denture wearer takes a breath test with even small amounts of alcohol trapped in his mouth, it could push the disadvantageously skew the results.
But the appellate court ultimately ruled against the defendant. It said that the arresting officer had followed protocol and met the requirement to observe suspects for at least 20 minutes prior to testing. This is done, in part, to give enough time for mouth alcohol to dissipate before the test.
The officer reportedly observed the defendant for about 22 minutes before the test.
While this man's defense was unsuccessful, his story contains an important message. It is important to remember that evidence obtained by police is not always iron-clad. It can be and should be challenged when a defendant believes he was wrongly charged or convicted.
Source: The Wichita Eagle, "Kansas appeals court rejects claim that false teeth led to DUI," Dion Lefler, Mar. 26, 2012
]]>Nonetheless, we continually hear about legislative measures to strengthen DUI penalties and keep drunk drivers off the roads. And Pennsylvania is not the only state to go to extremes when it comes to proposing new anti-DUI laws.
]]> For instance, a state senator in California recently introduced a bill that could arguably turn average citizens into paid informants. If passed, the bill would offer a $100 reward to someone who reports a drunk driver to police, if that drunk driver is later convicted.The funding for the reward would come directly from the convicted drunk driver, according to news articles about the proposed legislation. This means that in addition to steep legal fees, fines, and potential jail time, a convicted DUI defendant would be forced to financially reward the person who reported him.
Explaining his position, the senator said: "By engaging civilians to report drunk drivers, this bill would directly and immediately lower the number of roadway deaths."
Every citizen is in favor of the idea of lowering car accident fatalities. But in this case, there appears to be no data to prove that rewarding those who report alleged drunk driving would actually reduce fatalities.
Furthermore, there are many ethical issues with this proposed legislation that are expected to draw criticism from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. If we provide financial incentive for reporting drunk drivers, how long will it be before average citizens to begin to surveil and report on one another in other areas of life?
Sources:
Los Angeles Times, "California lawmaker proposes reward for reporting drunk drivers," Patrick McGreevy, Mar. 12, 2012
EGPnews.com, "Bill Would Reward People Who Report Drunk Drivers," Mar. 1, 2012