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attorney william hanlon

tampa dui attorney gets reckless on refusal in orlando»

tampa dui charge attorney
facts: Our client was arrested for DUI in Orlando. She got lost on her way home from the concert she attended with her 16 year old daughter. The following information is a summarized version of a letter that was written to a prosecutor in an effort to reduce her dui charge. This letter may describe facts which are relevant to your DUI charge, and explains the nuances involved in defending defects in someone's performance on the field sobriety exercises.
The client was a single mother with two children. She had no prior criminal past whatsoever, and owned and managed a construction company. On the night of this incident she was chaperoning her daughter to a rock concert in Orlando. The concert started around 7:45 p.m. and ended around 11:45 p.m. The client and her daughter had front row seats and stood during most of the concert. As you can imagine front row seats at a rock concert offer a great view of the show, but force you to deal with many people pressed up against you all night long. It goes without saying that many of these people drink and inevitably their beer winds up on your clothes. The trooper pointed out in her report that initially she smelled an odor of alcohol emanating from the client's vehicle, not the client. Alcohol did get on her clothing during the concert. Shortly after they left the concert they ate at Wendy's and attempted to drive home.
The client was from the Tampa area and had never been to Orlando. Orlando can be a difficult area to navigate, even for people who have lived there for a period of time. She used map quest directions to get to the concert, and was reading them in reverse in an effort to get home when she was stopped by the trooper. She was arguing with her daughter and becoming very frustrated when the trooper pulled her over. Everything about the client's driving pattern was consistent with someone who was lost, and confused, not DUI.
Only two of the three tests that were administered were actually approved tests (The walk-and-turn, and the one-legged stand). During the walk-and-turn test the client took her foot off of the line twice, and did not touch heel to toe. On the one-legged stand test the client put her foot down at a count of 14. She raised her leg again, and started counting again. The trooper then stopped her after 7 seconds.
The conditions under which someone is asked to perform the field sobriety tests is critical to their outcome. The trooper asked her to perform these exercises under conditions that made performing them properly extremely difficult. First,the officer's radio was on during the entire time the field sobriety tests were administered. As a consequence many of the instructions given by the trooper are inaudible. This problem makes it impossible to determine if all the instructions were read correctly.
The weather report also showed that the low on March 5, 2009 was 48 degrees. The wind chill also had to be fairly significant in that there were gusts of 25 mph that night. The concert ended after 12:30 a.m., and the client was pulled over at 12:44 a.m. During her performance you could see the exhaust emitting from the vehicle and the client continuing to rub and blow into her hands throughout the exercises. She also happened to be wearing high heels that night. The fact that she stood in these heels all night, and the fact that it is almost impossible to perform the field sobriety exercises in high heels forced her to take them off before she performed these exercises. Performing all these exercises in bare feet, in 48 degree temperatures caused the client to shiver during the exercises. If your body is quivering it is going to affect your balance, which is critical to performing these exercises properly.
The slope of the parking lot (which is even more visible when the trooper lays down her tape)could clearly be detected with the naked eye. In order for any of the field sobriety tests to accurately determine whether someone's normal faculties are impaired they must be performed on a flat, level surface. When the trooper makes a decision to request field sobriety tests she repositions her patrol vehicle in a different direction. Even though she had to have been aware that she was about to administer the field sobriety tests she again failed to turn down her radio so both she and the client could be heard. The trooper gets out of her vehicle and lays down tape for the client to perform the walk-and-turn test. The tape is laid down at an angle against the slope of the parking lot. As the walk-and-turn exercise begins you can seethe client point out to the trooper that there was a noticeable slope in the parking lot.
Finally, as you know these exercises challenge your divided attention span. When the client initially stopped she was lost in Orlando with her 16 year old daughter. Before she was asked to step out of the car she expected the trooper to come back and give her directions. When the officer began the criminal investigation for driving under the influence the client felt that the trooper had already made up her mind about her arrest. This caused her thoughts to immediately shift to her daughter and what was going to happen to her daughter if she were arrested under these circumstances. She also considered the embarrassing possibility of being arrested for the first time in front of her daughter. As a consequence, throughout the administration of these exercises her thoughts were divided between the instructions, her performance, and her daughter's well being. Shortly after the client was handcuffed and put in the back of the patrol vehicle the trooper backs up and forgot that her daughter was still in her vehicle. She casually asks the client, "Is there anything you need out of your vehicle before we leave". The client quickly responded by saying, "My daughter". As the video plays on you hear her continuing to cry saying, "I never leave my daughter". While that issue may not have been at the forefront of the trooper's mind while these exercises were being conducted, it was clearly at the forefront of the client's, and was part of the reason she eventually refuses to offer a breath sample.
defense: The client's performance was far from perfect. However, considering the conditions under which she was asked to perform these exercises, and the fact that she was concerned about the well being of her daughter throughout the administration of the exercises, I did not feel that her performance was lacking in any meaningful way. As the trooper states on the video, her decision to arrest her was based on her driving pattern and her performance on the field sobriety tests.  Since the client was lost, her performance on the field sobriety tests was the only evidence the State could offer to prove her guilt. For the reasons stated above we felt the field sobriety exercises were not reliable indicators of impairment.
results: The client plead to a reduced charge of reckless driving with a withhold of the conviction. In other words she received no points on her driving record.
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