Taimoor Rana is seasoned criminal defense attorney specializing in DUI related cases. He shares his expert legal opinion here DWI Enforcement during Christmas and New year Holidays »
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- In order to enhance the enforcement of DWI laws, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office will join forces with other law enforcement agencies from around the state and nation.
Death Toll from DWI rises during Christmas and New Year
According to traffic safety experts, during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday period the daily death toll from drunk driving crashes is significantly more than during the rest of the year.
2,400 alcohol-related traffic crashes in Texas
In Texas during December, on average, more that 2,400 alcohol-related traffic crashes occurred. These accidents result in 80 fatalities on Texas roads and highways. (These estimates are based on an analysis of Texas CRIS data since 2003).
More Patrols During Christmas and New Year Holidays
This year, in cooperation with TxDOT, Sheriff Tommy Gage has delivered an important message for Texas drivers – he asked them not to drive if you’re tipsy or buzzed; they should call a cab or get a sober ride home instead.
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Breathalyzers: Why Aren’t They Warranted to Measure Alcohol? »
If you are facing drunk driving charges, then you must have taken (unless that you refuse) a chemical test for checking a blood alcohol concentration (BAC). It has been noted that the test will be done with a breath machine in the great majority of cases. When you face the trial in a court then you will come to know that you have been charged with not just one, but with two crimes.
First Charge:
The first crime with which you have been charged is the so-called "per se" offense: driving while having a BAC of .08% or greater. It doesn’t matter and no one actually cares whether you were intoxicated or not. It would be proved by all of the evidence that without question you were sober: your condition is not the crime, instead of that the crime is your chemical composition. And what is the sole source of evidence used by the police officers upon which you will be either convicted or acquitted? Just a machine.
Second Charge:
The second charge that you have to face is "driving under the influence of alcohol" ("DUI"), or in some states, it is referred to as "driving while intoxicated" ("DWI") or "operating under the influence" ("OUI"). All of them are basically the same thing. However in each case, it can be proved by the prosecution that you were under the influence of alcohol by offering the results of the same breath test into evidence and the jury will be instructed that it should be refutably believed that the defendant is guilty unless he can prove otherwise.
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DUI Arrests: Surge in DUI Arrest Among Women »
It is a happening of a recent Friday night in Lowell, Mass., just outside Boston, the state police were out there to look out any drunken drivers.
Officers regularly stop drivers and ask them that have they drunk tonight. They also ask some drivers to take sobriety tests; they have also arrested some of those drivers for Driving Under the Influence of alcohol.
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DUI and the Disappearing Right to a Jury Trial »
Ok, so it has been said by the cop that I looked bad on the field sobriety tests, but I know myself that I’m not guilty: I only had two drinks and I have got the witnesses. It doesn’t matter what the arresting police officer is saying, I can tell my side of the story to my fellow citizens and then let them decide. Right?
Well that is not necessary. This right to jury trial, had been handed down centuries ago from England’s Magna Carta, it was considered so fundamental to the framers of our Constitution that it had been included by them in the Bill of Rights? This is what we call Sixth Amendment. So it makes no exceptions to this sacred right to trial by a jury of peers.
So why is this happening that some states today are denying jury trial to a person who is accused of drunk driving? Why is that, for instance, an American citizen who has been arrested in New Jersey is forced to accept the decision of a politically-appointed judge? After all, on that subject the Sixth Amendment is pretty clear:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed…”
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The Police Officer as DUI “Expert” »
The subjective opinions of the arresting officer are of great importance in the drunk driving case. The officer should have the abilities to correctly assess DUI symptoms of intoxication: observations of driving, personal symptoms (slurred speech, flushed face, etc.), answers to questions, performance on field sobriety tests. Criminal charges will be filed by the prosecutor is legally determined by his DUI report (and his opinion in that report; it is his decision by which it will be decided that whether to suspend the driver’s license or not; the guilt or innocence of the person he arrests will be largely decided by his testimony at trial. So how much expert is the average police officer at judging levels of intoxication in a DUI case?
In order to give the answer to this question, a series of experiments have been conducted by the researchers at Rutger University’s Alcohol Behavior Research Laboratory. In order to compare with officers, two groups of non-police witnesses were first tested. In one, 49 lay social drinkers sat in a room as various subjects have been brought in one at a time for observation and to ask related questions. Some of them have consumed varying amounts of alcohol while the others had consumed nothing; each had been given tests for blood-alcohol levels. Each in turn answered questions that were asked by the lay witnesses until all were finished, then they got up and left. Then each of the 49 witnesses were asked to judge state of sobriety or intoxication of each subject. It was concluded by the researchers that the assumption that social drinkers would prove to be accurate judges…was not confirmed.
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Have a Close look at DUI Fatality Statistics »
The numbers of deaths on the highways caused by drunk drivers has justified the "DUI crackdown", along with the loss of constitutional rights. As it has been said by the U.S. Supreme Court in Michigan v. Sitz, for instance, DUI "sobriety checkpoints" seems to be violating our Fourth Amendment right to be free of suspicion less stops by the police but this illegal intrusion on our privacy is "outweighed" by the "carnage" on our highways of 25,000 deaths that occur due to drunk driving each year.
What is the source of these statistics? Several years ago, the statistics that had been kept on traffic fatalities by law enforcement agencies included a category for "alcohol-caused" deaths. However, these statistics were subtly changed to "alcohol-related" in order to justify such things as sobriety checkpoints, lowered blood alcohol levels and automatic at-the-scene DUI license suspensions. Here you must note that they changed it to “DUI related", but not “DUI caused”.
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Investigation of DUI Cases: What are the SFST’s? »
In this article we have described about the tests which the cops ask a person to perform during a DUI or drunk driving offense stop. The information that is provided in this article is pertinent to DUI offenses across the nation as SFST stands for Standard Field Sobriety Tests which means they are considered to be standard across the United States.
Investigation of DUI Cases:
What are the SFST’s? How do CA courts deal with FST’s that are not performed in accordance with NHTSA? These are the frequently asked questions about SFST’S. I have tried to give the answer to these questions.
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