DWIs are hard on you. You may lose your job, fight to keep friendships or have a horribly damaged reputation. You may find it hard to rent a new home or be unable to afford car insurance to drive.
DWIs have the potential to change your life, but you still have some things you can do to prevent a DWI from impacting you after an arrest. Here are five tips for avoiding and defending a DWI.
1. Lawful and reasonable stops
First, it’s important to review how you ended up stopped by the police. Did the officer have a legitimate reason for pulling you over? If the officer stopped you without a reason, any evidence collected may not be admitted to court.
2. Standardized field tests: Failure is almost unavoidable
Standardized field tests are designed to make people fail. Making someone stand on one leg could make anyone, sober or not, unbalanced. Walking in a straight line and turning could make you lose your balance if you so much as have a cold or feel a little dizzy. If you have any medical concerns or injuries that could have impacted the tests, they may not be upheld in court. Failing these tests alone doesn’t signify that you’re drunk.
3. Improperly administered tests
What would you do if you found out the officer who gave you a breath test had never done so before? You’d question if he or she understood how to give one correctly. What if he or she failed to calibrate the machine today? That, too, could invalidate the test.
4. Medical concerns that made you appear drunk
Some medical problems make people appear intoxicated. Conditions like diabetes or seizures have the potential to make you lose control of your vehicle or to act unlike yourself. A medical condition can get you off the hook for a DWI if you’re able to show you weren’t intoxicated.
5. Entrapment concerns
Entrapment violates the law, and there’s no reason you should go to jail or face fines for falling into a trap set by the police. If an officer encourages your drinking at a bar and then arrests you as soon as you get behind the wheel, that could be considered entrapment. There are other situations that could be entrapment as well.
These five issues come up in cases and can be good information to use for a defense. An attorney can help you decide if any of these factors apply.
