DWI-What Does Your Lawyer Need to Look For?

DWI/DUI arrests often start out as a minor traffic violation in the evening or early morning hours—you forgot to put on your seat belt, or you failed to signal before you changed lanes. These small violations give the officer who stopped you the opportunity to stop you and talk to you. If the officer smells alcohol on your breath, you will probably be asked to step out of the car and perform what are called “Field Sobriety Tests.” You will probably be on camera when you do these tests. Each test involves many small components, but if you do only two of these things in each test wrong, the officer will say you failed that test. Theses tests must be administered correctly to be valid.

Wade Russell is certified to administer Field Sobriety Tests, just as are the officers who perform these tests. He will review the recording of you doing the tests, and will able to tell you whether the tests were demonstrated properly to you before you started. He will also be able to tell you how well you did on the video overall, despite what the officer said in his report about how well you did. Most of the time, what the officer writes in his or her report does not match what is on the recording—you may have done much better than what is written in the report.

DWI cases have many issues for your attorney to look at—did you really do something wrong while driving for the officer to legally stop you? Did you really have alcohol on your breath? Did you really fail the tests? Were the tests administered properly? If they were not, then they are not valid. 

Many cases turn on things other than the tests that show up on the video.  For instance, many people arrested for DWI technically failed one or more of the tests, but have clear speech, are responsive to the officer's questions and instructions, do not sway, and otherwise seem "normal."  In my experience, very many of these cases are reduced to a lesser charge, and some are dismissed altogether. 

Felony DWI Reduced to Misdemeanor

I just finished representing a client with a felony DWI, that it, it was his third arrest for DWI with two prior convictions. He gave a blood sample but it indicated no alcohol having been consumed.  There was an issue regarding the use of PCP. Even if the prosecutor could screen his blood for PCP, it would have been very difficult to prove a level of intoxication due to the level of the drug found in his blood.  So, the case was reduced to a misdemeanor DWI and my client was sentenced to the backtime he had already served in jail. He was happy to go home and not have a felony DWI on his record, not to mention avoiding the possibility of serving pen time.