Justice Starts Here Comprehensive DUI Services
Challenging the Stop
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures, including traffic stops conducted without proper legal justification. Understanding the role of constitutional rights and probable cause is fundamental when exploring your options for defense.
For a traffic stop to be lawful, the officer must have reasonable suspicion that the driver has violated a traffic law or is engaged in criminal activity. This suspicion must be specific and articulable and not based on mere hunches.
For instance, swerving between lanes, speeding, or running a red light are valid reasons to initiate a stop. However, if the officer pulls someone over without a legitimate reason that can be backed up in court, the stop is illegal, unless it was at a designated sobriety checkpoint.
What’s more, even if the stop itself was legal, there still has to be a basis for administering the DUI test itself. Any acknowledgement by the driver they have been drinking, or the presence of an open container would qualify. The smell of alcohol on the driver’s breath would permit an office to proceed with a test. Here again, though, there must be a reason, and officers must testify to that reason under oath.
There are cases when roadside tests are the probable cause cited for administering a test. We can subpoena the officer’s dashcam footage and review the tests. There are any number of reasons a driver might not fare well in these tests, from bad weather to bad pavement to simply not having great coordination.
If the traffic stop or the test was unlawful, any evidence gathered as a result may be subject to suppression under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine. Without admissible evidence, the prosecution’s case can be significantly weakened—perhaps even thrown out entirely.
To successfully challenge a traffic stop, it’s crucial to scrutinize all aspects of the incident, including the officer’s dashcam footage, bodycam recordings, and police reports. If roadside tests were the basis for
We know how to investigate whether the officer truly had probable cause, and if not, we’ll file a motion to suppress the unlawfully obtained evidence.
Challenging the Blood Test
Even though blood tests are often regarded as more reliable than breath tests, they are not immune to errors themselves. Issues such as improper handling, contamination, or flawed testing procedures can significantly impact the validity of the results.
One of the most common concerns with blood tests is the chain of custody. For the test result to hold weight in court, the proper collection, labeling, transport, and storage of the blood sample must be meticulously documented. Any break in this chain--such as unclear labeling or unmonitored storage--raises questions about the sample’s integrity. If we identify errors in the chain of custody, we might be able to argue that the results are unreliable and should be excluded.
Contamination is another factor that can compromise the accuracy of a blood test. Improper sterilization of equipment or the use of alcohol-based swabs can introduce external substances to the sample, leading to false BAC positives. Similarly, delays in analyzing the sample can result in fermentation, which causes an increase in BAC levels due to the resulting chemical.
